by Jon Pertwee
Richard Caldicot played the bullying, blustering dockyard Superintendant, Captain Henry Povey, at work a tyrant, at home a quivering, obedient, hen-pecked wreck who ‘had the honour’ to be married to the awesome and formidable Mrs Ramona Povey of the off-key singing voice and incredibly dreadful parties, played by ‘Wren’ Heather Chasen, who also played anything from voluptuous Mata Haris to sex-starved spinsters.
And from time to time, there was the added bonus of an appearance by my favourite comedy actress, the incomparable June Whitfield, with whom I later made a very successful album called Wonderful Children’s Songs.
Of the three leads, there was me, Chief Petty Officer Pertwee conning the hell out of all and sundry, and thinking I knew all the answers; Leslie as the naive Sub-Lieutenant Phillips who didn’t know any of the questions, let alone the answers, and Lieutenant- Commander Dennis Price who was always one jump ahead, and knew all the questions as well as the answers!
An interesting point, is the number of times that people have said to me, ‘Oh, I never missed The Navy Lark, never! Marvellous show! What part did you play in it?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t have been Sub-Lieutenant Phillips, would it?’ I’d say.
‘Nooooo, I don’t think so . . .’
‘And it wouldn’t have been Lieutenant-Commander Dennis Price (or, later, Lieutenant-Commander Stephen Murray) . . . ?’
‘Nooooo . . .’
‘Then how about Chief Petty Officer Pertwee . . . would that be a possibility?’
With a sheepish smile, they would then say, ‘Oh, yes, of coooourse!’
It is astonishing how often I have been asked that damn’ footling question!
Dennis Price had his own extraordinary and unique way of delivering comedy lines. He would inflect every one of them arse about face. So before the first show I approached Ronnie and Leslie and said, ‘Do you think we ought to tell Dennis that he’s inflecting his lines completely arsy-tarsy? He’ll never get a laugh saying them like that!’
But to our complete astonishment, Dennis went out in front of the audience that night and wowed them, putting stress on words in the most unlikely of places and getting every laugh in the book! This was the art of Dennis Price. It was his unique way of doing things!
Thank God, the show was a success from the start, which was shown by the astonishing number of repeat programmes we were given.
By the end of the second series it was an established favourite, and rivalled even Tony Hancock, Take It From Here and Beyond Our Ken.
When the third series began, the original was transmitted on the Wednesday, we had our ‘built-in’ repeat on the following Sunday lunchtime, General Overseas Service repeats on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday, a delayed repeat in four months time! And London transcription put it out all over the world.
Every Sunday, we would arrive in the Paris Studios in Lower Regent Street for afternoon rehearsals and the show in the evening. The Paris was an old stamping ground for me, because I used to record Mediterranean Merry-Go-Round there with Eric Barker, and later Waterlogged Spa (also with Eric), Puffney Post Office (the Postman’s first show of his own) and Pertwee Goes Round The Bend.
We would meet in the canteen where we would have endless cups of tea and sandwiches, Ronnie Barker would tell the week’s latest joke, and we would exchange all the current gossip of the ‘business’. Then Alastair and his wonderfully phlegmatic secretary, Evelyn Wells would appear, and after a few minutes we would adjourn into the studio where we would take our places in the stalls for the ‘read-through’.
We all had our favourite and individual seats, and for eighteen years we sat in the same ones, a habit we just fell into and never broke.
I used to sit in the front row of the stalls, three in from the centre of the aisle; Richard Caldicot sat on my left and on my right – when he took over after Dennis – sat Stephen Murray. Immediately behind me sat ‘Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee’, as we dubbed Michael Bates and Tenniel Evans, and Ronnie Barker sat alongside them but with an empty seat in between them and him. (He needed that bit of extra room, he said.)
Four rows up on the left side of the aisle sat Leslie Phillips, by himself, with Heather Chasen sitting about five rows behind everyone else, wearing dark glasses. The glasses were a vain attempt to disguise a Sunday hangover, for she was inclined to ‘indulge’ a modicum on Saturday nights after a teetotal week of starring in the West End.
The writers, when George Evans joined Lawrie, always sat three rows behind us on the left hand side of the aisle, Lawrie in the seat nearest the aisle and George, one seat in in the row behind him.
Alastair, as Producer, sat on the stage facing us.
Before the first read-through of a new series, I suggested to the cast as a gag that everybody should sit in everybody else’s seat, so I sat where Leslie sat, Leslie sat where Richard Caldicot sat and so on, until although all the same seats were occupied, they were occupied by different people. Alastair, having finished his cup of tea, came in, sat down and said, ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s lovely to see you all again, looking so. . .it’s – er – well. . . er. . . it’s great to. . . er. . . to see. . .to. . .er. . .um. . .’
‘What’s the matter, Alastair?’ I said.
‘I don’t know. I – er – something’s wrong . . .’
‘Wrong? Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
‘Yes . . . er, no.’ He looked puzzled. ‘I’m just feeling . . . a bit disorientated, that’s all.’
‘That’s probably because we’ve been away,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, yes. I expect that’s it,’ he agreed. Then suddenly his eyes sparked and his head flicked from side to side. ‘Why, you bastards!’ he said. ‘I knew something was different, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell what it was!’
An excellent practical joke, and perfectly orchestrated!
*
It was at the end of series two that Dennis Price, committed to a play in New York, had to leave the show. Alastair, with a fine stroke of inspirational casting, rang that splendid classical actor Stephen Murray to ask him if he would like to take over the Captaincy of HMS Troutbridge.
Stephen, noted for his delivery of such lines as ‘What bloody man is this?’ and ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’ rendered the hot line between him and Alastair extremely silent, so Alastair asked him the reason for his reticence.
‘It’s just that nobody’s ever asked me to play comedy before.’
‘Well,’ said Alastair, ‘your luck’s changed because I’m asking you now!’
Stephen took over the part so successfully that poor Dennis Price, on his return from a shatteringly brief run in New York, couldn’t get his job back!
The Navy Lark was also the favourite radio programme of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who once asked us to appear in a big WRNS reunion at the Festival Hall. We all turned up in uniform, and afterwards talked with the Queen Mother, who gave us each a beautiful silver ashtray inscribed with the words, ‘WRNS Reunion, 5th November 1960. Presented by HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother to . . .’ and finished with our names.
The Admiralty vetted our scripts for detail and accuracy, through a very brave man called Commander Mervyn Ellis. Not meaning that Mervyn was brave because he had to read the scripts, but because of his war record, fighting with the French Resistance; yet to look at this smiling, modest little man over his large pink gin, you would think that he wouldn’t have stepped on a wood-louse.
One particular Sunday afternoon, taking our usual seats, we noticed something unusual. A somewhat serious Mervyn had turned up with an even more serious and saturnine-looking companion. Apparently Lawrie Wyman had dreamed up a story involving an anti-submarine device, and when he read the script, Mervyn Ellis almost had a coronary. It seemed that the Admiralty already had an anti-submarine device that was identical to the one Lawrie had written about. Naturally, the Admiralty thought there had been a leak in the Department that had allowed Lawrie to fi
nd out all about it . . .
Once the show had been put in the ‘can’, we went home in the belief that everything was all right.
And so it was – until the Monday morning when Alastair went to his office in the Aeolian Hall in New Bond Street to find two men dressed as he later described them in ‘dirty raincoats’. After showing him their badges of authority, they proceeded to go through his office with minute detail. This DR Brigade remained with Alastair for nearly three weeks. Everywhere Alastair went, they went! Until one day, feeling suddenly lonely, he realised that his shadows had gone. They had evidentally decided that Scott-Johnston really was only a BBC Producer after all, and not a Man from Moscow, as suspected.
Lawrie Wyman had experienced exactly the same thing, except that in his case they didn’t enter his house. They merely followed him wherever he went.
It was in the early stages of the tremendous success of The Navy Lark, that the late Herbert Wilcox decided to make a Navy Lark film, and a monumental disaster it turned out to be!
First of all, Wilcox objected to Dennis Price being in the film on the grounds that he was too ‘camp’! In an interview with Mr Wilcox I tried to set him straight. After all, Dennis was one of our finest light-comedy actors, a big draw at the box office, and after thirty odd shows in the role, closely associated with the project. Wilcox wouldn’t have this, saying again that Dennis was too ‘swish’ for the role of a Naval Officer, and that he was going to recast him.
Leslie was very hot in films at the time, so naturally Wilcox chose him to play his original part of Sub-Lieutenant Phillips.
Ronald Shiner was chosen to play my part as he had recently made a couple of very successful films, including Seagulls Over Sorrento. I was naturally very put out over this as it would have been quite a ‘break’ for me. Although I’d made a reasonably large number of films since the war, this would have been my first major role in an ‘A’ picture.
Wilcox was of the opinion that Ronald Shiner would be a big draw at the box office, which, judging by the receipts was an incorrect prognostication. Not only was Ronnie considerably more expensive than me, he also had great difficulty in remembering his lines, which made them run many days over schedule and cost Wilcox a great deal of money.
To my mind, the film would’ve stood a much better chance of success if we had all played our original parts, as then The Navy Lark would’ve been as the public knew it.
*
Alastair gave the same introductory welcome speech before recordings for eighteen and a half years, and the fact that he got the same laughs in the same places from virtually the same audience completely mystified us. Even now, some of his ‘bon-mots’ stick in the mind. Such as when he told them how important it was for the show that they should laugh, because ‘If you laugh, we eat!’ Everytime he said this, he sounded as if he was producing a pearl of originality. Another of his treasures during the hot weather was ‘Those of you who so wish, may divest yourselves of any garment you may with decency remove,’ and he always beseeched the audience not to feed the man in the fish tank at the back – referring to the Sound Engineer in the Producer’s Box in the rear of the studio.
The late Michael Bates, a wonderful comedy actor and later to become a star of The Last of the Summer Wine and It Ain’t ’Arf ’Ot, Mum also contributed to the informality of the evening, albeit unconsciously, during the performance. Michael would invent the most marvellous characters which would absolutely slay us, one of the most popular being the Padre, with his canting chant.
During the rehearsals, Michael would do the character perfectly, but when it came to actual performance, more often than not he would have forgotten it! This gave us the chance to throw our scripts at Michael, chant the words for him, shout, ‘Get it right, Batesey,’ and so on, which added immensely to the general entertainment.
I remember Michael, not for all the laughs he gave us over the years, but for his immense courage. At our final ‘Jubilee Show,’ Michael was very, very ill. He could hardly walk, let alone stand, and should never have done the show, but to him The Navy Lark was just as much his show as it was ours and he insisted on being present. We had to help him up on to the stage, and for the first time in his broadcasting career he used a stool, laughing and joking his way through the show, when every movement must have been agony for him. Anyone who saw his brilliantly original performance in Loot will realise what a loss he is to the British theatre.
One thing we discovered was that the sound of somebody breaking wind was enough to render Tenniel Evans almost unconscious with mirth, so if we wanted to get Tenniel going, all we had to do was to walk behind him, let go a quiet raspberry as an assimilation, and that would be it! Tenniel would be off! On one occasion when he was making one of his long speeches as Sir Willoughby Todhunter-Brown, from behind my script I sounded off a little ‘Freep!’ After struggling with his self-control for a few convulsed seconds, he was away and gone. Tenniel’s laughter was horribly infectious, and within a minute the whole cast were speechless and crying with laughter! The audience were soon to join him, causing Alastair to stop the show until we had all regained some sort of control.
From the very beginning, The Navy Lark gained an obsessive audience of loyal fans who loved the show so much that they attended every one of our recordings, actually sitting in the same places each week for years.
There was a certain blind gentleman who liked to sit in a particular seat in the front row of the stalls. One night, another member of the audience all unknowingly sat in his seat. The blind man coming in found his way to his seat, and without preamble, sat in the usurper’s lap.
‘What on earth are you doing, sir?’ asked the squashed gentleman.
‘Sitting in my seat,’ said the blind man.
‘This is not your seat,’ replied the gentleman.
‘Oh yes it is,’ said the blind man, ‘I’ve been sitting in this seat for fifteen years, and if that doesn’t make it mine, I don’t know what does!’
When Ronnie Barker left the show after the sixth series, Alastair asked me, ‘Who shall we get as our new “voice-man”. Any suggestions?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Me! I’m tired of just playing the Chief Petty Officer!’ Alastair agreed. After all, I’d been a ‘voice-man’ for Eric Barker and Jewell and Wariss for years, but up to now, in The Navy Lark, I hadn’t had a chance to put that ability to use.
So the Chief was now joined by Commander Wetherby, the stuttering officer from Naval Intelligence, who could never quite finish what it was he had intended to say; Admiral Buttonshaw, who repeated the last syllable of certain words such as . . . ‘And as far as I’m concerned you can go to the bottom of the class – arse-arse-arse . . .’ Or, ‘And for the moment, that’s it-tit-tit-tit-tit . . .’
A favourite character of mine was Vice Admiral ‘Burbly’ Burasher. Burwasher was a ‘Thinking Man’. He would turn up at a meeting with a problem on his mind which would take precedence over everything else, and while the others were waiting for him to tell them why he was there, we would hear Burwasher’s thoughts working out his dilemma. I used to play him with two voices - a slightly higher one which was his ‘Conscience’ voice, and a deeper one which was himself answering.
My old friend Commander High Price, Chief of MI5, turned up occasionally, but George and Lawrie’s favourite was the self-styled Master Criminal, ‘The Master’, whom I played as a slightly camp, nasal impression of my father’s impression of Sir Beerbohm Tree. The part of ‘The Mistress’ was played by June Whitfield, who had her Headquarters in Hong Kong, in a ‘front’ she called her ‘. . . h’almost h’undetectable Wig Centre!’
After two hundred and forty shows, I only ever met one man who had the courage to say that why people laughed at The Navy Lark was beyond him. That gentleman was John Simmonds, now retired, but then Deputy Head of Light Entertainment. He also admitted that he knew what it felt like to be in the minority! John was present at our memorable two hundredth show, which was memorable for two
reasons, one, because it was the two hundredth show, and the other, I am coming to.
After the show, attended by the Head of Light Entertainment, Con Mahoney, Douglas Muggeridge the Controller, and others of the hierarchy, the BBC threw a celebration party on the stage of the Paris Studio for us. Wives, husbands, children, friends and lovers of the cast were all invited to come along and partake of the BBC’s renowned hospitality.
When it became speech time, Alastair surveyed us all with a proud smile, before he began to recap on the shining record of the show. Fascinating though The Navy Lark may have been to all of us who sailed in her, fascinating it most certainly was not to an alcoholically-flushed, red-headed lady sitting in the front row of the stalls. This was plain to see from the look of utter boredom she was affording her empty glass!
It took only about four or five minutes of Alastair’s rhetoric to release the inhibitions that had been bubbling away inside her, and when they burst forth, their timing for shock value could not have been bettered by Alfred Hitchcock himself. Alastair had just reached the end of a sentence, and was pausing for effect, when she was in! Irish in lilt, mellifluous in tone, and bell-like in clarity, her voice split the silence.
‘Hey! Alastair! What about a fuck?’
To our great disappointment Alastair majestically ignored her invitation and continued his speech without cessation or reply.
The Navy Lark was a team show. It was our show, and we were immensely proud of it. As I have said, it was the longest, and in all probability will remain the longest running situation comedy on radio for all time.
But this was all years ahead, and might never have happened if the Admiralty had not posted me to a new section with far-reaching personal effects. Our section of Naval Intelligence was deemed to have served its usefulness and was purposefully run down, with all of its members scattered to the winds. My new appointment was to the previously mentioned Naval Broadcasting section which necessitated a move of some 500 yards from Great Smith Street, Westminster, to Queen Anne’s Mansions, overlooking St James Park. My new Commanding Officer was an actor of repute, ‘Paul Temple’ himself, Lieutenant Commander Kim Peacock, RNVR, and our job was to produce and record programmes of every kind for the pleasure and edification of men and women in all three services. These programmes were recorded on acetate and distributed to ships and service radio stations all over the world.
