Working out Jim

May 5 2008 by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo

ALTHOUGH he likes to break things down to black and white, Jim Davidson is a grey area.

Davidson sprang to fame by winning TV talent show New Faces in the late ‘70s and went on to star in his own TV show, before being handed high-profile platforms on prime-time BBC on Big Break and The Generation Game.

Unfortunately, he has spurned most of the opportunities in a wave of tabloid headlines that have featured wife-beating, racism and alcohol and substance abuse.

“The people who say those things don’t know me,” he says, from his tax-exile home in Dubai.

“They just hear something and go on the offensive.

“The latest one is calling me homophobic.”

That latest label came in September 2007 when he was booted off TV programme Hell's Kitchen after calling fellow contestant Brian Dowling “a shirtlifter.”

“The fact that he was gay had nothing to do with it,” defends Davidson, 55, who admits to homophobia.

“It’s the fact that he was a talentless and deeply unintelligent man who played the homophobic card every time you spoke to him which annoyed me.”

It is often said that the easiest way to hide a lie is among truths, and a similar propaganda pattern works for Davidson.

Davidson’s MO is clear, he finds common ground with you on one thing and then cajoles you onto his agenda.

Witness the way he raised the subject of race from a conversation that began by appealing to a sense of working-class justice.

“In my shows I talk to people about the ridiculous way in which we are treated by councils and governments,” he begins.

“Their latest one is binge drinking but how are you going to stop that? And why should we stop?

“People work their guts out all week and on a Friday they just want to go out drinking. What’s wrong with that?

“You might want to go and watch your football team but these days you can’t afford it.

“You are an ethnic minority in your own country.”

Where does one relate to the other?

But Davidson knows the media loves to demonise him – his current tour is called The Devil Rides Out – and he acknowledges he uses it for publicity.

But this is the same man who founded The British Forces Foundation in April 1999, which provides morale-boosting entertainment to troops while on operations – a service endorsed by its Patron The Prince of Wales – and who was a awarded the OBE in 2001 for his services to charity.

Indeed that aspect of his work will be evident at his Cardiff show tonight, with Simon Weston expected to be in the crowd.

“Simon is someone I have had a beer with on many occasions, especially since I have become involved with the Falklands veterans’ association,” he says.

“I’ll take the mickey out of him something terrible on stage.

“Actually, I’ve got a friend called Daryl Connick, from Blackwood, who lost a leg in the Falklands, and it’s him that takes the mickey out of Simon. I just repeat what he says.

“Two people disfigured by that war but getting on with their lives – and doing it with a sense of humour.

“To me that’s the epitome of the British solider.”

This is not a defence or endorsement of Davidson because personally I wouldn’t watch his shows and I in no way condone any of Davidson’s awful opinions on race, sexuality or on whether it’s OK to punch a woman in the face.

But neither is he all evil and that has been recognised by the Royals, the Army and the BBC at varying times in his career.

“I don’t mind what people say about me,” he concludes. “You have to be able to stand at the pearly gates and say ‘I did all right’.

“Could I have done better? Yes. “Could I have been a better man? Yes.

“But I do all right.

Jim Davidson performs at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, tonight.

Tickets cost £19.50 from 029 2087 8444.