by Paul Daniels
I didn’t have to act. I spent the whole summer nauseous. I knew I could go up and down on roller-coasters, but I found I couldn’t go round and round and I got very sick. Unfortunately, there was no one else in the show that could do the job for them, so I was stuck with it and lived in constant fear of throwing up on stage all season.
My own spot hadn’t changed over many years of using simple, everyday household items, which I knew the audience could relate to. My act involved using a box of tissues, odd bits of rope, a couple of eggs, lemons and some walnuts. The cleaners threw my act out three times during the season thinking it was a load of old rubbish. Who am I to argue? I then had to go round Woolworth’s to buy my props again.
The other surprise was Monica. I wasn’t looking for a relationship but we hit it off straight away. Well, perhaps not straight away. I had taken to wearing all black at this time of my life. Black shoes, black socks, black trousers, black roll-neck and even (what a prat) black leather gloves all day long. To those who had been in the business for some time I must have looked a right wally. I thought I looked mysterious! Monica decided to take me down a peg or two and, in doing so, we became more than the best of friends. She also found me digs and generally looked after this showbusiness virgin.
By now, the shop had been sold but there had been a mistake in the transaction and somewhere along the line the stock had not been sold at the value it should have been. The stock was included in the sale price of the shop and I owed a lot of people a lot of money. The show at Newquay only paid me £35 a week and I was in a deep depression. It was Monica who telephoned everyone I owed and worked out repayment deals and, although it took a couple of years, she really sorted me out and put me back on my feet.
The show had comedy sketches. These were great. They were really mini plays with gags all the way through and were the theatrical equivalent of television’s sitcoms. I was in all of them but then I was written out of most and finished up in only one. More depression. I was obviously no good. Monica came to the rescue again.
‘You don’t know much about showbusiness, do you? You’re out because you’re funny. You can’t be funnier than the comedian.’
When, in my final sketch, my lines were dropped so that I had nothing to say, I turned my ‘silent’ policeman role into the campest, most effeminate copper of all time and still got laughs. Don’t you just love showbiz?
Newquay itself was a real culture shock. I had spent all of my life in the North and did not expect to find the weather so mild and the coastline so beautiful. Even the flowers in Newquay opened at least a month earlier than they did up North. I loved to go on long, early-morning walks to watch the seals as they dipped and dived through the waves. I actually felt a tinge of resentment towards my parents. Why did we live in the North when there was so much natural splendour in the South? Then, of course, I felt guilty about the resentment. On the other hand, are you like me? I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone wants to live in the Arctic Circle or in the shadow of a volcano or on an earthquake fracture line.
It was just after I started working in Newquay that I got a letter inviting me to come to an Opportunity Knocks audition. That was the major talent show on TV at the time and I had no idea how they had heard about me. All the letter said was that they had heard I was ‘different’.
The famous Hughie Green, who had enabled a lot of artistes to become television stars, presented this ITV networked show. The Skating Valentines had lent me a stretch lurex suit to wear so that I would look ‘professional’ but I never got into the gear. The whole affair was so badly organised that I just wore my jeans and sweatshirt. Note I had dropped the all-black gear.
The room was full of other hopefuls and one wall was stacked high with guitar amplifiers. A row of magicians in tailcoats had coo-coo-ing noises emanating from under their clothes. Having previously explained that I had only a few moments as I had to get back to the theatre to work, I went to the front of the queue with the letter that the production company had sent me. It seems that they needed some professional acts to fill out the programmes between the amateurs (or was it the other way around?) to get a cheaper show.
The receptionist, hassled about the utter confusion of several hundred acts, all desperate to be picked, wouldn’t listen to me, gave me a number and told me to return to the queue. Then I spotted the long table with Hughie Green sitting in the middle, with his assistants Doris and Len on either side. A very young girl was standing with her hands clasped in front of her, singing in an incredibly beautiful soprano voice. Having finished, Hughie called her over to the desk and, congratulating her on her superb voice, handed over his business card.
‘In the next 12 months,’ he instructed, ‘I want you to go out and sing for people, for up to now I think you have only sung at school?’
She nodded.
‘Well, my love, you are still a bit stiff and proper. When you have more experience of audiences, you will have learnt to relax. Then come back and see me.’
Next up was a guy who couldn’t sing to save his life, but he was beautifully dressed. It was awful, out of tune, out of tempo and the worst thing of all was that the singer thought he was wonderful. Hughie couldn’t stand more than two verses and stopped him in his tracks.
‘Excuse me, do you sing in the clubs?’
‘Yes, Mr Green, I do.’
‘Well, do showbusiness a favour and get out of it.’
Harsh words and the room was more than a bit stunned. Hughie was a hard, but fair man and he was right. This man should not have been taking other people’s money when he was so bad.
It was almost as if no one dared to go on next so I took the opportunity to walk to the middle of the floor and started my act. Hughie stopped me.
‘Who on earth are you?’
‘I have this letter, sir, and I’m short for time as I’m on stage tonight. Just let me show you what I do and I’ll be out of your way.’
As the panel watched my short collection of tricks, they laughed and clapped along the way. Four minutes later and I was preparing to leave when one of the panel said they liked what I did and I would be getting an invitation to be on the show.
True to their word, I received their letter a few days later, stating the date that I would be on the show and that I would come in second place. Fees and expenses were to be paid, and as it was one of Hughie’s special programmes for the forces, it was to be done on an aircraft carrier. Of course, with my army experiences on the aircraft carriers in Hong Kong, this was the perfect location for me.
What an eye-opener that show was for me. I got changed underneath an aeroplane. The make-up was done from a suitcase. I learned that television is not all that well organised. Opportunity Knocks was famous for the contraption at the end of each show that recorded the audience’s level of clapping and thus produced a studio winner. The ‘clapometer’, which occurred to me probably meant something completely different to the boys in the Navy but I didn’t do the gag, would go up and down on a sliding scale. I had always assumed it was some sort of electronic device. It turned out to be a long cardboard box with a slot in the side. The needle was attached at one end to a rubber bungee and at the other to a piece of string. The ‘engineer’ pulled the string and made the needle go to the numbers on the list supplied by the production company. As per my previous information, I came second.
The whole affair added nothing to my career other than experience, although for years afterwards, Hughie Green and Opportunity Knocks constantly claimed to have ‘discovered’ me, whereas I was paid to come second! The power of the media was also underlined when a lady in a sweet shop recognised me the following day. She was the only one who did. For a long time after that, I used to ask the audiences, ‘Put your hands up if you ever voted for anyone on Opportunity Knocks.’ For years nobody put their hands up and then, one night, a man did. I continued, ‘For somebody that you didn’t know …’ and his hand went down again. Was it all a fiddle? I don’t know.
What it did provide was a vehicle for new talent to be seen so I suppose that made it all worthwhile.
Later talent shows, to avoid having to pay Hughie Green royalties I guess, had panels of people criticising acts on air. I found that to be a sad way to show talent. If the acts were no good then why put them on in the first place. And they were being viewed by ‘judges’ who, in some cases, had no talent themselves and were watching the acts live, not on TV as we were, so they saw and felt a different performance. I wonder why they can’t just put new acts on television and build them up without having to resort to judging and voting?
Watching myself on Opportunity Knocks, I learnt how the sound that comes out of a television has nothing to do with what is happening in the arena of the show. A recording engineer sat there and rather than listening to the show, watched little meters. If a big burst of laughter sent the needles towards the red section, he would grab his little knob and turn it quickly down. If a gag got a small titter, he would turn it up. This was why television laughter always sounded so fake. This meant that while I was working in the aircraft carrier, I’d get a big laugh and wait for the laughter to die down before continuing. When I watched it on TV there were big silent gaps where the laughter had stopped because the man had turned his button down. It sounded odd. It was little observations like these that prepared me for television appearances to come. Don’t wait for the laughter to stop, keep going. Ken Dodd is a master at this.
Jackie and the lads came down and spent some time with me but Jackie and I lived apart and I spent the days with the lads. It’s a great place for children and I hated it when they had to go back North.
The season ended and I was back in the clubs and living with Monica. We lived in a small caravan, which I altered to make it a little more habitable. Looking back, I can’t believe that we both lived in a van that small, but we did. For a while it was in the garden behind the home of a bouncer from the Ba-Ba. He was also a professional wrestling match referee. These were not the sort of wrestling matches I had seen in Macau. These were the ones where big butch fellows pretend to knock each other about. Pretend? Well, all I know is that our landlord would not be able to referee one of the later bouts because it was the one featuring the Masked Mauler. The referee was the Masked Mauler who ‘would only remove his mask when he was defeated’. He was never defeated.
Peter Casson was too busy to be my manager and so I moved on to another agent called Bob who worked for a company called Artists Management. This Doncaster-based group contained a couple of directors, one of whom was Mervyn O’Horan. More of him later.
A bit later we moved the caravan to Cawthorne, on a farm. I was amazed at how little work farmers did. They did have to get up early to milk the cows but then there wasn’t much to do until it was time to milk them again. They just seemed to potter around doing odd jobs. Those early starts used to upset me because we used to work very late. Then we would drive home through the night rather than spend money on digs. One of the farmers would come over and hammer on the door with the early post. Unknown to the farmer, I came home late one night, unloaded the amplifier and the speakers and did a little work. The next morning, very early as usual, he came with the post only to discover a new doorbell right in the middle of the small caravan door. He pressed the doorbell, which activated the tape, which was connected to the amplifier, which was connected to the huge speakers lying under the van. Big Ben BOOMED out across the countryside and I would have loved to have been awake in time to watch him. He never delivered early post again.
The closest we ever got to owning a less temporary residence was when I bought a burnt-out mobile home which I then restored. I put a lot of time and effort into renovating the metal hulk and was quite pleased with the result, but had to leave it behind for several weeks when Monica and I went away for a season. Upon our return, we heard a strange, humming and buzzing noise coming from within. I carefully opened the door, not knowing what to expect and was pushed back with the force of huge bluebottles trying to escape. The whole interior was covered; it was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling flies. I went down to the local shopkeeper and bought his whole stock of fly killer, which I then sprayed through a hole in the door. Two days later and I had to go back in and shovel the corpses out, selling the home soon afterwards.
We usually tried to book ourselves out together into the clubs. Monica would sing and I would do the comedy magic and so provide a whole evening’s entertainment between us whenever we could. That couldn’t happen all the time, of course, and over the coming years, as I ‘took off ’ we drifted apart. In the meantime, we had a wonderful time and I remember Monica with nothing but fondness. Years later, when I hadn’t seen her for a very long time and I was married to Debbie, she turned up on my doorstep and, when I opened the door I didn’t recognise her for the first few seconds. Don’t hate me for that.
Ali Bongo, my good friend and brilliant magical adviser, tells a story of when he was at a party with David Nixon. David was the ‘famous-television-magician-before-me’ person.
Apparently, David called Ali over and, over the top of his glass and without moving his lips as he smiled around the room, said ‘Ali, there’s a woman in a red dress in the corner who keeps smiling at me. Should I know her?’ Well, we’ve all done it, haven’t we? We’ve tried to look around the room casually without looking at anyone in particular to find out who a friend is talking about? Ali did just that, even pausing, smiling and raising his glass to the lady in question. Then he turned back to David.
‘Yes, you should really … she was your first wife.’
Against Ali himself, at another party, he was deep in conversation with a young woman whom he knew he should know, but he could not recall where he had met her. It wasn’t until her husband, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, came over and said that it was time to go that the thunderstruck Ali realised he had been talking to the famous ‘Fergie’.
The clubs continued to offer the most readily available source of work. Trevor, who had by this time left the teaching profession owing to the bureaucracy, had gone back into the clubs as a Musical Director. A brilliant backing musician, Trevor was popular with acts because of his ability to sight-read their music quickly and play it with great feeling.
On one occasion, I answered the phone to Trevor, who asked if I would come and appear at the opening ceremony of a new club he was going to work in as resident MD. Having made a bit of a name for myself in the clubs, they had asked Trevor if he could get me, as I was a ‘bit of a draw’.
The new venue was very impressive if not completely practical for its true use. It had been designed with an entire wall made out of windows, which made it impossible to provide the right sort of atmosphere for daytime or early evening shows. The band was split in two, with the organist, Trevor and the drummer facing each other across the full width of the stage, a very difficult layout for musicians to work in.
Seeing the daylight conditions, I knew it would be hard work. Just before I went on, the Concert Chairman appeared backstage to check that I was ready. Giving him the thumbs up, he told me that he had one short announcement to make and then I would be on. Even though I had enjoyed the luxury of a resident season where the audience had come to see me, my faith in working the clubs remained undaunted, but I was always ready for any unforeseen eventuality. When I heard the announcement that followed, I froze on the spot. In what follows, the name has been changed, not to protect the innocent, but because I can’t remember it.
‘Now then, now then, give order, please!’ The clink and clatter of the glasses and the excited shouting of the crowd subsided at the sound of the Chairman’s voice.
‘Now you all know Jack Higginbottom.’
A deathly hush fell over the room.
‘As you all know, this is the first day of the new club,’ he continued in his broad Northern tones. ‘And as you all know, it would not exist if it hadn’t been for Jack, our beloved president. It was Jack, who only a few years ago, went to the b
reweries, got the money, arranged for the architect and got the plans for this fantastic building we are now in.’
I listened from the side of the stage as the pin-drop quiet continued as his audience sat in silence, wondering what was coming. Somehow, I knew.
‘It was Jack who also organised us to have raffles and keep kitties going so that we could afford bigger and better equipment. It was Jack who arranged fund-raising outings and coffee mornings for the women. And, as you all know, Jack took sick about nine months ago.’
‘Oh no!’ I groaned from behind the curtains. Trevor, who loves it when I’m in trouble, started to laugh. The Concert Chairman continued. ‘So, as you all know, Jack never saw this building as he got more and more sick and I’ve got some really bad news for you,’ he said. ‘I have just been informed that on this day of the grand opening of our new club, Jack Higginbottom passed away this morning.’
Men are now crying. Women are sobbing.
‘It is normal in this club, that when a member passes away, we have two minutes’ silence. But for Jack, we’re going to ‘ave three.’
I am now sat on a chair at the back of the stage with my head in my hands. Trevor is in hysterics. The architect has thoughtfully provided the club with a hard floor and plastic chairs that squeak and bang as the whole audience stands to attention. For three solid minutes, all I could hear was people crying.
At the end of which: ‘Thank you. Paul Daniels will now entertain you,’ and he walked off.
The curtains opened to the sound of people sitting down, talking about the passing of their friend, all interspersed by sobbing. I was still sitting with my head in my hands but I stood up and walked very, very slowly downstage to the microphone, thrust my hands in my pockets and spoke.
‘I never knew Jack Higginbottom.’
At the sound of the name the room fell silent.
‘But if he helped to build this place, he must have been an extraordinary fella. He wouldn’t want us not to enjoy it, or sit here crying over his memory. He would want us to make the most of what he has achieved here. So, I’m not doing this show for you today, I’m doing this show for Jack Higginbottom!’
