‘I wasn’t ambitious until I was 60!’ Gary Wilmot on comedy, panto, musicals – and his Beckett-style new play

2026-02-16 - 15:55

He left school at 15 and worked as a scaffolder. Then success on New Faces launched him to stardom – and he’s been a panto and musicals sensation ever since. So what made him write a comedy about two men waiting? Gary Wilmot has had many lives. A children’s TV presenter turned variety show host turned panto marvel turned musicals sensation, Wilmot has now turned his hand back to playwriting. His London debut is a comedy about two men, waiting. One is chill, the other restless; both become bonded by the wait. Very Samuel Beckett, isn’t it? The men could be Vladimir and Estragon, no? “Funny you should say that,” Wilmot says, sitting at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, the theatre above a pub in London that is staging While They Were Waiting, in which he also stars, opposite Steve Furst. Soon after the play was commissioned, he was asked if he had been influenced by Beckett’s existential play, Waiting for Godot. He’d never seen it but it just so happened there was a production in the West End starring Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati. Wilmot went, saw it and left nonplussed. “I thought, ‘There’s a reason I’ve never seen this. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on.’” Continue reading...