The Co Tyrone-born comedian James Mulgrew, known by his stage name Jimmy Cricket, has died after a short illness, his family has said. He was 80.<\/p>\n
The comedian had previously posted on his website that he was taking a “little sabbatical for health reasons” and had started treatment.<\/p>\n
The post had added that he would “catch up” with fans at a string of shows in autumn 2026.<\/p>\n
In a statement, his family said: “Our beloved Jimmy passed away this morning after a short illness.<\/p>\n
“He spent his last few days surrounded by his family, love, laughter and songs.<\/p>\n
“Jimmy brought so much laughter and happiness to countless audiences in his career over the years.<\/p>\n
“Whether on stage, screen or radio, or if you met him in person as well.<\/p>\n
“But that was nothing to the happiness he gave to his family.<\/p>\n
“A devoted husband to May for fifty-two years.<\/p>\n
“A wonderful dad to his four children and very silly grandad indeed to his four grandchildren.<\/p>\n
“He was our greatest champion and loved us all loudly.<\/p>\n
“He also just loved people and he absolutely loved being a stand-up comedian.<\/p>\n
“What a life he lived.<\/p>\n
“Forever our clown, he was cracking jokes to the wonderful NHS staff and to us all, right until the end.<\/p>\n
“His courage, dignity and positivity through all he endured was inspirational.<\/p>\n
“A force for joy, we are just all very sad that the world is a far less sillier place today.<\/p>\n
“We were going to end by using his famous catchphrase and say, ‘There’s no more’.<\/p>\n
“But Jimmy was a man of great faith and a Papal Knight of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
“He believed that death is not the end and was looking forward to eternity, so really… And there’s more.”<\/p>\n
Belfast-raised Mulgrew left school at 16 and spent his summers working as a redcoat camp host at Butlins holiday camps.<\/p>\n
He went on to work the comedy club scene throughout the 1970s and 1980s, winning London Weekend Television’s Search for a Star talent contest before getting his own ITV show, And There’s More, which ran for four seasons.<\/p>\n
He later fronted his own programme on BBC Radio 2 before appearing on the Royal Variety Show in the UK in the 80s and performing in a number of pantomimes.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Co Tyrone-born comedian James Mulgrew, known by his stage name Jimmy Cricket, has died after a short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-582072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}