Harry Enfield on starring in the stage adaptation of hit TV comedy The Windsors

Virgin Radio

12 Aug 2021, 10:16

The legendary comedian joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about starring in The Windsors: Endgame in London’s West End, and about how he and his friend Paul Whitehouse have changed over the years.

Harry plays Prince Charles in Channel 4’s irreverent royal spoof, which has been adapted into a stage show. He told Gaby Roslin and Sam Pinkham, who are in for Chris, “I’m in the theatre, darling! I’d never done the theatre until five years ago, and now I'm in musical theatre, darling! I sing, darling, so I have to call everyone darling, darling!” 

Harry added, “I’m very much enjoying myself, thank you. I have sword fights and everything!”

The plot of the stage version of the popular sitcom revolves around intergenerational conflict, with Wills challenging his father for supremacy, and Camilla trying to see him off and rule the land with an iron fist. Harry said, “We’ve got live S-E-X. Am I allowed to say S-E-X in the morning? We’ve got live S-E-X, we’ve got torture, songs and millions of jokes. It’s very good fun!”

The Windsors: Endgame plays at The Prince of Wales Theatre in London until Saturday 9th October. The show will star a number of West End performers, as well as Harry, Matthew Cottle, Tom Durant-Pritchard and Tim Wallers from the TV series. “We’re the only ones from the telly series,” Harry confirmed. “But everyone else is brilliant, and has recreated the characters for the stage. 

“They’re all really funny. Tracy-Ann Oberman is my Camilla, my evil Queen Camilla. And there is just a brilliant cast, I won’t go through them all, but they are all absolutely fantastic.” 

When Sam asked Harry whether they were able to tackle any subject they wanted in the stage show, or whether they needed to get things signed off by the actual Royal Family, Harry said, “No, they don’t sign off anything! No, no, no! The only thing is, there’s a song at the end that we all sing, and we all had a bit of a rebellion, because there is a song about, ‘We always do our duty and never, ever take a bus!’ and we had a thing of saying, ‘Oh come on, it’s the last song, can we change that to, ‘Never, ever make a fuss’? Because that’s actually the case with the Royal Family, you can say what you like about them and they never, ever make a fuss. You know, they just get on with it don’t they?”

Gaby and Sam also spoke to Harry about his timeless character creations, such as the iconic Kevin the Teenager. Harry joked, “I’m not timeless. I couldn’t play him anymore! I can play 74-year-old Prince Charles, but not 14-year-old Kevin!”

When talking about his friendship with Paul Whitehouse, with whom he worked on his massively popular sketch show, Harry said, “What’s weird is, Paul always used to go, ‘I never go to the theatre. I don’t like the theatre. Theatre should be no longer than a football match, but I don’t like it’. And now he’s been in Only Fools and Horses, and I’m in this. But one of our things about this was to make sure it was 90 minutes, the same length as a football match, and it’s running in at 1 [hour and] 29 [minutes], so a football match without extra-time, and, you know, with masses of laughs!

“And then Paul, afterwards, goes, ‘How was the show tonight, darling?’ And I text him back, ‘It was wonderful, darling’, and get flowers from him and things like that.” 

Harry laughed, “We’ve completely changed!”

The Windsors: Endgame is at The Prince Of Wales Theatre until Saturday 9th October. For tickets and information visit thewindsorsendgame.com.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.