Life the Universe and Me
Ternary Segment.( part three)
We ended part two on a cliffhanger , not really but anyone who reads this in the wrong order will be confused, try to keep up !
It’s 1965 and I’m in the Palladium Theatre Edinburgh as half of a Dancing act, and life started to open up
There was a singer/comic in the show called Mal Hollander who asked If I played golf, answering truthfully that it had never entered my head the following Sunday (no shows on Sunday in Scotland) off we went to Prestonpans Golf course, I fell in love with the game and for the next few years there was a set of golf clubs in the boot of my car and although I never got that good I have spent many happy hours ploughing up golf courses and replacing divots.
Variety shows in Scotland usually featured 2 or 3 short comic sketches with members of the company being required to do small parts, during the first week we did a hospital sketch and something about the army and I was in both, as the weeks went on I was being trusted with
bigger, funnier roles and I found that laughter is infectious and I caught the bug up there in Scotland.
When we finished the run Hector had arranged for us to go to the Gaiety Theatre Ayr for a short season , same deal change of programme every week but he had also recommended me to be the Compere of the show, He said I had a knack for comedy, my timing was good and being compere meant that I only had to present the acts but if I wanted to I could do some gags during those Intros; It was an incredibly kind thing to do, I have been lucky enough through my 6 score years and ten (plus a couple more ) to meet people who have been a huge influence in whatever success I’ve had and I’m forever grateful for their friendship and advice, I will introduce them as the story goes on .
Ayr was a success , my partner Irene was a superb dancer I just hung on and tried to keep up, The compering was a revelation, standing alone onstage telling a story and getting a laugh from a couple of hundred strangers is the most incredible feeling, none of my material was original but I had, as Hector Nicol said, good timing and that is a most important ingredient in any comedy exercise.
Our lives are based around rhythm, from our heartbeat to our walking gait everything has a tempo , listen to speeches from great orators , It’s there , Michael Kidd one of the main dancers in ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ was a brilliant tap dancer, he once did a routine in perfect time to an Adolf Hitler speech .
Comedy lives and dies on timing and diction, too many modern comedians and singers forget the importance of the words.
After Scotland I returned to London , we had a contract for the ’66 summer season on the Central Pier Morecambe but that didn’t start until Easter so back to dance school, Pageboy job had gone so I got work in a local garage as a petrol pump attendant on nightshift ,three weeks, two holdups, one with a gun the other with a knife, who knew garages were so dangerous so I looked for other employment , Quickly. !!.
I got a job in a wallpaper factory as a filing clerk ,Up until then the only thing I filed was my nails.
( how are we liking the humour so far, OK it gets better ,,,, maybe )
A few weeks after I got there they introduced a Computerised filing and accounting System , everyone go OOOOOH ! , the computer in question was an ICT 1500 and it was the size of a small house , it looked exactly like those you see in all the old B/W films , big cabinets with whirring tapes, flashing lights and people walking around with clipboards and files full of paper , I was one of those people, there had been 4 of us in the filing clerks room but we were now , wait for this it’s a goodie , we were COMPUTER ANALYSTS again with a OOOOOH please , thank you.
Our job was to go through the reams of paper that came out of the printer,look for mistakes and work out if they were the fault of the original programmers , the typists who typed up the programme or if it was a computer error, To be honest none of us knew what the hell we were doing ,mostly we made it up as we went along , If we’d been in Cape Canaveral in July ’69 Apollo 11 would have ended up in Birmingham .
Just before Easter, bags packed and on the train for Morecambe , I had digs just opposite the pier , full board £4 10s per week , use of cruet 2s/6p extra. (a gag for the oldies reading this ) the Central Pier show was run by Eddie Morrel the show starred Billy Stutt an Irish comic, Tommy Wright a baritone singer who was also Billy’s straight man, It was a normal end of the pier summer show, Big opening ,lots of musical numbers and acts and an even Bigger finale. There was no chance to do any comedy as that was all done by Billy and Tommy, I did manage to get some golf played and followed some other new interests ****************** !
The Central Pier also featured the Marine Ballroom which during the summer had Pop concerts every Sunday , Billy Stutt was asked if he would compere the shows but declined because he liked his day off, When Tommy also refused it was offered to me and I accepted straight away, it was a chance to improve my compere skills plus it was extra money and I wanted to buy a car . The first concert of the season featured The Troggs with a supporting group , I dressed in my Bronze mohair Dinner Suit , frilly fronted shirt, Bow Tie and tan patent leather shoes , I know what you’re thinking —Smoooooth— ! , I had the intro ready with a few gags to start off , backstage I asked Reg Presley the Troggs lead singer if there was anything special I should say for their introduction, he gave me a weird look and just walked away, Showtime I went out onstage to announce the support act, I did a couple of opening gags which died but I thought OK , I’m a bit nervous it’ll get better later on, I announced the Interval without the aid of any more gags, that went well !
The second half was the Troggs and I walked onto the stage to a barrage of noise and screams when I got to the microphone I had mentally thrown out all the gags and funny stuff I was going to do and as loud as I could said into the mike “Ladies and Gentlemen=The Troggs ! End of the show wished everyone goodnight announced next weeks attraction walked off the stage got paid and went back to the digs for my evening meal , (I could afford the cruet now),
This was my Sunday routine until the end of the season, go the the ballroom meet the acts have a chat , announce the show over the screams , go home, During that time I met the Troggs , PJ Proby, Hermans Hermits, The Who, Tom Jones and the Squires and many others who would become household names over the following years , It’s a quirk of life that I remember them but they would have absolutely no idea who I am but before the end of the season I’d bought a VW —Result !!!!!!.
The end of the season also saw the end of the ‘Dancing Dunnes’ by mutual agreement, I had my guitar, some songs, some impressions, some gags, some contracts for the clubs in Manchester and of course a car, life was good. Before I went to Manchester I had a date for a club in Barrow-In-Furness, I had heard things about this place and I should have listened but I was young and stupid, OK -when you’ve all stopped giggling , yes I know , now I’m old and stupid, I get it, but this was a contract with good money . It didn’t start well but by the weekend I had salvaged some self respect got a few laughs and more important, I got paid.
Manchester in the mid-’60’s was the place to be, I had a room in a hotel in Moss side, anyone who knows Manchester will be giggling now because Moss side was known as a place to obtain horizontal refreshment 24/7, well, known to everyone except me , this wouldn’t be the first or last time this happens, ( wait until part 4 or possibly 5).
The club scene was really lively and having arrived with a contract initially for two weeks I stayed throughout the winter working social and night clubs, One club became a bit special The ‘La Petite’ became the ‘watering hole’ for performers, it was open into the early hours and you could relax, swap stories or play cards it was a great place to wind down.
One event brought life into focus , on 21st October in Aberfan in Wales a colliery spoil tip collapsed , sliding down the hillside and engulfing the school and parts of the village, 144 people died including 116 children. The response from the nation was immediate ,a national memorial fund was setup ,artists and performers in Manchester played their part , a series of charity shows raising money for the fund was organised throughout the city, At the La Petite we did a charity marathon we did over 24 hours and raised a few thousand pounds, a small drop in the millions that were eventually raised but well worth it .
Xmas I went to Peterborough for Pantomime, I was ‘Man Friday’ in Robinson Crusoe, Yes I was in ‘Black Face’ actually I was blacked up all over except for a black curly wig, after the show I was always the last one out of the theatre and the shower looked like an oil slick, I did the role a few years later in Camberley but I’d learnt by then -black tights, black longsleeved leotard , black gloves adapted as socks ( they looked like feet) and a tight thin nylon balaclava , topped off with the black curly wig , the only black make-up was on my face , I was finished and out of the theatre before the final note of ‘God Save The Queen’ .
Back to Manchester working better clubs learning all the time trying to improve until late one evening travelling back to the city from a gig in Chesire there had been an accident on the dual carriageway , the Police, Fire and Ambulance service were already there, the hard shoulder and inside lane were blocked and the police were directing traffic slowly onto the outside lane past the incident , for whatever reason the driver two cars in front of me stopped and in a few seconds there were 4 stationary cars , I was the third , no one saw the 5th car until it was too late , he was speeding down the road didn’t see the lights around the accident and hit the car behind me which went up in the air and crashed down on the back of my VW with his front bumper resting on my back seat and my front bumper under the boot of the car in front, I remember getting out of the car , I wasn’t injured and luckily neither was anyone else in this 4 car game of squash , I managed to get my boot open ( on the old VW’s it was at the front) found my instruments and Dinner Suit, a couple of scratches on the guitar and trumpet cases but otherwise OK, the car was obviously a write off but at the time it didn’t seem to bother me I just kept telling the police that I had to be in Manchester as I had a show at 10.30, I must have sounded like a complete idiot but I was insistent and eventually a Women PC put me in a squad car and drove me to the Piccadilly club, not only that she came in and explained the the manager what had happened, all a lot different from the procedure today. After she’d gone the manager, who was a really nice guy gave me a very large whiskey to calm me down and I did my usual spot of about 30-35 minutes got a taxi back to the hotel and slept for two days, in retrospect I was obviously in a state of shock
When I returned to the Piccadilly club a couple of days later everyone was extremely kind constantly asking if I was alright and did I want anything, did I feel OK , I asked the manager what was going on and he said that on that night I had done nearly an hour onstage the act was fine and I had ended up as usual with my song and dance number but I had done an encore singing a sad ballad ( or a bad salad as we used to call them ) and cried all the way through it, he said it must have been the effect of the whiskey, I said what whiskey- I don’t drink ! He then explained about me being brought to the club by the PC, being told about the accident and giving me the drink to steady me, It was the first time in my life I had ever had strong alcohol, as a child If we were at the family home in Brixton my cousin and I would be given a small glass of white wine with lots of lemonade at Sunday dinner so that we felt like grown-ups but otherwise it wasn’t something that interested me, I have made up for it since but never before a show , you never know I might start singing and crying again.
Anyway the outcome of all this was no car and getting around to the clubs without one was impossible, the insurance was going to take a while to sort out so back to London where Ron and Mother were in talks with a producer called Stella Hartley about a short summer season in Douglas, Isle of Man, they got me into the show as choreographer and performing in the musical numbers on the understanding that I could do my act around the clubs on the island while we were there and this was agreed .
Before we went off for the summer we moved house , from Shepherds Bush to Barons Court, we had the top two floors of a house and I was given a small room on the top floor , all was sweetness and light until I realised the date we would be moving , 20thMay 1967 – this of course means nothing to 99.99% of you reading this, but to me it was devastating for the 20th of may 1967 was Cup Final Day -not only Cup Final Day but one of the teams in the final was ??? you guessed it ==== CHELSEA , the other was some bunch of scruffs from north london, Tottenham something or other, this was a catastrophe , I tried to get the moving day changed but the man who owned the moving company was a friend of Rons and was doing it on a Saturday as a favour so we couldn’t really ask him to change , after much ( heated) discussion with Ron ,on moving day morning I was given the key took my B/W portable TV on the underground to the tube station near the new house went upstairs to my empty room sat on the floor and watched , on a grainy screen , as my beloved Blues lost 2-1 to the mob from white hart lane. years later it still hurts. !
We moved in, settled down and started rehearsing the summer show in a local hall before all setting off for the Isle of Man, we had nice digs in Douglas up a hill not far from the theatre, my brother ronnie was about 16 months old and getting interesting, he had refused to crawl on the way to walking instead choosing to shuffle about on his bum, Oh how I wish mobile phones with cameras had been around at the time !.
The show was successful with a nice company, I’d put some good scenes together even doing an acrobatic dance with Mum, but after the first week I spent very little time at the digs with the family, there was a good reason for this , I’d fallen in love.
End of part three ( I bet you can’t wait for part 4)
LIFE AND ME: PART 4
Well you’ve had time to digest the last sentence of part three, what do you mean you haven’t read it yet ! RIGHT , PUT THIS DOWN and go and read parts 1/2&3 immediately, excuse me for shouting but I’m spending lockdown time pouring my heart out to the world and you ignore it , That’s it I’m not carrying on until you’ve read it , and don’t cheat there’ll be a quiz at the end =================================================================================== oh good you’re back , you see, it was worth it, now continue.
OK where were we, Isle of Man 1967 summer season and I’ve just done my impression of Al Pacino in the Godfather Pt 1, (It’s the scene where he’s in hiding in Corleone ,Sicily having shot Captain McCluskey the bent copper who was trying to get his father killed, During a walk in the countryside he
see’s a local girl Appolonia and gets ‘colpito da un Fulmina’ (struck by lightning ) I wasn’t in Sicily I was in Douglas , I’d done a show at the theatre followed by a late gig at one of the local pubs , a couple of gags, a bit of music and a song and dance to finish and I’d gone to the Casino Cabaret club
to relax and see the show, Dancers, Compere, Magic act ,Singers, not a bad show but there was a girl in the show I couldn’t take my eyes off, she was a singer and assisted the magician, long blonde hair, beautiful face, legs that never stopped and a body that would have persuaded any model to commit
a capital crime just to borrow it for a day !
I managed to meet her after the show and not only didn’t she run for the hills but we got on really well , there was a mutual attraction and after that meeting not only did we spend every moment in each others company we started rehearsing a double act so that we could work together after the season.
Back to the mainland at the end of the season, Lorraine and I had some clubs booked so I bought a car, I’m embarrassed to say it was a Vauxhall Viva, –don’t judge me ! The insurance was cheap but it carried our costumes and instruments. With her voice and personality interspersed with my impressions, music and other stuff we had good work and enjoyed a lot of success but then life slaps you with a wet sock and reminds you not to be so cocky !!!
For Xmas and New Year we were booked to a club in South Wales a large restaurant with a stage and a 4 piece band, we had a flat upstairs with meals provided for the 10 days over the holidays , sounded perfect so off we went.
On xmas eve after the show we joined the customers and staff for the Xmas party had a lovely time and at 12.00 wished everyone merry xmas and went to bed, Next day the place was a ghost town , no show on Xmas day, all the staff had the day off and had forgotten that we were in the building !
Eventually when we realised what had happened we made our way down to the kitchen which apart from condiments, spices, pots and pans was empty, it wasn’t worth going out as nothing would have been open, we didn’t know where the boss or any of the staff lived and I was worried that maybe the doors were alarmed, if we set them off and the police came out I wasn’t too sure of the outcome. Eventually we found some frozen peas in a fridge and a few packets of crisps and that was our Xmas dinner.
We finished on New Years Eve with an early show so decided that we would drive to North wales after the show , Lorraine lived in Rhyl which was a 4=5
hour drive and with a little luck we could be there to see in the new year, Do you remember the wet sock ? Well it made an encore, The journey took us through the Brecon Beacons which has a few hills, it was bitter cold and halfway up one of the hills the car decided to stop, I didn’t have any tools so it was useless looking for the problem, we’d driven through a village at the bottom of the hill but that was a couple of miles back and finding a mechanic on New Years Eve was going to be an impossible task so with no other choice we welcomed in 1968 not with a celebratory drink but bedded down on the back seat of a Vauxhall Viva in the freezing cold under whatever coats and jumpers we had. We eventually rolled into Rhyl after lunch on new years day cold miserable and hungry, the signs didn’t bode well for the rest of the year which was prophetic.
After the xmas trauma we went back to the club circuit and signed for a summer season but somewhere along the way we fell apart, while we had been in Rhyl she had met an old flame and slowly the fire had re-ignited , we decided to part after the season in New Brighton and got separate digs in the town, She was totally professional during the show but we had very little contact outside the theatre, it was all very agreeable until my 21stbirthday which was as miserable and depressing as a day could get, I was still in completely and utterly in love with her but had stepped aside without a word, I’d done what I thought was the right thing to do but it hurt like hell and set me and my shaky emotional state back behind the wall , it would be a long, long time before I stepped out from behind it again. In the years that followed I was rarely without a companion but as soon as a relationship got anywhere near being serious I would find a way to back off , usually with the “it’s me not you “ excuse . In my mind I reasoned that I didn’t want to be like my Father, He was a womaniser and put my mother through all kinds of hell.
I was never a violent character like him but as it turns out I may have been just as bad in other ways, thinking back my emotional cowardice must have caused much harm and hurt to many of the ladies in my life, none of them deserved it and it is to my great good fortune and their understanding that some of them remained good friends despite my shortcomings and boorish behaviour. To those that were affected I offer a late but sincere apology , (as a codocil may I say that this was written before the rise of #metoo )
Getting back to the story , At the height of the New Brighton season I was travelling to Rhyl every Saturday night to compere the Sunday Pop concerts put on at the Pavilion Theatre, Chipperfields Circus was performing there during the week so it was a chance to catch up with some old friends , My cousin Peter Sandow was there as well many others including Timm Delbosq and Dickie Chipperfield Jnr, it was only a 50m journey and the company putting on the shows paid for a small hotel for 2 nights so I would arrive around 10.00 pm go to my cousins caravan where there was usually a party or a poker game and so started a good weekend. This was slightly different to the Morecambe concerts, it was a theatre with a seated ( most of the time ) audience and the bands were more middle of the road as opposed to ‘Rock and Roll’ groups , during the run we had the Bonzo Dog DooDah Band,
Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers and a couple of others all at least twice during the short run, the nearest I ever came to being a star was on Sunday night when Gerry and the Pacemakers were there , after the show I went out of the stage door and a host of fans ( female mostly ) mistook me for Gerry Marsden , OK I was thinner and at a
distance through a fog it was an easy mistake to make, but for a few seconds it was quite scary, They started screaming and reaching for me , I was back through the door quicker than Usain Bolt.
Those weekends brightened up what was a miserable season in many ways so at the end I went back on the club circuit, I was in Scotland for a couple of months and enjoyed success not normally afforded to English comedians , one night I did an early show at the Pollock Rangers club followed by a late show at the Celtic supporters club== I survived,
1969 I had an absolutely fabulous season in Cromer ,a beautiful little town on the Norfolk coast with an even more stunning theatre at the end of the pier , well not right at the end, behind the theatre there is a ramp down to the sea for launching the Cromer Lifeboat , that in itself is not newsworthy but there are 2 things attached to that sentence, (1) on arriving in town in the early hours the day before first rehearsal I drove up the coast road and entering the town you can see the pier on the right with ramp at the end , not knowing about the ramp at that time it looked like the pier had collapsed into the sea, this same observation was made by everyone in the cast at some point on the first day, (2) the signal for the life boat to launch is the ignition of a maroon in a big dustbin sized re-inforced barrel , for those who don’t know, a maroon is big loud firework with a bang around the decibel rating of a medium sized Naval Cannon . We, that is the cast, knew nothing about this until a few weeks into the season when halfway through the first half of our matinee the maroon was ignited, the pier shook with the reverberations but that was only the beginning, about 2 minutes after the bang there was the sound of a bunch of men running down the pier to
man the lifeboat followed by a huge Whooooosh, the sound of the life boat launching, as the footsteps went by the theatre they were followed by the audience who decided that watching the Lifeboat launch was much more entertaining than watching us , I can’t really blame them because we,the cast, were out on the pier watching with them.
That season the top of the bill was a comic called Alan Wells, I was doing my act with a new impressions routine based on old saying that comedians want to be actors and vice-versa, so =Michael Crawford as Hamlet, Laurence Olivier doing knock knock gags etc, Tommy Cooper as Romeo was my favourite , anyway the day after the first show the local paper printed a review of the show and I came out of it really well, I went the the theatre for the show with some trepidation, when the Top of the Bill gets upstaged
by the junior comic it’s usually the start of an uncomfortable season, As I
walked in the first person I met was Alan and he could not have been nicer ,
We were doing a couple of sketches together, The Golfer which was a Sid
Fields classic and ‘Dinner for One’ made famous by Freddie Frinton, in both
of them I was the straight man but in an unprecedented gesture Alan
suggested that we could swap roles occasionally to give me a bigger profile
in the show, Alan was a wonderful comedian and working together in this
way was a powerful and intense education in comedy, we met a few times
over subsequent years and when I got the starring role in the Whitehall
Theatre in ‘Pyjama Tops’ he sent me a beautiful note of congratulations . A
real Gentleman and a true professional, It’s no exaggeration to say that he
changed my comedic life.
On the personal side I was dating , what an old fashioned word that is ,I was
always chatting up the dancers and was very rarely alone but the wall was
still there to hide behind when I needed it.
July 29th was a momentous day , the Moon landing was on TV and my
interest in astronomy and physics had been growing since the Kennedy
speech about “Putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade”
and to this day it has never faded , I like to think that If I had my time again
I would try to get a better education and follow that route but then I
remember, Scientist don’t get many laughs .
The end of another season a few clubs and back home to Barons Court
where my brother now a whole 3 years old had tripped over a small
footstool shaped like a Camel and broken his arm , luckily the Charing Cross
Hospital on the Fulham Palace Rd
was about 5 minutes away so that’s where he and mother , who stayed with
him 24/7 were ensconced for the duration, he must have enjoyed his time
there because as soon as he got home he fell down the stairs and broke his
arm again, The only thing we took from that as a family was , physical
comedy wasn’t his thing .
Pantomime in Gravesend followed, It my first time as ‘Buttons’ in
Cinderella , a part that fitted me like the proverbial glove, more clubs and
it was 1970 and off to Ilfracombe for the summer . The show producer was
Issy Bonn a jewish singer /comedian who’d had a been a star on the Variety
theatres. He was a big man with a big personality who had a quote for every
occasion. His best was after an incident involving me and my passion for
Golf ! (small interlude for story set-up ) Wherever I was in the country ,
apart from performing my passions were football and golf , watching one
and playing the other , most saturday afternoons in the winter I’d be at a
match, and during the summer on the golf course. Ilfracombe was a lovely
resort but the nearest golf course was about 20 miles away, no problem I
had my car ,a Rover 90 at the time, and off I’d go. For publicity a golf
match was arranged with a couple of local journalists and a couple of
performers, I was one and therer was a singer from the other theatre in
town that was presenting ‘The Desert Song ‘ about 3 evenings a week. Due
to bad weather and unavailability of one or the other of us the match kept
getting postponed until eventually a note came to the stage door that it
was on the next day. We met up were having a good game chatting about
different things and about halfway round the reporter with me asked about
our show , it was the usual questions and he was getting the usual answers
then he asked about the showtimes and I said it was a normal summer
season 8 shows a week, once a night Sundays off and matinees Wednesday
and Saturday , he went a little quiet and asked what times are the matinees,
I said 3.00 I saw the puzzled look on his face and said “it’s fine today’s
Tuesday”, he shook his head looked at his watch and said “no it’s
Wednesday” and it’s 2.15, We were on the back nine of the course but still
a long way from the car park, I started running and shouting to him to get
my clubs back to me somehow, I got to the car and started the 20 mile
journey back to the theatre, 1970 no motorways or dual carriageways, The
show opened with a short overture, an opening dance from the chorus girls
which blended into a musical scene with a comedy sketch that started
about two minutes in , As I pulled up to the theatre and rushed into the
stage door I heard the start of the musical number, I ran across behind the
back curtain upstairs to my dressing room on the first floor shedding clothes
as I went threw my costume on and without make-up ran downstairs to the
stage , as I got to the bottom of the stairs I heard my cue for the start of
the comedy sketch, I was about 12 ft and a couple of seconds away from
the stage but it was the longest couple of seconds of my life , I was late!.
After the show Issy Bonn called the company together and gave me the
biggest bollocking ever in front of everyone , he went through the every
cliché in the book , how I had disgraced my family ,( he’d worked many
times with various Konyots in the variety days ) He closed by saying that
there were only two reasons not to be onstage on time , you’re either dead
or have diahorrea !
A few weeks later as Issy’s opening music played the stage remained empty
for quite a while , the orchestra played his intro twice more before he
came on and started singing , he had been taking a phone call and not
heard his cue , didn’t matter, at the end of his act the whole company stood
at the side of the stage and threw toilet rolls at him , we had reasoned he
wasn’t dead so *******, Call it Karma call it Hubris or stuff happens, he took
it well and joined in the laugh , a nice man and a real pro .There was one
sad note was during the season, my Grandmother Konyot died , a solid rock
which our family was built around, she had suffered many operations for
cancer but never complained , when you asked how she was the answer was
always “ never mind me how are you? “
Come Xmas and I was playing Buttons once more this time at the Hoe
theatre in Plymouth ,Cinderella was played again by Mary Pickering a petite
litle blonde packed with talent and a lovely voice we worked really well
together no romance but we were really good friends . We had a great time
especially when, as a publicity opportunity the cast was invited to tour the
Plymouth Gin Factory one morning , during the tour we were given samples
of their various products, I don’t drink gin but they made Vodka as well
which suited me perfectly , suffice to say the matinee that day was a little
strange , another strange thing happened a few days later , a man walked
into my dressing room introduced himself and said I was wasting my time
and my talent and I needed a manager , I replied I needed a manager like I
needed a hole in the head , didn’t he see that my name was at the top of
posters all over town , Oh I forgot to say that at some point in my 23 years I
had turned into a bit of a pratt , I was a little bit up my own **** and
thought I was God’s Gift to show business . I know that there are many out
there who will say “What do you mean- was “ ?
Thanks for persevering this far and I will get to the real Circus part of my
life soon but these early years are what prepared me and gave me the
confidence to face anything.
LIFE AND ME: PART 5
Welcome back , 1st=== VERY IMPORTANT =====
To find out how many are actually reading this story I put a deliberate mistake in part 4 . If you found it, send me a PM on facebook saying what it was .
And now ,on with the book .
Plymouth Hoe Theatre Xmas 1970 Terry Steel entered my professional life he’d been a saxophone player in the Ted Heath band and was now the musical director for a couple of the local amateur Operatic companies and still engaged in the music business, As I wrote at the end of part 4 he came into my dressing room and said I needed a manager , I did all my own contracts and was doing fine, why would I pay a percentage to a manager. ? I thought no more about it until I got home after the panto and there was a letter with a couple of contracts at more money than I was earning at the time , that got my interest so I did the work then went to meet up with Terry and his family in Leigh-on-Sea , I stayed a few days and we talked about what my ambitions were and where I saw my future, to be honest
that wasn’t something I’d thought about, the round of summer seasons, Pantomimes with cabaret clubs in between was fine but Terry said that with a proper plan I could do better. He asked a few times what I wanted, all I really wanted was not to go back to Circus but being a bit cheeky I said I wanted to work in the West End and thought no more about it.After a few weeks and more meetings we got a company together and formed a show called ‘Stardust’ to work in Hotels, Dinner Dances, Function rooms etc, There was a couple of such troupes already working in London but we had a tour bus and pitched ours around the home counties. Our company consisted of a troupe of dancing girls, a girl singer, a live band and 3 or 4 acts that we could call on for different venues depending on the conditions , I was to compere the show and do my act, this was where the first shock came, Terry said I could have 10 minutes for the act,
My argument that I couldn’t possibly do that because my act was 40 minutes and I couldn’t cut it got the response that 10 minutes out of the 40 was good , 10 were average , 10 were self indulgent and another 10 was just padding. I had a small hysterical paddy but there was no alternative and I learned my lesson when on our second or third show I overran my 10 minutes and the band started playing the music for the following dance routine, cue another paddy from me during which I punched the dressing room wall, Terry’s answer to that one was how are you going to play the trumpet with broken knuckles.?
The road show was succesfull and we were working regularly so I got a small flat in Southend a couple of miles away , the flat was in York Road which caused a few snickers , not the chocolate bar but the ‘you’ve got a flat in the red-light district again’ remember Moss side in part 3 ? No – your obviously not paying attention !
After a few weeks we were on our way to another show and Terry quietly said “ do 15 minutes tonight”, that threw me until I realised that he had taught me to discipline myself and be selective, basically ‘Less is More’, something that still rules me today.
Terry became a partner in the Vince Shaw Organisation an agency that represented among others Harry Corbett ( Sooty not Steptoe) Jessie Mathews and now me so the next couple of years were non-stop , Summer season in Teignmouth, back to the roadshow, I was also doing a lot of dates in London so I bought a caravan and stayed in Billericay on the Rosaire Circus family farm which made the journeys a lot shorter.
In late ’72 I’d just finished a summer tour with the Sooty Show finishing with a short run at the Mayfair Theatre in London was back doing the roadshow a couple of times a week, I then got a job compering at the Stars & Garters club in Leicester Square 4 nights a week starting around 10.30 till the early hours. If the roadshow was too far away we had a standby compere but I had my own car and normally I’d be back in time.
I was still parking the caravan at Billericay and during the days I spent time with the Rosaire family, Joan was a lifelong friend and a brilliant horse trainer who did a wonderful act with her Palomino ‘Goldie’, in late 72 they were appearing at the Victoria Palace theatre with Max Bygraves, Max would be onstage with Goldie and Joan was on the side of the stage giving the cues to the horse, At the same time she had 2 more horses in ‘Gone with the Wind’ at the Drury Lane Theatre (they were housed at Camden Stables, now Camden market) and another one ‘Nellie’ in the ‘Robin Hood’ Pantomime at the London Palladium,who was driven in and out by a Groom. For Joan it was a hectic schedule, she would drive to the Victoria Palace park her Horsebox get a taxi to the Camden stables take the other two horses to Drury lane harness them to a waggon which had to cross the stage during all the chaos and mayhem of the Burning of Atlanta scene during which Joan was hidden under the seat to drive the waggon, back to the stables with the horses, taxi to the VP for Goldies performance with Max then back home, all went well until the groom who was handling the Palladium horse ‘Nellie ‘ remember Nellie? decided he was leaving, so he left — the same day ! Joan was in a quandary, that’s the same as a twodary except twice as bad , Ok it’s a crap joke but this was starting to get a bit dull so I thought I’d brighten it up a bit, ‘You want to brighten something up, put some flowers in this room ‘ which film was that from ? You see, from an autobiography to a quiz show ! What do you want for free ?
Back to the tale of Nellie and me , the story ended up with me driving a horse box to the London Palladium parking outside the stage door unloading and harnessing Nellie putting on a Lincoln Green ‘Merry Men’s’ hoodie and walking Nellie onto the stage for Edward Woodward to get in the saddle and ride off , =have you ever realised that saying Edward Woodward quickly sounds like a fart in the bath = on other side of the stage I unharnessed Nellie put into the horse box drove to Billericay got in my car and went back to London.
The Stars &Garters was a brilliant place, it was next to the Odeon Leicester Square down a flight of stairs into what was a combination of an old time American speakeasy and an English pub, It had a small stage with a 3 piece combo – Piano, Bass & Drums, Lenny Felix, Jack Fallon and Lennie Hastings, three of the best musicians it’s ever been my pleasure to work with, Occasionally the club would put on a ‘Shop Window’ this would be a night where a lot of agents would book acts in for other agents and managers to see , I was always compere because if there was a comedian working I didn’t do my comedy stuff or if it was an impressionist I’d cut my impressions, I could and would work around what there was on the bill. One night we had an escapologist who had a new wrinkle on an old trick, He was handcuffed and chained to a target board , on the other side of the stage was a contraption with 3 crossbow arrows on the top facing the board, underneath was a digital timer set to 30 seconds, the countdown would start and he would extricate himself from the handcuffs and chains before the 30 seconds elapsed and the arrows were fired , well he was obviously nervous on his debut of the new trick and was out of the handcuffs in about 10 seconds and as he bent down to release the locks around his ankles the buzzer sounded and the arrows went off thudding into the board just above his waistline or where his waistline would have been had he not bent down .he got a huge round of applause as I back-announced him but I could see he was shaking as he returned to the dressing room, a couple of minutes later I got a call to go to see him and found him I a panic ‘cos he was stuck into his costume , an all-in-one jump suit with a zip at the back which was jammed , ‘escapologist’ ?? I asked why the trick had gone wrong and he said that the timer on his prop was some sort of solenoid that set the arrows off with a shortwave signal but had probably been triggered early by a passing cabbie on the same wavelength ! And I thought comedy was hard !!!!.
As a sidebar to this story during this time Terry arranged for me to compere one of these shop window shows at the Astor Club, now the Astor had a regular advert in ‘The Stage ‘ newspaper looking for acts for the club with the proviso ‘Singers and Comedians need not apply’ at the bottom of the ad , I compered the show which went on until about 2.00 am and the only act who was booked was me , a singer and comedian, Go figure !
Back to the S&G
I had a friend, Harry Dickman who was the understudy to Anthony Newley at the Prince of Wales theatre, Newley was my hero I had the LP’s of all of shows and all of his singles, of course I did an impression of him in my act doing ‘pop goes the weasel’ and ‘What kind of fool am I’, anyway one night I am starting the impression and I hear this laugh from the back of the room which I recognise and of course it’s the man himself , Harry has brought him to see the show, needless to say the rest of the impression was a disaster, I did get to meet him afterwards and he was charming and complimentary and it was a nice memorable evening .
Early in ’73 I was introduced to George Richardson who was the general manager for Paul Raymond productions, he’d been to see me a couple of times and they were interested in me for one of their shows , I could take my pick which one ,Oh Calcutta ‘ ‘The Dirtiest Show In Town’ or ‘Pyjama Tops’ I chose pyjama tops because it was the only one where I wouldn’t have to take my clothes off ! Honestly that was the main reason , well apart from the fact that Pyjama tops was a very funny show that had been running for a few years and had featured some good comic actors during it’s time , The first ‘Leonard Jolly’, the character they wanted me for, was Bob Grant from ‘On the Buses’ he was followed by Joe Baker
former partner in a double act with Jack Douglas , next was Roger Kitter who was a golfing buddy of mine and fourth it would be me.
Two things persuaded me even more , I talked with the director Alexander Dore a well known comedy actor in his own right and he said that PJ was originally a french farce which had been very well translated to suit the english humour, secondly when Joe Baker came into the role he said that he wasn’t an actor and asked could he have a bit more freedom to try his style of comedy which he did , Roger then took it even further in his own particular way so that when I got the script it was a few sheets of A4 paper with page one having the synopsis of the story , the next few pages were the order of the scenes with some lines highlighted , these were plot lines that I had to learn so that the play made sense other than that it was my show, there were two rules, Be funny and finish before 10.00 pm , they wanted to make sure the bar would still be open as the customers went out !
Alexander said not to see the show with Roger in it because we were very much alike and he didn’t want me to be influenced in any way , yeah like that was gonna happen , I snuck into a matinee and watched from the back Roger was excellent but what I wanted to do was totally different.
During all this time Terry and I had negotiated with George Richardson and I didn’t meet Paul Raymond until the party after my premiere , He was a shy man but we got on well, he started talking about his time in the variety theatres he said that he followed the advice of an old show producer who said the formula for a successful show was ‘Pretty Girls and Funny Men’ In case you’re wondering NO , I wasn’t the pretty girl.
After the premiere Alexander took me and Terry outside and pointed to the title display on the theatre , my name was there along with Fiona Richmond’s ‘Starring in Pyjama Tops ‘ He said at any one time there are only19 people who can say they have their name in lights outside a West End Theatre, only 12 have their name above the title and I was one of the twelve, I felt a tap on my shoulder ( my plumber has a weird sense of humour) it was Terry who said , not bad, only took us 3 years from Southend to the West End, that was the first time I remembered our conversation about what did I want to do.
Fiona Richmond was the star of the show and because she was a star she didn’t turn up for rehearsals so I worked with her understudy, this was a pattern that continued during my run in the show, Fiona did the premier with me and a couple of shows after that and then went on holiday with Paul, on the second day of her absence ,halfway through the first act I stopped the show and said “Knock Knock “– Tony Bateman my wonderful straight man and feed replied “who’s there” “Fiona “ Fiona who” ? “ only been gone for a day and you’ve already forgotten me ” That got me my first ‘Yellow Peril’ a rebuke from head office .’Do not mention Fiona Richmond in any derogatory fashion during the show’
I probably worked more with the understudy than Fiona during my run in the show which was good because she was a good actress and easier to work with.
The show started in 1969 and was a ‘saucy romp ‘ but was never obscene, I have never done ‘blue’ comedy and the show didn’t need it , It was a typical farce involving a businessman, his wife, his girlfriend, a maid ,a shady butler, the police and the wifes gay friend ! One third of the stage was a swimming pool and occasionally during the play a couple of girls got into the pool , naked of course ! I played the gay friend Leonard Jolly who for the first two acts is camp and outrageous but in the interval between the second and third act he is ‘visited’ by one of the women in the house and comes out in the third act all Macho , Butch and Tarzan-like setting the third act denouement – which of the ladies has caused the turnaround ? The Whitehall theatre seated about 450 and we were always full so at on evening show to see a couple of empty seats on the front row was a surprise, we were into the second act and Tony and I were sitting on the edge of the pool moving the plot along when we heard the doors at the rear of the stalls open, down the aisle came an usherette with a young couple trying not to be conspicuous, I started to speak more slowly and quietly , Tony followed until we were both silent , I looked up to the spotlight and nodded towards the pair still trying to get to their place unnoticed, the spot guy got it straight away and put a light on them but because it was behind them they didn’t notice, edging their way along the front row they were suddenly aware of the silence and the atmosphere and realised that they were the centre of attention, I got down off the edge of the pool and started talking to them doing the normal gags , “did car break down” -”did you bring a note “ just conversational, trying to put them at ease, when they sat down I asked how much they’d paid for the seats , front row at the whitehall wasn’t cheap and for a few moments we chatted like that till I had an idea , I said to the audience , it’s not fair that they’ve paid the same money as everyone else but have missed half the show, If none of you mind could we start from the beginning again, the audience cheered and clapped and on the side of the stage I saw blind panic from the stage manager and all the staff, shaking their heads , and fists, at me, I knew it was impossible but it got a hell of a reaction from the punters so I calmed them down and said no we can’t do that but I have an idea , I then went through the show from the start, at speed, picking up all the feed lines and major punch lines with each one getting bigger laughs than originally until I said “ and then you two walked in and screwed it up “ well the laugh went on for quite while, eventually Tony and I got back to the script finished the second act and then the show. Next day I got a ‘yellow peril’ not a complaint but a request from head office , if we kept two seats empty and employed a couple of stooges could you do that every show?
comedy is a serious business !
I’ll finish part 5 here and be back with part 6 ( thats where the Circus comes back into my life ) soon .
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