Jimmy Cricket, comedian known for his ‘And there’s more!’ catchphrase, dies aged 80
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- Jimmy Cricket (born James Joseph Mulgrew in Cookstown, Northern Ireland) died aged 80 after a short illness, with his family saying he spent his final days "surrounded by his family, love, laughter and songs" and was "cracking jokes to the wonderful NHS staff" until the end.
- Cricket fronted his own ITV series "And there's more!" wearing his signature tailcoat, short trousers and wellington boots marked "L" and "R" on the wrong feet, and appeared at the 1984 Royal Variety Performance and on BBC's The Good Old Days.
- Cricket got his big break reaching the semi-finals of TV talent show Search for a Star in 1980 after leaving school at 16 and working as a Butlin's Redcoat, and by 1987 was the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life.
- Cricket moved to BBC Radio 2 in the mid-1990s, starring in four series of Jimmy's Cricket Team alongside other comedy talent.
- Cricket married May Tweedie in 1972, had four children and four grandchildren, and was married for 52 years; his family called him "forever our clown" and "a very silly grandad indeed."
- Cricket was a prolific charity fundraiser, appearing alongside Peter Kay and Matt Lucas in the 2007 Comic Relief video for "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" and staging tours for Manchester's Francis House Children's Hospice.
- Cricket was awarded a papal knighthood — the Roman Catholic Church's highest honour — by Pope Francis in 2015 in recognition of his charity work, quipping at the time: "He's got the wrong fella here, is he sure it's not the neighbour?"
Why it matters: Cricket was a fixture of British light entertainment whose career spanned four decades and multiple charities, including Francis House Children's Hospice, which lost a prolific fundraiser. His papal knighthood in 2015 signalled the institutional recognition of a comedian whose working-class northern circuit roots translated into sustained philanthropic impact.
