Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

  The name of the multi-service section we worked with was ‘ORBS’ – ‘the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service’ – and was headed by a brilliant young Flight Lieutenant in the RAF called Harry Alan Towers, later to make a considerable name for himself in more ways than one. On the committee were Regimental Sergeant Major George Melachrino, Flying Officer Sydney Torch, Flight Lieutenant Peter Yorke, and Sergeant Eric Robinson, all very well known musicians in their own field, while Kim Peacock and I tagged along to look after the Navy’s interests. We had the use of Drury Lane and the Fortune Theatre to record our programmes and after my previous appointment the whole thing was a delightful doddle. I would spend hours sitting in the stalls auditioning prospective artistes and then put together the kind of programmes that we thought the servicemen and women would like. Singers, music-hall comedians, instrumentalists, and a Welsh counter-tenor called Ivor Pye who had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard. Though it was more like the voice of a woman his programmes were, strangely enough, immensely popular with the troops; in truth, I had expected little but derision.

  One day I was asked to go down and listen to the swing choir of the Royal Army Pay Corps Choir under the leadership of a Sergeant George Mitchell. They were magnificent and I’m proud to be able to say that I gave this now world-famous choir their very first broadcast.

  Into my office one morning came a very, very young Ordinary Seaman called David Jacobs. He had been seconded to our section for training as a radio announcer and once trained was to join MacDonald Hobley in Ceylon (Sri-Lanka) as an announcer on radio SEAC (South East Asia Command).

  He looked very frail and slight in his tight fitting blue-jacket’s uniform and with his dark Semitic looks was strikingly good looking. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, Kim Peacock was of gay persuasion. So the arrival of a handsome young teenage sailor in our midst gave me cause of suspicion that O/S Jacobs was the ‘friend’ of our Lt/Comdr Peacock. I became all the more convinced when O/S Jacobs was continually addressed as ‘David’ and I, by now a full Lieutenant, as nothing else but ‘Pertwee’. Naturally, I took an instant dislike to the young man. I later discovered his feelings for me were much the same, as I worked him to death at every opportunity.

  One morning, travelling on the underground to a recording session, I heard issuing from the side of the mouth of O/S Jacobs a muffled ‘Cor! will you look at that.’ So I looked. Directly in front of us with a short black skirt pulled well up over her knees and wearing a tight white sweater that looked as if it had been moulded to her mamilla, sat a very attractive girl indeed. I was puzzled. Nubile young ladies were surely not in O/S Jacobs line, so I said as much.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ said Jacobs.

  ‘Well, I thought that perhaps you were more likely to be stirred at the sight of a pretty gentleman?

  ‘Sorry, sir, I still don’t know what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Well, bearing in mind your “friendship” with Uncle Kim, I didn’t think you were much interested in females of the species.’

  Light began to dawn, and O/S Jacobs’ face turned bright scarlet.

  ‘Oh my God! You don’t mean he’s one of those?’

  For the next twenty minutes I enlightened the completely innocent young man with the facts of homosexual life. By the time we alighted from the train we had a whole new respect for one another, and had each learned a lesson – he to understand better the pitfalls that lay in store for such handsome young innocents as himself, and I to be more careful in future before jumping to completely unjustified conclusions.

  So to cement our new relationship and to further his heterosexual future, I invited him to take tea backstage in the Windmill Theatre canteen, where pert and barely clothed young ladies were to be found in abundance. I was a regular visitor to the ‘Mill’ through my friendship with a most exotic black-haired, long-legged beauty called Pat Raphael. Pat was one of the ‘Revuedevilles’ principal show girls and a great favourite of her boss ‘VD’ (a singularly unfortunate abbreviation of his name, which was Van Damm). She was not only loved, admired and secretly desired by her audience, but with her wonderful body was also the pin-up to end all pin-ups. I felt most honoured to be one of her principal suitors, and showed her off to David with tremendous pride. Pat and her husband Vic Sephton are still two of my and Ingeborg’s greatest friends and no-one who considers himself to be anyone (including James Bond), passes through Hong Kong without calling in for a drink with Pat at her world famous bar ‘The Bottoms-Up’.

  David took to the nudist camp atmosphere backstage like a fried fish takes to chips and with our new found friendship firmly based on a common interest in the female sex we proceeded to enjoy life to the full.

  I have always found listening in on other people’s conversations absolutely fascinating. None more so than one we heard on the top of a London bus. Two young girls were talking and each seemed to find the other unutterably boring. Their conversation seemed to dry up. Suddenly, after some minutes of silent travel, girl number one said, ‘I’m going to ve fearter on Fursday.’

  ‘Oh yeh,’ said the other, ‘Wot ‘yer goin to see then?’

  ‘I tink it’s called Sealions in Toronto.’ (She meant of course Seagulls over Sorrento.)

  ‘Oh yeh? Sounds nice!’ There was another long pause, followed by girl number two asking, ‘Is that the one with the Chinaman in it?’

  ‘Nah!’ said girl number one. ‘I don’t fink so.’

  ‘Pity,’ opined girl number two, ‘I like a Chinaman in a play.’

  If you wrote dialogue like that for the theatre, critics would castigate you for a complete lack of human understanding.

  My friend James Hill, Producer/Director of Worzel Gummidge, heard this mystifying conversation between two women on a crossed telephone line.

  ‘So I stood there ’till my vest was wringin’ wet.’

  ‘Yes, well you would, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘I said to myself, could it have been a horse?’

  ‘No, dear, it couldn’t’ve been a horse.’

  ‘A rabbit then?’

  ‘No, couldn’t have been a rabbit.’

  ‘Why not? They’ve got big teeth.’

  ‘Yes, but rabbits can’t reach hanging baskets.’

  How about that for a perfect non-sequitur?

  To keep myself in trim for character parts after the war, David and I invented an excellent game. Whenever we were out on the town or at a party where the other was not likely to be known, one would introduce the other as a character that he would have to stay in throughout the evening, be it a Hungarian Lion-Tamer, a Yugoslav Teeter-Board Champion, a Komodo Dragon Breeder or on one occasion, at the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, the Youngest Colonel in the Russian Army, Colonel Ivan Nastikov. According to David’s autobiography, Jacobs Ladder this was positively my finest hour, as it appeared I was quite unfazed when David assured the gaggle of giggling girls sitting at our table that although the Colonel’s English was heavily accented, he possessed a remarkable ability to speak in any British dialect. Cockney, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, you name it, the Colonel could speak it. So for the rest of the evening I regaled the enthralled young ladies with light-hearted anecdotes of my travels through Britain, switching from thick Russian into broad Cockney or the soft lilt of Inverness at the drop of a Cossack’s hat. The ‘pulling’ power of the Colonel was so evident that it was a long time before David was unwise enough to introduce me as Colonel Ivan Nastikov again. For a change it had been he, and not me, that was the gooseberry.

  Douglas ‘Cardew the Cad’ Robinson threw excellent parties and at one he gave in the 50s I introduced David as the celebrated French actor Gérard Philipe, to whom he bore a striking resemblance. David’s French was not of the best, but he had a great ear for impersonation and after a momentary pause to get over the shock of hearing his set task for the evening, was off into an excellent impression of the great French heart-throb and drove the girls wild with exciteme
nt. There was a young man present who, just starting his career as a film Director, spent the entire evening trying to talk David into making a film for him. It was a most frustrating exercise for both of them. Years later, by now one of England’s most eminent Directors Lewis Gilbert (for it was he) and I were reminiscing, when he reminded me of the time I had introduced him to Gérard Philipe, and how he had tried so hard to sign him up for a film. ‘Then you can try again,’ I said, ‘for funnily enough he’s here with me tonight’, and with that I introduced him to the by then famous-in-his-own-right David Jacobs.

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done, Jon?’ he said frostily, when all became clear. ‘You’ve ruined an illusion of years.’

  Perhaps that joke was a misfire, for strangely enough I have never been cast in one of his films.

  Another bus game was carried out on the top deck in mufti, and played on the public’s natural inclination to interfere. David would sit directly in front of me, and, on the bus passing Nelson’s column, for example, would turn and in the thick accent of whatever country he had chosen for the day, enquire,

  ‘Pliss am visitoring zis country and no knowing much, could you be telling me what zis big post is?’

  ‘Certainly, mate,’ I replied in loud, rich, ‘The Cut’ Waterloo Road Cockney. ‘You’ve asked just the right geezer. I was born and bred ahrand ’ere, an knows it like the back of me ’and. That there pillar is wot’s called “The Monument”. It was put there to celebrate the great fire of Puddin’ Lane, which started right there,’ I said, pointing down Northumberland Avenue.

  Passengers looked at each other aghast not believing their ears at this clap-trap.

  ‘An’ that there,’ I said, pointing to the Horse Guards Parade ‘is Buckinghampshire Palace, where the Queen hangs aht.’

  ‘Zank you, you are most kindly,’ said David seemingly unaware of the whispering around him.

  ‘The man’s mad, he knows as much about London as my Aunt Letitia.’

  ‘Fancy tellin’ the poor soul all them lies.’

  ‘The berk don’t know his arse from his bleedin elbow.’ But the high spot came when we got to Downing Street and I pointed up to Number Ten and said, ‘Now up there, mate, is the flashiest ’ouse in Lunnon, Number Ten Downin’ Street!!’

  Is zat so, very interesting, an ’oo is living zere zen?’

  ‘George Formby,’ I replied.

  That was it!! The ‘interfering passenger’ was found. We knew he would be eventually.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the IP, rising to his feet and facing David, ‘but I could not help but overhear the tissue of untruths that this so-called Londoner has been telling you. The man, sir, is a lunatic, and is filling your head with utter balderdash. He is a veritable mine of misinformation and should be ignored. As for you, sir,’ he said, turning to rail at me, ‘you are a charlatan, a mountebank, a disgrace to your race, for two pins if I were not a gentleman I would take a horsewhip to you.’ Snapping his thumb and middle finger in my face he expostulated, ‘A fig for your London ancestry and birth. You are more likely to have been found under a stone.’

  So saying, he collapsed on to his seat puce and perspiring.

  I would then slowly rise and say to David, ‘Come along Montmorency, I’m not stopping here to be insulted.’ David would get up and with a toss of his head, he and I would walk arm in arm off the bus, leaving the passengers completely non-plussed. When on a long train or bus journey do try it – you’ll get some wonderfully funny results, I promise you. Though I would advise that you drop the camp exit.

  David and I had a very severe lesson in sexual tolerance towards the end of our time in ORBS. We were sitting in the canteen in Queen Anne’s Mansions laughing it up over a male colleague’s predilection towards his own sex, when a Lieutenant Commander RNR sitting at the same table brought us horrifyingly to heel.

  ‘Can I tell you two ignorant and intolerant young men something that might perhaps help you to understand the agonising of a homosexual such as myself ?’

  We were virtually speechless, but managed a swallowed, ‘Yes, of course sir.’

  ‘I am a 46-year-old married man with three children but from my early youth I always felt “different” and dissatisfied with the way I was living. I felt as if my body did not belong to me at all.’ It was like being at a confessional. ‘Then about five years ago on holiday, I met up with a psychiatrist who persuaded me after days of private discussion and deliberation that my problem was a simple one. It was that I was a latent homosexual and the quicker I admitted the fact and faced up to it, the quicker I could begin living at peace with myself. Most of what he said was absolutely true, but there was one thing that I didn’t tell him and that was my terrible underlying fear, and it is because of this fear that I get down on my knees every day of my life and thank God that I have three daughters and not three sons.’

  With that devastating statement he rose from the table and said, ‘So in future, instead of subjecting people like myself to your intolerance and ridicule why not try a little compassion?’

  Never in my life had I felt so humbled and ashamed and we slunk away to think, lick our wounds and vow to never again be so wretchedly inconsiderate.

  *

  Early on the morning of 6th June 1944, having just returned from the north west of Scotland, I was having breakfast in the Dutch Oven restaurant in Baker Street, when a young airman flew in through the door and dropped a bomb.

  ‘It’s started,’ he yelled. ‘The invasion has started.’ I straightaway rushed back to the Admiralty where I followed the first few hours of that historic event on the radio. Once the Bridgehead had been established and the Cherbourg Peninsula was in our hands, it was decided that a small unit of French-speaking Army and Navy broadcasters and engineers should be flown in to the recently liberated island of Jersey, to interview locals about their treatment under the German occupation. From there we were to proceed by Tank Landing Craft to Cherbourg and drive down the Peninsula, recording similar interviews on acetate.

  Now this is a job where I’ll find my French is not all that bad, I thought, and heartily looked forward to the trip. We took off from Southampton in a much dented DC3 and within the hour were circling the Jersey Airfield prior to landing. Sitting up front near the pilot, I observed with mounting horror that as we were making our final approach, dozens of German soldiers were pouring on to the airfield. ‘Keep going, keep going,’ I yelled into the pilot’s ear, ‘it’s a mistake, we haven’t taken the bloody island after all, look at all those damn soldiers!!’ Quite unconcerned, the pilot put the plane gently down, as the Germans continued their forward-rush towards us. ‘You fool’, I said to the grinning pilot, ‘now we’ll all be taken prisoner.’

  The door of the plane was opened and we scrambled out, filled with trepidation. The emaciated German soldiery immediately grabbed our luggage and equipment and smilingly bore them across the airfield watched over by a lone Army squaddie with a Sten gun. Far from us becoming their prisoners, they had become ours, and turned out to be the last German soldiers remaining on the island. Disarmed, they were hanging around the airfield prior to being shipped out to POW camps in the United Kingdom.

  *

  From Jersey, having recorded a few hurried interviews (in English, naturally, after all the explicit instructions that they should be conducted in French) we embarked for Cherbourg, where we boarded two ten-hundredweight lorries. From my old kit-bag I produced two Union Jacks with which we draped our bonnets and set off down the Peninsula in hot pursuit of our duties and the rapidly advancing Army. We hadn’t gone but a few miles along a country road from Cherbourg when we arrived at a badly shot-up farmhouse.

  ‘We won’t be very popular here,’ said our leader, an Army Captain called Ronnie, ‘so let’s move it on out.’

  As he spoke, French persons of every age and gender began to appear out of the woodwork. They had seen the Union Jacks and came pouring into the farmyard.

  ‘Vous êtes anglais?�
�� they cried.

  ‘Oui nous sommes anglais. Ça va bien?’ we answered.

  ‘Oui, maintenant que vous êtes arrivés. Venez prendre un petit coup avec nous.’

  At that, we were whisked into a barn where, as if by magic, several bottles of excellent calvados were produced and the party began. It was not long before cries of ‘Vivent les Anglais et merde à la Boche’ echoed into the night.

  Calvados is a very potent drink made from apples and could best be described as a stamping fluid. Toss a small glassful down the gullet and one’s immediate reaction is to breath out hard like a dragon belching fire and stamp the right foot on the ground several times until the burning sensation in the windpipe begins to ease. After an hour or so of merrymaking, it was unanimously decided that we should take full advantage of our hosts’ hospitality and partake of a fine young goat that they would be roasting in our honour. Then again the sturdy young farm lassies were beginning to get more beautiful by the minute and were becoming more ‘laid back’ as the party progressed.

  Un bon jeu de mots there, n’est-ce pas?

  I remembered little after the generous helpings of goat and calvados, and by midnight had passed gently out on a pile of straw where I snored away until morning, much to the chagrin of lusty, busty Louise who said, when I awoke, that I was certainly no gentleman. I defy anyone to be much of a gentleman after a skinful of calvados!

  So the caravan moved on, laden with cadeaux of cheese, wine, a bottle of cognac, and of course a litre of stamping fluid to keep us going. It didn’t have to keep us going for long, as after travelling for just under an hour, we came across a badly shot-up farm house.