Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  * * *

  The advantages of having our own warehouse became excitingly apparent in the autumn of 1984 when, surprisingly for such a small publisher, we found ourselves with two No. 1 bestsellers in the same month. Coping with that was a challenge for all of us, especially for Carole, but it more than made up for the many onerous aspects of the operation – and it certainly relieved pressure from the bank.

  It was around June of that year that I had a phone call from Gyles Brandreth. At that time, the multi-faceted and effervescent Gyles was famous for the colourful jumpers he wore for his regular appearances on breakfast television, and for both his fast talking and his fast-working mind. (Those jumpers were quickly shed when he later became an MP.) He also had a publishing business called Victorama, which was really an editorial operation, Gyles using his contacts and charm to bring in celebrity authors to work with his excellent editor, then looking for a publisher such as ourselves to buy the rights and publish the book. Thus it was that Gyles phoned to ask whether we would be interested in a book with Michael Caine called Not Many People Know That, which was basically an entertainingly presented trivia book of little-known and unusual facts. All royalties were to go to the National Playing Fields Association.

  Without a second’s hesitation I said yes, and a deal was struck. The reason I had reacted so decisively (even though it was late in the year to take on an autumn book) was that I had seen Peter Sellers on the Parkinson show imitating Caine saying, ‘Not many people know that’ and talking about Caine’s penchant for collecting eclectic information, so I knew exactly what Gyles was offering. Even so, at first it looked as though I had made a mistake, as we got a negative reaction from Smith’s and the other major outlets, and our reps found themselves struggling. The only positive was that the on-the-ball Ian Chapman, now MD of Simon & Schuster, but then in charge of Pan Books, bought the paperback rights for Pan, albeit for an extremely modest sum. However, our publicist, Cheryll Roberts, did a smart thing. She sent copies of the book to local radio stations around the country and suddenly snippets from it were being quoted by their presenters whenever there was a gap to fill in their programmes – and, best of all, that Not Many People Know That title was mentioned again and again, becoming a popular catchphrase. Suddenly we were flooded with orders.

  At more or less the same time, we launched another book, by the popular northern singer/writer/comedian Mike Harding. We had already published several of Mike’s books, and they had all done reasonably well, backed by the very popular one-man show he’d tour nationwide every autumn. Mike was fast-footed, very funny and had a strong and loyal following. With his new book, When the Martians Land in Huddersfield, something happened – and that something was an appearance on one of the main chat shows of the day, hosted by Russell Harty. Harty loved the book and led Mike into quoting more and more from it and showing on screen some of the funny drawings he’d done to accompany the text. As with Michael Caine’s book, we didn’t know what had hit us.

  The multi-talented Mike Harding, whose When the Martians Land in Huddersfield shot to No. 1.

  The orders piled up in their thousands for both books, which went quickly out of print. We put large reprints in hand, beseeching our printers to work wonders, and waited anxiously for more books to arrive. But even before they did, it became clear that still more copies were needed, and so, taking a deep breath, we placed further large print orders. We knew that the publishing tide can turn very quickly and that there wasn’t a moment to lose, so Carole and I piled the orders up on our dining room table, got out our calculators and started to allocate the reprints, arranging for direct deliveries to WH Smith (who’d now woken up to what was happening) and other main outlets and wholesalers. We’d also arranged for a goodly number of books to be delivered to our Clipstone Street office, and we were there with other members of staff when the boxes arrived at 8 p.m. Some of our reps were on hand too, helping us unload and filling their cars. We packed up books for the London shops, and arranged for them to be delivered by bike or car early the next morning. The other orders were dealt with at great speed by the warehouse, where Carole had laid on extra help.

  An amazing autumn – our books at No. 1 and No. 2 on the Sunday Times bestseller list.

  It was Operation Bestseller, and the result was that Mike Harding’s book went to No. 1 on the Sunday Times and other main bestseller lists, and Michael Caine’s book to No. 2 – and then they swapped places, staying there right through until Christmas. The speed of delivery and the fact that we were on top of the orders and in constant touch with our customers had made all the difference. Michael Caine was astonished, Mike Harding rejoiced with the Martians, and we went on to publish further books with them both. What’s more, whenever I got a call late in the summer from someone saying they had something really special to offer that needed to be brought out quickly, I’ve always taken the call. In the strange world of publishing, you just never know.

  20

  YOU’VE GOT A WHAT…!

  Alan Coren, for so many years our star author, had a live-wire cousin called Linda Agran. In fact Linda, whom we’d met socially on various occasions, was not just a live wire, but a creative one, and as a top TV producer had worked on such popular dramas as Minder, Poirot, London’s Burning and Jack Rosenthal’s The Knowledge. Linda had joined Euston Films in 1976 as a script executive working with Verity Lambert, and whenever we met she’d treat us to hilarious behind-the-scenes stories and I’d tell her she really ought to write them down. Eventually, to fob me off, she said I should meet her friend Maureen Lipman. Now that sounded like a very good idea, and the three of us met for lunch at a Greek restaurant opposite the Post Office Tower and just around the corner from our office. The two of them talked… and talked… and talked, while I sat in the middle of it all, pouring the wine and trying to order the next course, relishing what seemed like a comedy cabaret act. As I recall, Linda talked about how she used to get out of games at school, and Maureen about how a naked man had run past her car as she slowed down at a crossroads on a country lane. But maybe I’m adding my own surreal, wine-fuelled touch to the conversation.

  At that time, Maureen was writing entertaining articles for the popular women’s magazine Options, mostly drawn from the everyday adventures of an actress mum, and she thought these might form the basis for a book. Her suggested title was Every Night That Dawns – something that her mother Zelma used to say. She sent me a large batch of articles, and Liz and I went through them carefully, Liz marking where she thought they could be expanded or linked and cutting things that were dated or made them sound like topical articles. Maureen rose to the challenge, adding a great deal of new material (she’s a born writer and thinks at great speed), and so in the end we had an enticing book. It looked fresh and new and not a bit like a collection of articles, and it was very funny. But that title didn’t excite anyone, so Maureen suggested How Was It for You? – which did – and in typical Mo fashion she posed for a photograph sitting (apparently unclothed) in a Victorian bathtub with a chamber pot on her head… as any author would.

  We asked her to the office to meet and talk to our reps – about a dozen of them – which she did, keeping them all in fits of laughter for nearly an hour with anecdotes from the book – all, that is, except for one veteran rep, Harry Richley, who tended to doze off at a certain time in the afternoon, whoever was talking. In fact, I later discovered that the reps would take bets as to what time Harry would nod off. One thing one learns is that there is no fooling Maureen, and she noticed it at once, but being used to matinee audiences she focused on him and not only woke him up but had him laughing. A triumph – or so I thought, but that evening she phoned and said, ‘Never do that to me again.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I responded. ‘You were wonderful. The reps – even Harry – were bowled over and think we have a winner.’

  She made it quite clear she’d found having to talk about her book like that a daunting experience, but it was probably just first-night
nerves (it was her first book), and once she’d gone on radio and TV up and down the country answering the same questions, telling the same stories, she never looked back. At that time, the TV programme that publishers vied to get their authors on was Terry Wogan’s talk show, which always did wonders for sales. So we were naturally exultant when they invited Maureen to appear, and our publicist Cheryll and I eagerly accompanied her to the studios. Well, she certainly gave them their talk’s worth that night, sharp and funny and captivating both Wogan and his live audience as she rose to the occasion. The only trouble was, there was no mention of the book Maureen had gone on the show to promote, as she realised as soon as she came off, annoyed both with herself and with Wogan for not bringing it up. But he too was aware of it, and immediately invited her to come back the following week to talk about it – much to the producer’s consternation, since to have the same guest two weeks running was unusual, to say the least. But the die was cast, Maureen agreed to return, Terry kept his part of the bargain, and we all felt a lot better when, as she was doing a signing session in Leeds, there was a call from Carole in the office to say we’d just got an order for 10,000 copies from an enthusiastic Chris Rushby at Smith’s (those were the days!), and that the book was going to be on the Sunday Times bestseller list at the weekend. It was on that tour, at a Yorkshire Post literary lunch, that they put their fork in it by serving Maureen pork, which certainly added spice and crackling to Maureen’s speech. It was a mistake they never repeated! While driving back from that lunch, Maureen played me a tape of the very Jewish American comedian Jackie Mason, whose low, gravelly voice sounded, she said, just like Hugo Gryn, a rabbi we both knew and loved who was to become widely known through his regular appearances on the radio programme The Moral Maze.

  Jackie Mason was a revelation to me, as he was to the audience at the Royal Variety Show he appeared on (quite what the Queen made of his irreverent Jewish humour one can only imagine). He took London by storm, incidentally offending quite a few oversensitive Jewish souls with his routines, while delighting a great many others. Consequently, when I was offered a book by him through an American publisher, I grabbed it, and we timed publication to coincide with Mason’s next London visit. By that time, we’d been in contact, and I arranged to take him and his manager to lunch at the Garrick Club, which I’d recently joined (having been proposed by Robert Morley, who assured me it would do my career the world of good, ‘dear boy’). Anyway, in bounced Mason in a blue blazer, looking around him at the pictures and asking me where the originals were, fortunately in not too loud a voice. Then a tall, elegant, Savile Row-suited man walked in carrying a silver tray bearing glasses of champagne. ‘And what do you do?’ Mason asked jovially, going up to him. ‘Bugger all, really,’ came the reply. ‘I’m a member of the House of Lords.’ ‘Well, keep in touch, keep in touch,’ responded Mason, unfazed, and in we went to lunch.

  I was never comfortable at the Garrick, too shy to turn up by myself and sit at the long members’ table and talk to whoever happened to be next to me, and I always recoiled at having to take women guests into a different room for lunch (things have changed now, but at that time women were only allowed into the main dining room in the evening). Even the almost daily sight of Kingsley Amis, deep into his cups at the head of the table, surrounded by his cronies, was not compensation enough as far as I was concerned. You weren’t really supposed to talk business there, and when I once took John Simpson for lunch and he brought some maps to show me the area he planned to write about, we were politely leapt on. However, the atmosphere was very different the night Carole and I took Les Dawson and his young wife, Tracy, to dinner there. Les loved it, and everyone in the crowded dining room fell under his spell as he drank glass after glass of Beaumes de Venise and chatted to all and sundry, virtually performing a cabaret act. After they left, all the members there came over to tell me to be sure to put Les up for membership and they would support his candidacy – and I did, but sadly it wasn’t to be, as Les had a heart attack shortly afterwards which carried him away.

  Like Harry Secombe, Les loved to write and produced comic novels at great speed. Endlessly inventive, he had a flow of comic repartee that could throw even the great Michael Parkinson, who loved him. It took several books before we really got to know Les, but after that we always had lengthy dinners à quatre when he came to London, and he would work closely with our gifted editor Louise Dixon. And, of course, nobody played the piano like Les (and if you think it’s easy to play all those wrong notes on purpose the way he did, just try it!). Fittingly enough, his last book for us was an autobiography, No Tears for the Clown, and he and Tracy would bring their new-born daughter Charlotte to signing sessions. She was always an additional attraction.

  Roger Dixon’s cover photo for the incomparable Les Dawson’s autobiography, No Tears for the Clown.

  Les’s funeral, to which I went with Carole and Louise, was extraordinary, the whole of Lytham St Annes lining the streets as if a beloved monarch had died. But then I suppose he was a king of comedy. I resigned from the Garrick shortly afterwards, not because of Les, but because I just didn’t fit in. For all that, I do enjoy going there for lunch from time to time when a kind member invites me, and I know that for many it’s a convivial haven of friendship and bonhomie. It certainly was the night Les reigned there.

  * * *

  Maureen by now was not only an Olivier Award-winning actress, but a bestselling author too, and a second book, Something to Fall Back On, was swiftly on its way. The words had flowed easily and wittily enough, but the photo for the jacket was another matter, until Maureen decided that the ‘simple’ solution was to wear a floral dress, hat and shoes specially made out of the same material as her sitting room curtains, and then to drape herself on a matching chaise longue in front of those same curtains. Barry Cryer, never short of a bon mot, pronounced the last word on that: ‘A woman who dresses in her own curtains should pull herself together.’

  After you… Speaking, or trying to, with Maureen Lipman at the launch of her bestselling Something to Fall Back On.

  By now Carole and I had been drawn into the Lipman/Rosenthal family circle and had met her amazing mother Zelma (as much a star in her own way as Maureen, and a major character in Mo’s writing). We’d also met Adam and Amy, her super-talented children, and Jack, her husband. Everybody loved Jack – even, I imagine, Barbra Streisand, with whom he was working at the time. Co-writing the film Yentl with her was not an easy gig, and many were the stories he and Maureen told about her (see How Was It for You? for the hilarious description of one encounter which she was prompted to tell over and over again as she promoted the book). Jack was very much his own man, deceptively quiet and with a self-deprecating sense of humour that was underpinned by a sharp-eyed observation of the world around him, his northern and Jewish roots very much in evidence. Jack’s writing career had begun in the early days of Coronation Street, for which he wrote over a hundred episodes, and encompassed a number of TV comedy and drama series including London’s Burning. But it’s such classics as Bar Mitzvah Boy, The Evacuees, The Knowledge, Ready When You Are, Mr McGill, The Chain and Eskimo Day that place him in a class of his own.

  Maureen and Jack shared a warm and very special kind of humour which seemed to bind them in a unique way. Maureen’s stories of their courtship were both hilarious and endearing. I still laugh when I recall her account of the night she took Jack home to Hull to meet her parents. After dinner, Jack had gone up to the room he’d been allocated, leaving Maureen to gossip and catch up with her parents, until her tired father decided to leave the ladies to it, saying he’d sleep in Maureen’s room and she could move in with her mother for the night. All of which was fine until Jack crept into Maureen’s room in the middle of the night only to find himself climbing into bed with his future father-in-law!

  Maureen and Jack were great party-givers and generally there was a theme or a twist to them (one invitation enjoined guests to ‘Come as you were’; for
this, Maureen dressed as a waitress in a short black dress and pinny, and Jack as a sailor, complete with nautical hat). They had a close circle of friends we always met there, and often we’d end up singing round the upright piano in their living room while the versatile pianist-composer Denis King (one of the popular King Brothers vocal trio) did the honours. Occasionally, once the party had got going, Jack would appear in a side room with his violin, music stand and music and start to play old favourites such as ‘Goodnight, Irene’ and ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ (somehow this always made me think of Sherlock Holmes). At one party, the writer, broadcaster and tenor saxophonist Benny Green and his wife Toni were among the guests. It was Benny’s first outing since undergoing treatment for cancer and, knowing that he was coming, Julia McKenzie’s husband Jerry, who collected old instruments, had brought along a tenor sax. Benny started playing, whereupon Jack produced his violin and attempted to accompany him – reducing the assembled company to tears of laughter. The Lipman/Rosenthal parties were a show of their own.

  I was always prodding Jack to write an autobiography and whenever we were out together he would say he’d started – well, had written the first paragraph, anyway – and there it stayed over the years. It was an arresting enough paragraph, but he well knew that one paragraph does not a book make, and he was content for it to stay that way. It became a running joke until one evening, many years later, which I will return to. What wasn’t such a joke was the occasion when, after the four of us had enjoyed an Indian meal together in Soho, the car door slammed on Jack’s finger, prompting Carole to rush back into the restaurant to get a tomato – her patent cure – to squeeze on the wound, while Jack tried stoically not to show the pain he was in. ‘It worked,’ wrote Maureen, ‘and Jack could too!’ We laughed about that, but not until much later!