James Mulgrew (1945 – 2026)

Their Story

James Mulgrew, known professionally as Jimmy Cricket, was a beloved Northern Irish comedian whose career spanned over five decades. Born in Cookstown in 1945, he left school at 16 and began his entertainment career as a Redcoat at Butlin's holiday camps before moving into stand-up comedy. By the early 1970s, he had become one of Britain's most recognizable family entertainers, renowned for his entirely clean, wholesome humor delivered in a thick Irish brogue with a signature stage costume featuring a tailcoat, cut-off trousers, bowler hat, and Wellington boots deliberately worn on the wrong feet marked 'L' and 'R'. His television career flourished with the Central Television series "And There's More," which aired from 1985 to 1988 and featured his famous catchphrase. He also hosted "Jimmy's Cricket Team" on BBC Radio 2. Beyond television and radio, Cricket performed across the country alongside major entertainers and appeared multiple times on the Royal Variety Performance. In recognition of his extensive charity work, Pope Francis awarded him a papal knighthood, the Order of St. Gregory the Great, in 2015. Cricket was devoted to his wife May for 52 years and was deeply proud of his four children, two of whom followed him into comedy. Until the very end, he remained the spirited, joke-cracking performer his audiences had loved for decades.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Cricket