What do you call a man with one of the most recognisable voices on South Yorkshire’s airwaves?

The same thing as the one whose acting credits include TV’s greatest ever comedies.

The inimitable Toby Foster.

For more than twenty years, Toby’s career has been a merry-go-round of sitcoms, stand-up and soundbites.

But how did a lad from the Dearne end up having the Last Laugh?

His childhood ambition was to be an actor, but career advisors at Wath Comprehensive School quickly burst his bubble.

“I left school in 1985 just as the pits started closing after the strike. In my careers meeting I said I wanted to be an actor. They put all my details into a computer and it came back saying I could join the army. My dad wouldn’t have let me join anyway unless I went to Sandhurst to become an officer,” Toby says.

Instead, he got his first job selling adverts at the South Yorkshire Times where he stayed for a year before heading off to Oxford School of Drama to pursue acting.

Back then, there were only five drama schools with scholarships, but Toby didn’t get into any. His dad had agreed to pay the £3,000 course fee at Oxford for a year on the promise that Toby would get into another school with a scholarship.

After the first term, Toby was offered a scholarship at London’s Mountview for the next academic year. That was nine months away, so to pass the time he got a job back in advertising sales for the Hull Daily Mail.

His family had a caravan over there so, with no rent to pay, he could save up for the move to London.

But that never happened.

“I met a Hull girl and decided not to go. I was 19 doing what 19-year-olds do. No surprise to say it didn’t last.”

Looking for a new direction, Toby stayed in sales, joining the now defunct Mansfield Brewery at the end of the 1980s. Aged 22, he was lured back to South Yorkshire by Malcolm Lister to run his new pub, The Mill of the Black Monks in Barnsley, after an extensive renovation project.

After a year, he went back to Mansfield Brewery where he became national sales manager.

“Pubs were thriving then, so I travelled the country flogging beer to all these big posh pubs in the likes of Brighton and Sussex. Because you lived out of hotels, you needed somewhere to go on your own at night without looking like a weirdo. It was either live music venues or comedy clubs, and music was a no-go for me as the noise didn’t sit well with my brain.”

It was while at these comedy clubs in the mid-90s that Toby was inspired to start writing his own material.

“I once saw John Fothergill at the Glee Club in Birmingham and he told the audience that he was getting £150 for that set. That was more than I made at the brewery for a day’s work! So I started writing. I was 27 then.

“My dad died the following year when he was 52. He’d been a sales manager all his life, always on the road, and I was following the same path as him. I had one of those breakthrough moments where I thought, ‘What’s the point? Sod that.’ And, after ten years with Mansfield, I packed it all in to do stand-up.”

Hoping to emulate his favourite comic Eddie Izzard and the stuff he watched growing up, like The Comic Strip with Ade Edmonson and Rik Mayal, Toby was determined to find his voice on the comedy scene. 

But no comedian goes straight to Live at the Apollo. He needed a way to fund cutting his comedy chops and refining his gags at open mic nights. So, together with his younger brother Matt and their friend Rupert, Toby bought the Courthouse pub in Barnsley at the bottom of Regent Street.

They ran a weekly comedy night every Saturday, the first in Barnsley. It was also where he met his wife, Nikki.

“We went to school together and dated for six weeks when we were 14. I was up a ladder painting a windowsill and she was walking past to pay her tax return when she recognised me. That was in the July and we were engaged by November.

“Crucially, she had a house and I was technically homeless. I’d slept in my MG Metro for six weeks because the pub was haunted. We were both skint but I borrowed £1,500 off my mum and we went off and got married in the Bahamas. We’ve got our silver wedding coming up next year.”

Around the same time, Toby bumped into someone else who would have a lasting impact on his life: Peter Kay.

They were both on the Manchester comedy circuit and Peter had been compering at a Lancashire versus Yorkshire battle of the roses night. On the bus back to Barnsley, all they could talk about was that lad from Bolton.

With The Lescar Sheffield’s only comedy venue, Toby kept gigging in Manchester, becoming acquainted with Peter.

“We put a gig on in Barnsley, me, Mark Jackson and Peter Kay. We charged £3 a ticket and only 36 people turned up. Afterwards, he said he was doing a TV show and asked me to be in it. I said to Nikki, ‘This idiot reckons he’s got some TV show coming up but I said I’ll be in it.’”

‘Some’ TV show turned out to be That Peter Kay Thing, a six-part mockumentary that aired on Channel Four in 2000. The first episode was called ‘In The Club’, set in the Neptune working men’s club. It introduced the world to Brian Potter, Jerry St Clair, Max and Paddy, and Toby’s character Les, a drummer in the house band.

“Six weeks after it aired, I got a phone call from Peter to say that Channel Four wanted to do a spin-off series about the club. Did I fancy being in it? None of us were actors. We were all stand-ups, so it took forever to film as none of us knew what we were doing.

“We thought we were going to be millionaires. I remember going to The Comedy Store in Manchester and they had this Harley-Davidson Fat Boy in the window. That was the first thing I was going to buy with my Phoenix Nights money. But they were about £15,000. I got £6,500 for the whole series.”

Everybody’s got their favourite Phoenix Nights moment. Sammy the snake bouncy castle, Young Kenny’s tiger face paint, Clinton Baptiste’s psychic night. And you probably can’t buy bin liners without singing it to the Men in Black theme tune a la Jerry St Clair. Shabba!

Even twenty years on, that wry portrayal of a northern working men’s club remains an iconic part of British television history. But surprisingly, Toby says viewing figures for the first series weren’t great. However, when the second series came out in 2002, everyone went out and bought the DVDs of both – and the cast were laughing all the way to the bank.

There’s always talk of another series, but Toby says he’s not sure whether it would ever go ahead due to everyone’s busy schedules.

“The last time we all met up was in 2015 when we did Phoenix Nights Live for Comic Relief, and then it had been 12 years since we’d all been in the same room. When we were filming, we were a lot younger and we’d all be running off after to do stand-up. There were lots of egos. Now we’re all settled down with kids and mortgages. I was talking to Paddy recently and said we’ve now become the age of the characters we’re supposed to be playing!”

After Phoenix Nights, Toby’s stand-up career took off. He was booking huge gigs across the world in places like China and Dubai and spent years doing audience warm up gigs for TV shows like the National Lottery and Question of Sport.

More TV work came in the form of Extras Christmas special in 2007, playing a Northern comic in the Big Brother house with Lionel Blair, Lisa from Steps, Chico and Ricky Gervais’ character, Andy Millman. 

He worked with Gervais again for the Derek Christmas 2014 special as the best man for Brett Goldstein’s character Tom, and then in series two of After Life.

“I wasn’t supposed to be in After Life but me and Nikki binged the first series in one night and I text Ricky saying I thought it was good but be better if I was in it. He replied straight away saying ‘I’ll get you in the next series.’ I played a man who identified as an eight-year-old girl with blonde pigtails and a size 28 dress. I’d imagined I’d be more of a romantic lead.”

Most of his work comes from the connections he’s made from years on the comedy circuit. He’d turned down a big agent in London for fear of it affecting his family life. With two young daughters, Maisie and Annabel, he didn’t want to be away from home five nights a week.

So he stayed up north, living in Harley village for the last twenty years and running his Last Laugh comedy clubs around South Yorkshire. They now have regular nights at four venues: Barnsley Civic, Penistone Paramount, Sheffield City Hall, and The Lescar.

“The Lescar was – and still is – the best comedy club in the country. We’ve had some big names over the years. Jimmy Carr, Dara Ó Briain, John Bishop, Sarah Millican, Al Murray. Alan Carr said in his book that only three promoters would book him, and I was one of them.

“I’ve compered for so many years now there’s not much I’ve not heard. There are certain jokes that tickle me but it takes a lot to make me laugh. I think Justin Moorhouse’s current show is fantastic and went up to Edinburgh Fringe in August specifically to see him.”

How have we got this far into the story without talking about his other career? For the last 22 years, he’s been entertaining audiences as a presenter on BBC Radio Sheffield. But again, it was Phoenix Nights that led to him getting the job.

“I’d been invited onto Tony Capstick’s show to talk about series two and, after the interview, the producers asked me if I would be interested in filling in for Cappo while he went in hospital. I went from having never step foot in a radio studio to being a presenter in the space of about two weeks.”

When Tony moved to the breakfast slot, Toby was offered the afternoon show. He then moved to the breakfast show, where he stayed for 18 years until last autumn when changes at the station saw him move back to afternoons. He now plays out to the Sheffield, Leeds and York areas.

Over the years he’s interviewed endless people. Ainsley Harriott was a favourite (“He came on the radio and was Ainsley Harriott”), Alexis Sayle was a disappointment (“He wanted to be cool but you can’t be cool down the radio”), and Simon Cowell was surprisingly brilliant (“He wanted to know everything about me and my co-host Chelsey. Wouldn’t talk to me in a pub but totally got what you’re supposed to do on the radio.”)

But there’s one interview that left a lasting impression – and gained him a nomination for Best Interview at the 2010 Sony Radio Awards. He interviewed the new Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, shortly after he was elected. But Davies walked out after just six minutes on air, with Toby questioning the legalities of the English Democrat’s manifesto.

“It taught me a lesson as I never got to interview him again while he was in office for those four years. With politicians, if you try to stitch then up you sound silly, like you’re trying to catch an eel.

“I do quite well with listeners and awards but I’m not really a radio presenter and never wanted to be one. I just talk to people. I’ve never changed. It’s warts and all and people seem to like that. Sometimes I say things wrong or make a mistake, but I always admit it and apologise. People usually just say fair enough and move on.

“After 22 years on radio I’ve told my listeners everything. I had a bad journey with anxiety about 15 or 20 years ago and I got ambulanced off the radio many times due to panic attacks. But I’ve always talked about it because why be ashamed of something you can’t change?”

He credits his kids with helping him get over the hurdle of anxiety, realising that he couldn’t have a panic attack if he’d got two young children to look after. They’ve also been one of the reasons he was diagnosed with ADHD in his late 40s.

“My youngest daughter has autism and when she was being diagnosed her nurse watched me run frantically round the house and asked if anyone had ever tested me. A lot of the symptoms of ADHD are how I get the job done.”

He’s no doubt spinning a lot of plates.

Toby organises the annual Went Fest – an idea that started after a few too many shandies watching Billy Ocean at Silverstone in 2017. Toby and festival co-founder Steve White have since brought the likes of Kim Wilde, Heather Small, Blue, Tony Christie and Scouting for Girls to Rotherham.

Since 2018, he’s also been the narrator of the hit TV show Bangers and Cash, which follows a family-run classic car auctioneers in North Yorkshire, recording his lines from his lock-up unit at Parkgate

“I did it as a favour for Air TV’s Andy Joynson when he left the BBC to set up on his own. I’m not entirely sure I even got paid for it, but it really took off. We’re now onto the tenth series which is bonkers, with about half a million viewers per episode, which is more than Newsnight. People recognise my voice more from Bangers and Cash than 20 years on radio.”

After a period of ill-health, Toby is starting to get back into compering at his comedy nights and is hoping to do the Edinburgh Fringe next year.

Now in the throws of midlife, he’s got no desire to call it quits anytime soon.

“I’ll just carry on until I drop. That’s what broadcasters do. It’s not so much a job, it’s just a laugh.”