by Paul Daniels
Not only was I left with a bad taste in my mouth, but a hole in my pocket, for I had now begun to rely on the extra money the shows were bringing in. No matter how much you earn, your expenses increase to match the income. Glancing through my address book at the names of several agents I had bumped into over the last two years, I telephoned Joe Vipond, a Middlesbrough agent. Explaining my predicament and tentatively enquiring whether there was a possibility of any work in the next few weeks, he replied, ‘How about tomorrow night?’
Astounded, I accepted the gig for more money than I had received with the concert party. From this moment on, I got so much regular work on higher fees that I soon put the grocery shop on the market, convinced that I was now able to support the family single-handed.
The reply to my offer of a sale came in the form of a large Indian family who arrived on my doorstep the next day.
‘Excuse me, sir? Most important question: is it right you are selling the shop?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well now, the most important question: can we look round?’
‘Yes, of course.’ I watched as all his relatives trundled courteously around from potatoes to plums.
‘Well now, the most important question: can we be selling other things beside this?’
‘I presume so, it’s not for me to say. The local council will no doubt advise.’
‘So, the most important question: can I be opening longer hours than you?’
‘I’m sure that’s fine,’ I said, becoming more bewildered at the friendly interrogation by the moment.
‘Well then, most important question: how much?’
Explaining that the price should include the shop with the stock, the rates and the licence on top, I disclosed my figure.
‘One moment please,’ he smiled, as he disappeared out of the door, returning moments later with a suitcase.
‘Here you are, sir,’ he beamed, as he plonked the case on my little counter and opened it to reveal several stacks of crisp notes. ‘Goodbye.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I said slightly stunned.
‘You sell shop, I want to buy and here is money, goodbye.’
I explained that in England it was important to get solicitors and agents involved but his excuse was that they cost money and we didn’t need them anyway, we had struck a deal on our own. For the life of me I couldn’t think why not, but I persuaded him that I had to do it legally and it was only a matter of weeks before our little corner shop had a new manager and a new identity.
The bus-cum-mobile shop had to go as well. Lynn and I had built up a good relationship with most of our customers and it was a bit of a sad day when we made the last tour. Mind you, it was not all sadness. In Dormanstown we had one lady who’d clamber aboard and used to point at everything with a long, bony finger. ‘How much is that?’ and ‘How much is that?’ and ‘How much is that?’ Whenever she had got off the bus in the past Lynn and I would do ‘parrot’ impressions as we drove away: ‘How much is that? Who’s a naughty boy?’ It was a regular routine. The last day she climbed up and went into her regular routine. It just so happened that we had some of those cream doughnuts with the hole in the middle on the counter. As she pointed at them and started to ask ‘How much …’ I upped with one of the doughnuts and jammed it on to her pointing digit. As she gaped, Lynn and I were rolling about laughing. I told her that one was free.
At the next estate, a lady came on board who, particularly when the bus was full, would say that something was much cheaper on Andy’s bus. He was our ‘competition’ and what she was saying just wasn’t true. I pointed out that she should go and shop on Andy’s but she never did. We used to sell some lovely custard tarts. About 6in round they were, and about 2in deep. Lovely. She bought one. She stood there as I scooped up the tart with my right hand, careful not to break the light pastry that surrounded the custard. My left hand flicked open the white paper bag. ‘In the bag or in your face?’ I asked. Without moving (silly girl) she started to say, ‘You wouldn’t d…’ and she had a face full of custard. Lynn wet herself. Luckily, the woman laughed as well and I said that I would run her to the end of the road where she lived. As I set off she came alongside me in the bus holding a custard tart in her hand. Until this moment in my life I had never laughed at slapstick comedy. I started to laugh so much that I could hardly control the bus. I knew that when I stopped I would get it. I drove slower but eventually got there. I stopped. I got it. Getting a custard pie in your face is one of the funniest things that can happen to you. Don’t believe me? Go on, bake some. Have a party!
We bought a new terraced house with a garden in South Terrace, still in South Bank. Jackie and the boys moved in. So did I, but not for very long. Jackie fell pregnant with Gary and he was born in 1969. I missed so much of his growing time, diving home whenever possible to see him and Paul and Martin. The decision to turn full time pro meant that I dared not turn down any job that came my way.
With no shops to run I was now free to move anywhere within clubland and I did so. My first full week as a pro was with a rock ‘n’ roll star called Vince Eager. Over hundreds of performances my act had sorted itself out into, dare I say it, a unique and entertaining style. The manner in which the tricks were delivered was so very different that I suppose I was the equivalent of the alternative comedians that came along later.
That first week with Vince we were in South Wales and I think that Mountain Ash Conservative Club was the first gig. I remember that because Mountain Ash had the cleanest public toilets I had ever seen. Things like that leave an impression on a travelling man.
On one of the gigs that week the backing was, as usual, organ and drums. The problem in most clubs was that the musicians could not read music. The COMMITTEE who listened to them as they played their repertoire of learnt-by-ear music, magnificently pounding out the ‘Dam Busters March’ and the like, would have nothing bad said about their band because THEY employed them. ‘The finest in the Valleys’ or, in the North, ‘You’ll get none better, Ah’ll tell you that, none better.’
At this Welsh venue, Vince had talked the ‘dots’ (music) through with the ‘musicians’ and on they went. There was a balcony and I went up there to watch the spot. As soon as they had started it was obvious that the organist had no idea what was going on. Vince decided after the first song to lose the organist and go ahead by accompanying himself on the guitar and just use the drummer. The organist took the hump at this and went off stage to the right. The second number started and slowly, ever so slowly, the right-hand curtain started to close. It was obvious to everyone except Vince that someone was pulling the cloth nearer and nearer to the organ. A hand came out and picked up the cigarette that had been left burning on the end of the keyboard and it and the curtain went back to the right. Clouds of smoke came out from the wings where the organist was obviously doing his impression of the famous cigar advertisement.
The song finished and I should explain that most organs had a squat oblong freestanding speaker. Not this one. It had a tall, upright speaker between the organ and the drums and as Vince was doing his link to the next song, the drummer shuffled in a crablike movement sideways behind the tall speaker. His bum suddenly appeared on the right side of the speaker as he bent down and, when he straightened up, the bottom of a pint glass appeared on the left side as it described an arc in the air as the drummer got a drink. He bent over again (we could see his bum) and then he appeared in the same peculiar, legs-bent-facing-the-audience-crab-like-movement back to his drum stool.
The next number was heavy rock ‘n’ roll and the drummer laid into it. Suddenly, his head started twitching to his right as he looked into the wings and he also kept gesturing with his head to his bass drum. Nobody was listening to or watching Vince. We were totally hooked on the pantomime going on behind him, particularly when, with fag dangling from the corner of his mouth, the organist appeared on his hands and knees, crawled behind the organ, crossed behind the speaker and knelt sidewa
ys in front of the drumkit, holding the drum with his hands to stop it ‘crawling’ forward. As Vince rocked he stayed there, nodding and smiling at the audience who were failing about. Vince’s face was a picture when he saw him. I don’t know what was said but the kneeling drum holder left in an even bigger huff than before.
Vince had a manager who took me under his wing from his office inYork. He went to Rowntree’s and got them to sponsor the printing of a brochure for me. They said they would as I featured Polo mints in my act every night. Someone in the audience would lend me some money in exchange for a packet of Polo mints and, having checked the number of his note, would find it later in the hole in the middle of the mints. I also did a routine where the mints linked together, chain like, so the brochure was made very cleverly with the mints separate on my hand and when you unfolded the paper they had joined together. You will probably find this hard to believe but I am a collector’s item. There are people in the world who collect anything to do with me and they search diligently for these brochures. The reason they are so eminently collectable is that not many of them were sent out.
Something else had happened that shocked me into the full realisation of what I was up to with women. In the midst of travelling the clubs, and the haze and fog surrounding the break-up of my marriage, a blinding awareness had come in the middle of making love to a girl in the back of a car. I had realised that I wasn’t actually enjoying it; I was just doing it for the sake of it. I remember I actually apologised to the girl and drove her home. A few years later, on a long train journey, I started to doodle the names of the girls I had made love to in my ‘mad’ years. I got past 300 and gave up. Nowadays, that would have been a suicide mission.
From that moment on, I was very choosy about my relationships. Yet there were still a couple of times when I was on the road and intensely lonely when I tried paying for a prostitute but found I couldn’t follow it through. It was all so sordid and dirty and twice I just walked away from it without ‘getting my money’s worth’. I’d never do that again. Many years later, I was accosted by a pro near King’s Cross station in London. Debbie had only just that minute left me to walk across to her car when a very young cockney girl in a full-length coat asked whether I was looking for a good time.
I laughed because nothing was further from my mind and pointed out that my wife might object and pointed to her. The penny dropped and the young girl said, ‘’Ere. You’re ’im off the telly, aincha?’
I agreed that I was ‘im.
‘Give us your autograph, dahlin’, for me mum.’
‘Sure,’ says I. ‘Have you got a pen?’
‘You gotta be kiddin’,’ she said, opening her coat. ‘Where would I keep a pen?’
She was starkers. I didn’t say the obvious!
Early on in the never-ending cycle of gigs, I met one of the greatest stage hypnotists I had ever seen, Peter Casson, who became my manager. I never had any problems with Peter, although he had the strange hobby of suing everyone and was always in court representing himself in some case or other. We met because I got a week at the Club Ba-Ba at Barnsley and the Club Ki-Ki at Kirk Sandall and he owned them. I learnt a really big lesson on my first night at the Ba-Ba. I didn’t think that I had gone down very well at all and I fully understood the large sign that Peter had put up backstage: ‘Will all Artistes please refrain from asking the audience whether they are having a good time or enjoying themselves as the lack of response is invariably embarrassing to both parties.’
As soon as I came off stage, the compere said that I was one of the funniest men ever to appear in the club. I said I didn’t think so and he said that the only thing I ought to do is slow up. Around Barnsley, the rhythm of speech is much slower than in the north-east and I ought to give them more time to get used to the sound of my voice before getting faster towards the end of the act. Great advice. Fabulous advice. From then on I did that, and I also learnt to clip my words in Scotland and take my voice up a little at the end of the sentences in Wales. It’s not making fun of anyone, it’s enabling them to be able to ‘hear’ me better. Where this tip really came in handy was years later when I appeared in Las Vegas.
That experience was still a long way away. I still had a lot more to learn.
CHAPTER 8
FIGHTING DEATH IN THE CLUBS
The international space-race began in earnest when American President Kennedy challenged the USSR to be the first nation to place a man on the moon. Managing to launch the first cosmonaut in 1961, the smiles on the faces of the jubilant Russians soon faded when the USA followed eight years later with the first human landing on the moon. The Apollo command module touched down on 21 July 1969 with Neil Armstrong making his ‘giant leap for mankind’.
So turning 30 was a significant time for me, not for all the commonly depressing ‘Oh my God, my youth is over’ reasons, but because I was at last a full-time professional entertainer. Well, I hoped I entertained ‘em. Looking back, I suppose it was an inevitable journey given that all I did in my spare time was magic, magic, magic. Plus my kind of entertaining with magic was different, thanks to Bruce Forsyth, although he didn’t know it. I treated the audience as though they were at a party. I would be cheeky to them, they could be cheeky to me and together we had fun. There was a particular market for this, as no one else in the country presented magic in the way that I did and I enjoyed the audience’s enjoyment.
Although the applause felt good, it was not the reason I did the job, I just enjoyed being on stage. Years later, the best description of this came from Voronin, who was the artistic director of a theatre in Kiev. In his clipped English and struggling to find the right words, he said, ‘Paul, I lorv to vatch you in the stage. It is liking vatching the fish in the water.’ He was right, I am very much at home when the stage lights go on. And any performer savours the nice things people say, it protects you from the critics’ cruelty. Lord Delfont once said that I had the ability to turn the Opera House in Blackpool, which seats over 3,000, into a living room. Isn’t that nice? Thank you, Bernie.
The reason I had decided to turn full-time professional was because I had an offer of a summer season show at the Cosy Nook Theatre in Newquay, Cornwall. I had more than enough club dates in the diary and I thought the summer season would carry me through until the autumn and by then I would have picked up more dates.
With all the showbusiness work that was coming in, it was increasingly difficult to get home. In fact, home didn’t feel like it belonged to me any more, merely a place where my three sons, Paul, Martin and Gary, stayed with their mum. I visited them as often as I could and they were well loved by Jackie and myself, but our marriage had now drifted so far apart that we had to face the truth that it really was over between us. Now we prepared to cut the final cords that tied us.
On the last day that I said goodbye to Jackie and the family, I had more than a lump in my throat. Admitting it was over was the hardest thing of all. Of course, I would see them all again and again, particularly the boys on a regular basis, but even though Jackie and I were not happy together, somewhere deep inside I still wished it wasn’t happening.
It took the most enormous effort for me to leave the house and the kids behind and I tried to hang on to myself and not show the lads how upset I was. As I got into the car, I couldn’t hold back any longer and I drove around the corner only to stop a few hundred yards later as the tears flowed. Sitting alone in the car, I cried my eyes out and it took some while before I composed myself enough to drive away safely. That happened every time I visited in the years to come. I really missed those lads.
It would have been miserable for the boys if we had stayed together, as they would have been subjected to us rowing all the time. I also had a belief that I could earn more money ‘on the road’, although for the first couple of years I frequently slept in the back of my car to save on digs money so that I could send more home. It was several years before I stopped living out of a suitcase and found a permanent home I coul
d really call my own.
So it was the failure of the marriage that drove me into showbusiness and not, as in many other cases, showbusiness that ruined the marriage. It was at exactly the same time that I closed the door on my marriage, the door opened with the summer that now lay before me.
The billing for the theatre, neatly built on the side of the promenade, included the singer Monica Robbins, two comedians, Don Mundy and Alan Mills, a high-speed roller-skating act called The Skating Valentines and me. Casson was a great believer in old-style variety and insisted that we did four different shows a week, with a complete change the following week as well. He thought that holidaymakers would come to the theatre more than once during their two-week break. They didn’t, but the show was very successful.
I also had to present ‘Uncle Paul’s Children’s Showtime’ on several afternoons as well as the evening performances. It depended whether it rained or not.
I got a shock when I joined the production. In the world of the amateur you rehearse all year and do a week. The ‘pros’ rehearse a week and do a year! Well, a season. The difference is that everybody arrives knowing their acts and their requirements so well that the only thing you have to learn are the links. In this show I was also in the comedy sketches, behind Monica with the other guys singing the backing and working as a stooge for The Skating Valentines.
‘You just walk across at this moment in the act and, as you are walking, we’ll both pick you up under your arms and whiz you round,’ they nonchalantly explained. ‘As you are going around you climb to the top of us looking as though you are trying to get off. Just make sure you don’t look down, or out, but that you just keep your focus on one of us. Then you won’t get dizzy. But when you do get off, act dizzy as it will get us all a big laugh.’
