by Paul Daniels
I put up all sorts of arguments. He would have none of them. ‘Everyone thinks they need all the money they earn but there are a lot of people living on a lot less than you. You can do without the 10 per cent and one day, in some years’ time, you will look into your bankbook and think, “I’m rich.” What you also have to remember is that much more truthful than the old adage of “money attracts money”, is the adage that “the confidence of having money, attracts money”.’
I started to save. Try it, believe me, it really works. Just a couple of years ago I read a book from America called the Wealthy Barber, and Chapter Two was devoted to exactly this principle.
As I said, on the Bentine show I met a nice girl called Melody and we lived together, on and off, for the next two years. It was actually less like ‘living’ together and more like ‘moving’ together, as I still had no permanent home.
It was while I was living with Melody in Kenton that child stars Lena Zavaroni and Bonnie Langford burst on to the scene. Suddenly, showbusiness was very young. I looked at them and thought that there was no way I was going to make it now – showbusiness had become so young and I was past 30!
My hairline was receding and one day when I expressed my fears at a dinner party, a little Jewish fellow sitting opposite whispered, ‘Why don’t you wear a wig like me?’
I was gob-smacked. Thinking that I would always easily spot a toupee, I leaned closer, looking for a ‘join’. This fellow’s hairpiece looked real, not a hint of a wig. Offering to make me one, he explained how they are often made far too thick to look real. Using less hair makes the wig look real. This would do me the world of good, he insisted.
The following week, he delivered his masterpiece and I was very impressed. Initially though, rather than making me feel self-assured, it had the opposite effect. In fact, I felt pretty insecure wearing what felt like a piece of carpet on my nut and I was sure everybody would notice. Deciding to give it a go, I took it out for a test drive. While visiting my sons in the North, I took the wig for a walk on Redcar beach where the northeast wind howls most days of the year and I thought this was the perfect place to give my new top a spin. Walking at a 45° angle against the vicious gales I was amazed when it didn’t blow off. My head nearly did, but the matting stayed firmly in place.
I became very fond of my new-found youth and clipping it to my head each day became as regular as brushing my teeth. It also kept me warm in the winter! Replacing it every six months was a necessity as the real hair began to go gingery after a while. My cousin Bob, naturally more ginger than me, used to get my hand-me-downs!
The first time I wore it on stage was at my beloved Batley Variety Club, and a volunteer on stage that night announced he was a hairdresser. I couldn’t resist it. Unfastening the piece from my head, I whisked it off, handed it to him and said, ‘Well, cut that then!’ It got a roar from the audience.
The following night I had yet another opportunity when an audience member announced that he worked in the furniture business, for a company called Wigfalls. Off it came again and fell to the ground, symbolising a live logo for his company. I’ll do anything to make people laugh.
I wore a wig for several years until the Sun newspaper did an interview with a wig-maker in London who revealed his list of clients. Suddenly, after years of not being noticed, I was told I wore the most obvious wig around. Every year, when newspapers haven’t got any news, they run wig stories. I still get mentioned for the wig and even I can’t remember it. As the years went by, I started to ease it back and have it thinner, until one day I took it off altogether and nobody noticed. I would sit at home watching Spitting Image poke fun at my wig, knowing that I hadn’t worn one for six months.
Madame Tussaud’s, the great waxworks museum, sculpted three models of me from a special photo session where I stood on a rotating platform as the camera clicked away. At the press call, one of the reporters asked if I was going to donate one of my wigs.
‘I don’t wear a wig,’ I replied.
Chaos reigned as cameramen climbed ladders to try and take pictures of the top of my head. The next day, several of the tabloids proudly announced on their front pages the headline: PAUL DANIELS NO LONGER WEARS WIG!
This made me realise how ‘intelligent’ some of the press in this country are. This type of ‘in-depth’ reporting of similar incidents is beyond my understanding and comprehension. With the startling news of my wigless state on the front, page 5 contained the story that Chernobyl, the Russian nuclear power station, had just blown up. Where is the sense of priority here?
Incidentally, we haven’t taken a newspaper in our house for years. Debbie and I have read so much about us that is pure fabrication, or altered to imply things that we haven’t said, that we find it impossible to believe what they write about other people. If they go to that much trouble to alter stories about a man who does card tricks, how can I believe them when they write about important people? The press say that they should have freedom. Why only them? They say that anyone in the public eye should be open to public scrutiny and I agree with them. When I, or anyone else, is performing in public, whether it be on television or theatre, cabaret or opening a shop, by all means the press should have the right to ‘cover’ the story and, if that is their wish, criticise the ‘performance’.
On the other hand, why should they be allowed to ‘cover’ my private life without my permission? If someone breaks into my home tonight I can phone the police and have them arrested. If a journalist decided to break into my private life and expose it, when I have committed no crime, there is no recourse. By anyone’s standards, surely that is an invasion of human rights.
We have a free press. We do not have a truthful one.
Melody and I stayed together for the next two years as I toured the clubs once more. The problem was that I was occasionally still seeing Monica and I was in a real quandary as to which one I wanted to be with. Many an evening I had to eat two dinners as I flitted from one to the other. Melody and I split up when she went to Canada to dance. She was away for two weeks and I knew that she wanted several alterations to the flat in Kenton. I built wardrobes and did, even though I say so myself, a marvellously modern paint job in the bathroom. I worked day and night to get it finished then, together with Bonnie and Clyde, our two Pekinese dogs, I went off to meet her at the airport. As she got off the plane with another man, she said, ‘didn’t you get my letter?’ I gave her the dogs’ leads and ran to the car, drove like the wind to Kenton, grabbed all my stuff and then drove out to ask Jack Sharp if I could stay with him. I told him the story and he laughed like hell. He still asks whether I have seen ‘Wardrobes’. I did see her once or twice after that, but it was all over and we are still friends who write from time to time.
These years were to lead to the most significant summer season in Guernsey where I finally decided to turn SHOWbusiness into showBUSINESS. I was top-of-the-bill now, by virtue of the fact that I was very well known in clubland and had won a lot of comedy awards. Maybe I could move up the ladder, and for that you needed a plan.
During the previous Bentine season, a thought had constantly niggled away at me. Michael was on a lot of money a week and yet he wasn’t the right man for the job. He wasn’t comfortable with the season and left early.
I took over the top spot but I don’t remember getting his money! Had he been placed in the right environment, I know he would have ‘done a storm’. The thing was, he was paid a lot more money, because he was a lot more famous. I used my bonce and worked out that he was famous because he was on television and, more importantly, he was on regularly.
Telephoning Artists Management, I asked if Mervyn O’Horan could come over to Guernsey and see me. I was a holiday golfer by this time, never very good and I still play that way, and when Mervyn arrived we immediately set to on one of the local courses. We got to a short hole that had to be played off a very high plateau down on to a green below which was surrounded by ferns. This meant you had to be accurate. We
were both level on scores and when Mervyn embarked on his back swing, I casually said, ‘I’m leaving your office.’
He lost the ball and, being a Yorkshireman, has never really forgiven me for that.
I was a good act and a good earner for the agency and they had never had a complaint. This was bad news for Mervyn.
‘Why are you leaving?’ questioned a frowning Mervyn.
‘Because there has to be something better than what I’m doing. All I do most of the year, week in and week out, is one-night stands in working men’s clubs. I bet you that if I was to phone the office now, that the next eight weeks after I finish here will be Sunderland, South Wales, Doncaster and Sheffield.’
We made the call to prove my point and that is exactly what had been booked for me. Mervyn took my point and promised to talk to others at the office about how I felt.
From that moment on, Mervyn became my personal manager. This man was to become much more than that, my good friend, for the next 30 years and he still is. True to his word, Mervyn discussed the problem with a guy called Howard Huntridge, now a good friend but a heck of a hustler, who went straight to the BBC. It took Howard a lot of time and patience to make contact with the talent scout for BBC Light Entertainment who was responsible for getting new acts on television. Finally arranging the meeting, he told the man about an act called Paul Daniels and the rest is history. Well, almost!
CHAPTER 9
MAGICIAN ON FIRE
The sounds of the Seventies arrived with the super-stardom of Abba, Queen, Elton John and David Bowie. Punk rock and disco-fever spawned the Sex Pistols and John Travolta, and in the same year that the Bee Gees’ soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever tops the charts.
One of my dreams was always to perform at Batley Variety Club, a new, high-tech venue, and even though it was a nightclub it really was the Palladium of the North. Batley was the biggest and the best of several huge venues that had become wonderful places to work; the audiences were looked after, relaxed and eager to be entertained. I got my chance during a winter of cancellations when everybody was falling down with ‘flu except me. Dashing from one club to another on snow and ice, with only minutes to spare, I became an expert on driving safely in bad conditions. As I came off stage at the Aquarius Club in Chesterfield, I was asked whether I would ‘double’ up later at Batley. Would I? I was in the car in a flash, driving up the M1 in the snowed-over fast lane. I arrived late, of course, and had a very quick word with the orchestra leader. No time for music to be studied, all I did was ask him to play me on, wait a while and then have the whole band give a ‘taa-daah!’ when I dropped all the cards in my hands into a box. Off he went.
Batley Variety Club was the best. They had their own Stage Manager, a gentleman from the older world of theatre, who checked you over before you went on. Just as I was about to enter, he noticed a cotton thread on my jacket and tried to pull it off. Mistake! It was tied to my ear and that hurt. Magicians move in mysterious ways and that was part of a trick. He told me they had an apron stage and that I would walk out around the outside of the curtains as they opened. For the first time ever, my act box was placed on-stage without my checking it. The dressing rooms were really good. I felt that I had arrived.
When I walked on stage the volume of the applause hit me and stopped me in my tracks. I had never seen a room so well appointed for cabaret performance. You were the focal point of the sound of the applause from the audience. Someone must have gone to Las Vegas and copied the design. The act got under way and I dropped all the cards into the box. Instead of the band playing a loud chord to raise the applause, the whole orchestra stood up, waved their hands in the air and shouted ‘taa-daah!’ I fell about laughing. I was down to do 30 minutes and, thanks once again to the clock in the box, exactly that time later I walked off feeling as if I owned the place. I played Batley many times after that, both as a support and as the feature attraction, but I can still feel the thrill of that first time.
Howard Huntridge, now starting to arrange for the BBC talent scout to see me, telephoned the Corrigan family who owned Batley Variety Club. It was the best and most reliable place in the country to see me work and Howard wanted to know if there was a free gap in their diary. There wasn’t, but the Corrigans, enthusiastic to help, offered to squeeze me in anyway. A few further arrangements by telephone and I was told that the ‘man from the BBC’ would be coming to see me work. Come to think of it, I wonder why television companies don’t employ anyone to talent search any more? I know they do if they are producing a talent show, but this man found acts and placed them into suitable shows in the schedules.
There was one problem. I was finishing Guernsey on the Saturday night and my Batley BBC audition was to be on the very next Sunday night. It was a tight schedule, but I was confident I could do it. Knowing that this was to be my big chance, I’d packed my car on the previous Wednesday and sent it on to the ferry, ready to meet me in Southampton. My car was my hotel, my dressing room and my attic. I lived in that vehicle and managed to squeeze my entire life’s chattels inside the metal shell with a mixture of art, expertise and sheer luck. Packing my car so well, any door could be opened and nothing would move, it was that solid. I even left an oblong, letterbox-shaped hole in the pile of objects on the passenger seat, so that I could look through it and see if anything was coming from the left. The final performance in Guernsey was full of the usual last-night tomfoolery. We filled Lee Clark’s clarinet with talcum powder so that when it was blown, he was suddenly surrounded by a cloud of fragrant dust that got everywhere. In the interval and in front of the audience, I also taped his piano keys together along the edge so that they wouldn’t be noticed. When he hit the chord for his big closing number every key went down. He couldn’t see the tape, so he gradually stripped the piano down to find the problem.
The gag that was played on me centred on the fact that every night I threw three pieces of rope out into the audience and then asked for volunteers with rope to come on to the stage. Unbeknown to me, the cast had given every member of the audience a piece of rope, so that when I gave the order, the whole auditorium would stand up and walk forward. Unknown to the cast, I had changed my entire act so the gag never happened.
This was the happiest season I ever did. Every act clicked with the punters, the hoteliers and with each other. The show closed and, as we took our bows, half of the audience, who were made up of the island’s hoteliers, came forward to give us flowers, gifts, wine and chocolates. Apparently, they had been so impressed with the value and quality of the show they wanted to make their appreciation clear.
The after-show party was fun. Knowing that we would not be allowed to take the stuff back into the UK, we drank all the booze (yes, even me!), scoffed all the chocolates (yes, especially me!) and put flowers in our buttonholes (well, Lee Clarke did!) I bade my fond farewells to everyone. Booked on an early morning flight the next day, my plan was to pick up the car and drive the 300 miles or so to Batley in Yorkshire. That night I slept soundly and woke sparkly bright at 9.00am. Unfortunately, that was exactly the time my plane was leaving. Grabbing the phone, I did all I could to hold up the flight, but the receptionist said that it was actually going down the runway.
There was no alternative but to charter a small private plane, which wiped out a lot of my hard-earned wages from the season. Landing on grass at Southampton, I ran across to the Customs Office in order to pick up my car. By now, I was running several hours late and was in serious danger of missing the most important gig of my life.
The fellow with the clipboard looked serious and I knew that out of all the officers available, I had the ‘job’s worth’.
‘Is this your vehicle, sir?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Right, sir. Empty it.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ I stammered. ‘It took me three hours to pack it! You must be kidding!’
‘As a matter of fact, sir, I am,’ he said, breaking into a smile. ‘If you can get
a five-pound note into a walnut, which is inside an egg, in a lemon, I’ve got no chance of finding anything in this car, have I? Sign here.’ He’d been on holiday in Guernsey, seen the act and was taking the mickey. I wonder whether Customs men get checked when they come back to the UK from abroad.
I drove all the way to Yorkshire and arrived mid-evening, ready for an appearance at 10.00pm. Quickly introduced to the man from the BBC, Colin Farnell, I waited my turn to appear. I had hoped that Colin would be entertained by some good acts while waiting for my spot. Apparently, however, he had already sat there for two hours listening to drumming. The club had been booked for the entire afternoon and evening by a drummers’ convention. I was the only non-drumming act on. All the audience were drummers, too, and as I went out on stage I cried, ‘don’t worry, I’ll keep all these plates spinning,’ because there were so many drum kits on stage the cymbals looked just like a plate-spinner’s act.
I went down very well, thank you, and Colin liked my work. He promised to get me on to one of his television variety shows. I was thrilled, only to be disappointed a few days later when he telephoned to say that all the possible slots he had for magicians were filled for the next 12 months. I think he was being polite. I don’t think that the BBC wanted me, or is this a persecution complex?
Fortunately for me, he telephoned a man called Johnny Hamp who produced a show for ITV called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. Staged to look like a genuine Northern club, complete with running bar, tough audience and Chairman, this programme was aired on Saturday nights from around 9.00pm. I went over to Manchester to do my first and my only real ‘audition’. Opportunity Knocks didn’t count because I had been invited to do the job and I really wasn’t all that bothered. This job I really wanted.
