The Years Before My Death

by David McPhail

  It was then I made the mistake of asking him how long he had been touring. Quietly he replied it had been five weeks. I plunged on. ‘It must be difficult being away from your family for that length of time?’

  He kept looking straight ahead. His voice didn’t change. ‘My wife died in a motorcycle accident and two of my sons were killed in a house fire in 1968.’

  I looked at my feet. ‘Is that right? Look, Roy, may I call you Roy? I’ve got to go upstairs immediately. Right now. So see you soon.’ I scurried away. We recorded the two songs and I instructed my floor manager to wish him goodbye.

  The world of rock music was raucous and unpredictable. Singers like the great Bunny Walters and even bands like Dragon sometimes struggled to make a living. You didn’t accept work. You grabbed it. There was a hectic, slightly underworld feeling about the music industry. The late nights, the grim dressing rooms, the girls, the alcohol and the drugs.

  So it was to my surprise that a poised, elegant young woman with immaculate makeup appeared at the door of my scruffy office and announced she’d been appointed my secretary. Her name was Sonia Black. Every producer was assigned a ‘production secretary’ as the position was then called. Producers and their secretaries had a close working relationship not only in the office, but in the planning meetings, the control-rooms and the editing suites. Invariably, and certainly in my case, the secretary knew more about the production than the producer.

  Sonia had been a personal assistant to the American publishing millionaire, Walter Annenberg, and had worked at his mansion in Palm Springs. She’d had her own apartment in the complex. She told me of being summonsed to Annenberg’s office and asked if she had washed her own dishes the previous evening. Mildly surprised, Sonia replied that she had. Annenberg said, ‘Please don’t do that anymore. We have staff to wash dishes.’

  Sonia was polished, precise and exceptionally attractive. We worked well together. She didn’t seem at all disturbed by the procession of hairy musicians who traipsed through our office smelling of marijuana and soap deprivation, but, given the occasional details of her earlier life, I began to suspect Sonia was far worldlier than I could ever imagine. And so it turned out. One afternoon she took a telephone call and blushed. She looked up and asked softly if I would mind leaving the room. ‘Of course not,’ I replied and went out of the office.

  I watched her through the glass partition. She talked for at least ten minutes. Then, she put down the telephone and waved me in. I sat down and looked rather expectantly at her. It was none of my business but I was intrigued. Sonia typed for several minutes and then stopped. She apologised for having to ask me to leave. I said I fully understood. It was a private telephone conversation.

  ‘It was an old friend,’ she said.

  ‘From America?’ I asked.

  ‘No, from England,’ she replied. Then, she blushed again. ‘Actually, David, it was Prince Charles.’

  I nearly fell off my chair. They had known each other in London. The Prince was on an informal tour and had called Sonia from Auckland. Then, with a smile that carried more meaning than her gentle face could conceal, she said, ‘And that, David, is all I’m ever going to tell you.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO’

  Derek Payne contacted me from Auckland. He had been approached to make an hour-long show that would play on New Year’s Eve. Its title was And Finally Payne and he wanted me to help write the programme and appear in it. It was tempting. I had to talk persuasively to my superiors because it was unusual, in fact unknown, for a salaried producer to write or appear in programmes. Reluctantly, they agreed and I flew to Auckland to join Derek and make the show. I remember hardly anything about the programme, but it must have impressed someone because the executives asked for a series based on the show. It would be called, somewhat hopefully, Something To Look Forward To.

  Imagine this scene: it is an ordinary New Zealand family kitchen. An over-dressed and wildly made-up woman is working at the kitchen table. Look more closely and you discover she is not preparing a meal but dismantling the engine of a small, four-cylinder car. Stare harder and you realise it’s not a woman at all but a man dressed up.

  There is a knock at the door. The woman shouts, ‘There are two Mormons knocking on the front door. Quick, get the Mormon gun.’ An erratic-looking man enters, runs to a cupboard and emerges with a broom. The woman shouts again, ‘You fool, that’s the Mormon broom not the Mormon gun. Hurry up.’ The man hurls the broom back into the cupboard and appears with a double-barrelled shotgun. He dashes to the front door and flings it open. Two soberly-dressed young men stand on the step smiling.

  One says, ‘Hello, I’m Elder Bingham.’

  The other continues, ‘And I’m Elder Louder and we were wondering …’ He doesn’t get any further. The man with the shotgun pulls the trigger and in a cloud of smoke the Mormons disappear. The woman, who hasn’t watched this, lights a cigarette and says, ‘Whew that was close. Right, come over here and give me a hand with the big end on this Anglia.’

  This was my second leap into the often shark-infested pond of television comedy. Something To Look Forward To was screened on what was then TV2 in 1976. What the sketch is about eludes me completely even though it’s possible I had a hand in writing it. But, as all seven programmes of Something To Look Forward To were never repeated and finally erased, there is no way of discovering what the Mormon piece actually meant. The tapes were not wiped to remove the contents from the pure minds of Protestants. It was men, and always men, never women, who, with suits buttoned up to their noses, demanded efficiency, economy and banality. So it was standard practice in the seventies to erase a programme once it had been screened. Most shows had a lifetime of a few slim weeks.

  That is why it is hard to find a copy of the last concert ever performed by the original Howard Morrison Quartet. It was staged at the Christchurch Town Hall. Howard reassembled the quartet for a final performance. I was to direct the video coverage of the concert.

  The rehearsals were difficult. Gerry Merrito would not stop strumming his guitar and Howard, knowing this might be the last time the quartet would be together, was torn between getting the harmonies right and making sure I was getting close-ups at the right time. I told him not to worry. I can’t do harmonies — you can’t do close-ups.

  We talked for some time. He didn’t have the faintest idea who I was and I was fielding questions from a rather fierce man with a voice like a rolling thunder. Then, the four walked out in their crisp dinner-suits and their wide smiles. The quartet had not been together for some years but that night the Howard Morrison Quartet burst from the past into the present. It was a remarkable performance. I threw any plan I had out the window when Howard and Gerry started making moves we’d never rehearsed. Why is Gerry on the other side of the stage and what is Howard doing in the audience? Why are we singing ‘My Old Man’s an All Black’ when I thought we were doing ‘The Battle of the Waikato’? It was a stunning evening as four fine singers combined their musical delight and threw their songs gleefully at the ceiling. The concert was screened once and a month later the tape was erased. No one ever considered that a record of one of the quartet’s greatest concerts should be preserved.

  Here’s another scene from Something To Look Forward To. A well-known interviewer named Rhys Jones is standing at the end of an airport runway. Rhys tells the audience he’s investigating a new form of recreation and he introduces the Dubronski Brothers. They don’t look like brothers although it’s hard to tell because they’re shrouded in dark overalls and ancient leather flying helmets. Rhys asks one brother about their hobby. He replies, ‘We’re leapers.’

  Rhys thinks he’s misheard. ‘Did you say lepers?’

  The brother becomes a trifle agitated. ‘No, Rhys, leapers.’ He goes on to explain that their hobby is leaping into low-flying aircraft. As a jet comes in to land the brothers proceed to show how they leap. Again, this is nearly as unintelligible to me, b
ut I admit I find the idea of grown men trying to jump into low-flying jets very funny.

  Another programme contained a long sketch that still puzzles me. It is a sunny day in Auckland. A red sports car drives into the picture. It all looks quite normal until you realise the driver and the passenger are literary lions Dr Samuel Johnson and his companion and biographer, James Boswell. Almost immediately Johnson and Boswell are in the middle of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. The pair stride along a wharf towards the bearded mariner and, on the line, ‘Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon,’ throw him off the wharf and into the sea.

  A little later, Johnson and Boswell stop to buy daffodils from the poet William Wordsworth. This episode baffled and annoyed one television critic who wrote: ‘It is doubtful whether the nonsense about the English Romantic poets would have grabbed anyone, even those viewers thoroughly familiar with their works.’

  The driving force behind Something To Look Forward To was the producer, John Carlaw. He was cheerful and imaginative and had a refreshingly direct approach to comedy. After reading one sketch I had written he looked up at me thoughtfully and said, ‘Do you know I never realised you could write such crap.’ But, John was determined about the show and constantly encouraged Derek and me to write anything we liked. The main performers were Marcus Craig, already notorious in Auckland as the bawdy drag-queen, Diamond Lil’, Alistair, the peripatetic and wildly amusing sometime teacher who hated teaching but couldn’t support his family by acting, the celebrated cartoonist Peter Bromhead, whose idiosyncratic work still appears, along with Derek and me. Two of the cast I knew but Marcus was a different set of stockings altogether. He’d put on huge eyelashes and a wig slightly shorter than the Eiffel Tower for his act. Then, sheathed in sequins, he roared out a collection of jokes as old as the Pyramids. ‘Are there sailors in the house? Oh, wonderful, I do love a drop of seafood.’ But, Marcus had been an actor before being a drag queen. He was an incisive comedian with a cutting wit that transcended the banalities of the show-girl scene. I liked him immediately. So there we were. A mad teacher, a cartoonist, an urbane front man, a drag queen and a rather confused television producer.

  It was not a particularly promising group of individuals to attempt a six-part television comedy series. But we started. Anne and the children came to Auckland in our battered EH Holden and we found ourselves in a motel on Takapuna beach. I was hammering away on my tiny Olivetti typewriter, the children were looking alarmed and Anne was gently spreading a cloak of calm over us all.

  Derek, John and I spent some time at John’s family bach at Piha writing material for the show. Most of the sketches would have been about drinking gin and tonic had John not taken a firm stand with us. I had days of great confidence and moments of grave doubt. The process was more difficult than I’d ever imagined and some sketches were received with a perplexed silence. But, once we started rehearsals in a draughty hall in Birkenhead and a woman like Beryl Te Wiata actually laughed at what she was about to say, my self-assurance returned.

  Much of Something To Look Forward To is covered by a genial haze. I recall the opening titles ended with a hydrogen bomb exploding and the programme’s name inserted across the mushroom cloud. We created a male marching team called the Fleshettes and the sight of Peter Bromhead and Derek in busbies and mini-skirts made it impossible to work rationally. The marchers were managed by a gruff little man played by Alistair. He was a rugby coach who couldn’t get a job so he reluctantly took on the Fleshettes and could never understand why rugby tactics shouldn’t be applied to marching men. And, we did march. John Carlaw was insistent that the sketches would only work if we looked precise and exact. It was only after we’d mastered the art of marching that we could start making deliberate mistakes.

  The first programme included a song by my friend Malcolm McNeill. He performed a rather poignant ballad called ‘Softly’. It included lyrics like, ‘Softly, I will leave you softly. Before the morning breaks and you awake to find me gone.’

  It was a song of tender but sad farewell. We set it in a bedroom with a woman sleeping in a double bed and as Malcolm sang a removal man began carrying the furniture out of the room. Finally, he carefully lifted the woman from the bed and after rolling up a rug and throwing it out the door, placed her on the floorboards. Then, Malcolm tiptoed out of the room, but not before removing a painting and a bedside lamp.

  AK Grant, whose reputation I knew of, but whom I was yet to meet, reviewed the episode for The Press in Christchurch. He wrote he was pleased by the ‘bad taste with which Malcolm McNeill’s sketch was concluded with the furniture removal man about to ravish the sleeping girl’. Alan was right but I thought we’d been a little more subtle. He continued with an observation that I have carried with me throughout my years in comedy. ‘Any comedian worth more than a polite titter from an audience full of friends and relatives must be prepared to risk being offensive for the sake of a laugh.’ I felt the episode had succeeded when Alan concluded, ‘McPhail and Payne, I am pleased to see, are not overburdened with scruples in this regard.’

  But another reviewer for The Press was more alarmed than Alan. Ken Coates wrote that he felt an overwhelming desire for more subtlety. One sketch, he wrote, was almost painful to watch. Another reviewer remarked: ‘One of the limitations imposed by the production of this series of the programme is that topical issues and current arguments could not be used.’ It was a pertinent observation and one that I’d been thinking about for some time.

  Something To Look Forward To ended its run and discussions began about the future. I was not included in these deliberations because of my rather awkward status. My principal occupation was a television producer and when discussions with Derek stalled and the second series was shunted into a convenient siding, I decided to head home. I packed Anne and the children into the EH Holden, paid the account at the Takapuna beach motel and went south. It was a sad and ignominious ending to a brave experiment, but for all the enchantment of the North Shore, no one was paying the bill anymore. My daughter, Anna, was five. She’d just entered school at Takapuna Primary. The four of us were settling into a new life in Auckland so, as we drove back through the wandering roads of the Waikato, I kept wondering, am I making the right decision?

  Chapter 14

  ‘A WEEK OF IT’

  After Something To Look Forward To stalled, my return to Christchurch was greeted with puzzled looks from my peers. I had veered off the career path of a responsible producer and now, unexpectedly, I was back. So, what do we do with him now?

  I was convinced that funny local television was possible. It just needed a direction and not a haphazard collection of unrelated sketches. My certainty sprang from two sources. The first was my work with Derek. We had appeared together on stage and on television and while the audience was frequently puzzled by our antics, there were moments, when their guard was down, that we managed to get a punch line in. Invariably, the biggest laugh came from a reference to a recent local event.

  The second reason was meeting an inspired group of writers and comedians in Christchurch. They were called the Merely Players and produced an annual stage review. I was asked to direct one and it was here I started my long association and friendship with Christopher McVeigh and AK Grant. Just as fortunately, I came to know Annie Whittle. I’d known her as a singer but never anticipated her impressive talent for comedy. She appeared in an uncannily accurate portrayal of the Greek singer Nana Mouskouri who was noted for her large spectacles, a high, quavering voice and for singing sentimental songs to the accompaniment of a mindless bouzouki orchestra.

  Annie appeared mimicking perfectly the precise stage manner of Mouskouri. This was funny enough, but then she began to sing. She had announced that the song was about a happy little bird flying in a clearing. Suddenly, a tiger appeared, pounced on the bird and ripped out its throat. All this was delivered in a sweet, unhurried voice. The song ended with the enduring line, ‘And the little bird coughed and
died.’ Annie finished her performance with a modest bow and a demure ‘Thank you’ to the audience. The sincerity of her delivery, completely at odds with the gruesome lyrics, was wildly amusing.

  As a curious aside, that particular Merely Players show also contained a sketch with the rather clumsy title of ‘Three jokers standing around a leaner in a pub.’

  I started plans for a new comedy series based on current events. There were two reasons for this. First, it had never been done before and second, sketches relating to incidents that happened only a day ago might be saved by their topicality if the humour fell flat. My superiors’ response to the idea was unanimously negative.

  As is obvious by today’s television, many executives are wary of comedy. In 1977 they were terrified of it. The show was rejected on numerous occasions for a variety of reasons: I had little experience in this field (this seemed to ignore the work I’d done with Derek); previous attempts had created only a lukewarm response (certainly, Something To Look Forward To had not been a high-rating show but that said more about the time it was screened than what it was doing); and perhaps the most remarkable rebuff used the peculiar argument that New Zealanders didn’t like laughing at themselves.

  I persisted and was eventually told I could produce a pilot show. I was given a tiny budget to make the show and promptly made a serious mistake. Since the demise of Something To Look Forward To I had always assumed that Derek and I would continue working together. But, he was in Auckland and the pilot would be made in Christchurch. My budget did not allow for any travel or accommodation so I resolved to make the pilot without him and then reassess everything in the now increasingly unlikely event the show would proceed. This resulted in misunderstandings that eventually escalated into a perceived sense of betrayal. I take full responsibility for not keeping Derek informed and for instigating a rift that wrecked our friendship and ensured we would never collaborate again. It was one of the bitter disappointments of my life and I am deeply grateful that, in recent years, we have again become friends.