by Paul Daniels
‘Now we’ve see your act, Mr Daniels, and we think you are very funny,’ they began. ‘Now you will have heard of Southport and we would like to know if you would consider coming for a summer season next year?’
‘Look fellas, do you mind if I get shaved, ‘cos I have a show to do in a minute?’
‘Not at all, Mr Daniels. You go right ahead.’
‘I don’t really talk business. You need to talk to my manager, Mervyn O’Horan.’
‘No, we don’t like managers and agents, Mr Daniels, we like dealing direct.’
‘Well, he has to make the decisions but I’ll pass the message on. You can trust him, he’s dead straight. How long is the season?’
‘It will be as long as you’d like it to be.’
‘And what are the dates then?’
‘Oh, you can pick the dates.’ That was very good because then I could pick only the high-paying weeks at the centre of the season.
‘Who else is on the bill then?’
‘Whoever you want, Mr Daniels,’ they smiled.
Thoughts of whether Sammy Davis Jnr was available to do a warm up for me in Southport flashed through my mind.
‘What about dancers?’
‘You book whoever you want, Mr Daniels. It’s your show.’
To anybody in my position, this was an incredible deal. I could pick the best business weeks and get commission off every act that I booked as well. I constantly asked them not to talk money with me. That had to be left to my manager.
I was half-way down my face with a razor when they said, ‘We were thinking about £20,000 a week.’
Stopping short of cutting my throat in surprise, I turned round to look at them. They were deadly serious. This was an unheard of amount for a season.
‘I think you r-r-r-really do need to talk to my manager,’ I stammered. Mervyn telephoned me the next day after hearing about the proposal and asked me what I wanted to do.
Having chatted it through with Richard Mills, Chief Director of the Delfont Organisation, whom I am proud to call a friend, I understood why it wasn’t such a good deal. He put in plain words the fact that I needed to see where my bread was best buttered. Delfonts could offer me several summer seasons in a row as they held a chain of resort venues, whereas Southport had only the one. It was a reasonable argument and taking a deep breath, I turned Southport down.
And so it was that in the middle of this season, I did the Blackpool Bonanza shows. I was performing twice-nightly on the pier and on the Sunday morning, early, I started to rehearse for the show which was recorded that night in front of a very large audience. I was everywhere, learning, watching, sorting out tricks and trying above all to remember the names of the acts. In the whole season I only forgot one name and it wasn’t exactly the hardest name to remember. Roy Walker, the Irish comedian. The trouble was that I had never met him, never seen him rehearse and he was new on the scene. I had no trouble with the next act, Shakin’ Stevens and Bogden Komenovski, but Roy Walker was a blank. I hope he has forgiven me and, by the way, he was brilliant.
On the Monday morning after that first Bonanza recording, I learnt something else about television. If you are really working at it, the strain is greater than you think. The alarm went off by my bed and I couldn’t get up.
I couldn’t move a muscle. For whatever reason, and I am sure it had to be the mental strain, I was completely paralysed and I was on my own in the house. It took until about 11.30am before I could move my arms and legs and I was terrified.
The following Sunday, I paced myself into an easy-going attitude and that’s the way I have worked ever since.
This was quite a season. I received a telephone call asking me whether I would act as the MC for a major variety show in Aberdeen. It was to be in the presence of Prince Charles and would be on a Sunday evening. I was already doing two shows a night on the pier and, now Bonanza was finished, Sunday was my only night off. Add to that the distance to and from Aberdeen and I told the organiser that it was impossible.
‘No, it’s going to be very easy – the oil companies who are working that area of the North Sea are sponsoring each act. They are paying for aeroplanes, limousines and hotels. You will be well looked after.’
Well, despite the other 12 shows that I would be doing both sides of this one I decided to say ‘yes’ and put it into the diary. I asked for a list of the acts that I would be introducing and worked out my material accordingly.
Two weeks before the show I got another telephone call. Apparently the oil company that was sponsoring me could use its company jet to get me to Aberdeen but they couldn’t find a plane that would bring me back again. All attempts to charter a small plane on the following Monday morning had failed and they were asking whether I could go by train.
The railway system at that time was notoriously bad. I said ‘no’. They asked if I would drive there and back. I said ‘no’. They asked if they could drive me there and back. I said ‘no’. I wasn’t being awkward. It’s a very long way and I was already working very hard. I find that when someone else is driving me I can’t relax and I watch the road all the time in case of emergency. Quite what I’d do, I’ve never worked out, I just don’t feel safe.
I explained the situation to my office and Howard Huntridge offered to come to the rescue. In the previous few weeks Freddie Starr, Colin Crompton and Howard had all qualified as pilots and suddenly the air seemed a very dangerous place to be. The first two were crazy comedians and Howard was just crazy.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not qualified to fly you myself, but I have an idea how we can fly you back.’
Well, I knew the major oil companies and the organisers of the Prince Charles Trust had failed to find a plane, but Howard moves in mysterious ways. He was a truly lateral thinker. I said OK.
The trip up to Aberdeen was fantastic. The oil company provided one of those company jets that only top golfers could afford. We even had an inflight hostess who served drinks and sandwiches. Reg Parsons, a member of my management team, who was not too keen on flying (and that is the understatement of the century), accompanied me. Even Reg, however, was impressed by the service and the luxury but even so, seemed much happier when we landed.
The show that night was fantastic. The opening act was a top American star, Billy Daniels, famous, amongst many other talents, for a song called ‘That Ole Black Magic’. His name and mine being the same, and the song having magic as its theme, gave me all sorts of link opportunities as the compere for the show. The only real problem in the show came at the end of his act when he sang a song called ‘Melancholy Baby’ so very movingly and dedicated to his friend who had written the number, but who had died that very day.
Billy was crying as he sang, the orchestra was crying, the dancers were crying, the audience were crying and I was crying but for a different reason. I knew that I had to follow this tearjerker by introducing someone whom I hadn’t seen for a few years, Michael Bentine, known, of course, to the public as one of the Goons from the radio show of the same name. This well-known idiot in the nicest sense of the word was about to enter as an Arab with a huge scraggly bird on his arm to work a zany comedy spot, and everyone was crying.
Well, I got out of that one by telling a story or two about the confusion between Billy Daniels and myself, which was strange because Billy was black and I was, and still am, white. The rest of the show ran without a hitch and was great to do. I really enjoyed myself and the audience had a great night out.
Morning came and found Reg, the scaredy-cat flier, and myself standing on the side of the tarmac at Aberdeen airport. There was no sign of Howard or an aeroplane of any type. The air was sharp and crystal clear and Reg and I scanned the skies.
‘I’ll kill him if he doesn’t turn up,’ I said, exaggerating only slightly. Slowly, we became aware of the sound of a small, light aircraft making a noise like a scooter running out of petrol. A tiny Cessna fourseater made a circuit to land.
‘Well, it can’t be tha
t,’ I said, ‘it’s far too small.’ It landed and taxied to a halt.
Howard got out of it. So did the pilot, dressed like a businessman and carrying a small briefcase.
Howard started to walk faster. So did the pilot. Howard started to jog. So did the pilot.
Howard broke into a sprint. It was obvious that he wanted to get to us before the pilot.
As he went past us, Howard said, very quickly and not too loudly, ‘Pretend you’re buying it. It’s a demonstration flight.’
I couldn’t believe it. Before I could get out a ‘But …’ the pilot had grabbed my hand, shook it and had embarked on his sales pitch.
‘I understand you are looking to buy a light aircraft, Mr Daniels.’
‘Well … er … er … yes. I have been thinking of that for a little while.’ Nearly the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
How little a while he’d never know. ‘This one does seem to be a little small, however,’ and I gestured towards the pile of stuff on the ground. There was a suitcase, a box of magic props, a rabbit in a hutch, a folded but still large table, two suit bags and some other odds and sods.
Reg Parsons came in with, ‘Well, I really don’t think there will be enough room for me,’ but his hopes were dashed when this Super Salesman went into action.
‘Oh don’t worry, sir. The modern light aircraft has more room than you would think,’ and from somewhere in the plane he took out a small toolkit and started to unscrew panels off the body and the wings. I was fascinated to find that a plane is mostly just skin. He got the props box in the back part of the structure, making sure that all the cables ran freely. The table went in a small space behind the back seat, together with all the more compact items.
He put the suit bags into the wings, again checking the cables before replacing the panels. Reg was terrified and totally convinced that this was all illegal. Next, this genius of packing put Howard and Reg into the rear seats and handed them the rabbit in the cage. Have you ever seen a single-engine light aircraft up close? They have a tiny set of wheels in a sort of triangle formation at the front end and the tail is unsupported.
As the hutch was grasped by the lads in the back, the whole plane tipped up backwards. Reg yelled.
‘Don’t worry,’ smiled the salesman and ran around to the front, jumped up and held on to the propeller. The plane regained its balance and then he made me the most wonderful request: ‘Could you get in now, Mr Daniels, and could you all lean forward?’
As we all sat there auditioning for a part in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the salesman resumed his role as pilot by working his way hand over hand into the plane with us, holding down the front end until he was in his seat. ‘Keep leaning forward, we’re a bit tail heavy.’
Reg groaned.
‘During the war, you know, a pilot took off with a plane full of paratroopers and as he took off he realised that he hadn’t done his pre-flight check and that all the flaps were locked on. By commanding the paras to move around the plane to his orders he managed to redistribute the weight, do a circuit under weight movement and land safely. He was dismissed from the service which seemed a bit unfair. I think he was brilliant. I tell you this because, in a way, we are going to do a miniature version of that. First, let me check that it is all right for take-off.’
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never been able to understand a single word of what air traffic controllers are saying. The background noise coupled with tinny speakers makes it all indecipherable to me, but apparently we received the OK to take off.
‘Right-oh, Mr Daniels. We are going to go down the runway now and when I shout “NOW” would you all sit up and lean back?’
Reg was more garbled than the air traffic controller. I feared for the health of the rabbit he was holding.
Off we went, the pilot shouted ‘NOW’, we leaned back and the plane took off. It really did. Up it went, climbing all the time. In fact, that was the problem. We were so tail heavy that we couldn’t straighten up. For ages we flew along with the Cessna doing its impression of a helicopter. Finally, but after quite a struggle, he got it level and we were off to Blackpool.
The pilot explained all the technicalities to me as we flew along, and I pretended to be interested as we went from beacon to beacon. Howard flew along reassuring Reg that he really wasn’t going to die.
Suddenly, the pilot looked at the map strapped to his knee and said, ‘damn!’
‘WHAT’S THE MATTER? WHAT IS IT? WHAT’S WRONG?’ came screaming from the rear seat. Reg obviously was suddenly worried.
‘Oh, it’s nothing much. It’s just that the radar is out at Blackpool and there is a weather report of low cloud. We’ll have to go to Manchester.’ Now it was my turn to be worried. If we went to Manchester the timing would be all wrong and I’d miss the show on the North Pier. Bernie Delfont would be after my blood and I said so. Our pilot considered this and then said, very slowly, ‘Well, there is one way. They teach you it when you are training to be a pilot but I’ve never actually done it.’
Howard chimed in, ‘Oh yes, you mean a …’ and off they went into technical jargon.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Reg
‘Basically, it is what you sometimes see in the movies. The airfield talks you down.’
‘How do they talk you down if they can’t see you?’
‘They listen and advise accordingly,’ and the pilot immediately contacted Blackpool who put up very little argument as both they and the pilot thought that this was a really interesting thing to do.
So there we were, a happy band of travellers (except for Reg), about to descend through the clouds to Blackpool airport. The pilot switched on the overhead speaker so that we could all enjoy the experience. Except Reg, who was reciting strange incantations about never flying ever again.
A flat Lancashire accent cut through the noise of our aircraft. This was the first air traffic control voice that I had ever been able to understand. It gave our call sign followed by ‘Are you flying a single-engine Cessna?’ Upon being told that we were, the voice from the control tower said, ‘Well, you’ve just gone over us heading south,’ followed unbelievably by, ‘We’ve got the window open and we heard you.’ We were then instructed to make a circuit as we descended and that is how it went on.
Every now and again, we would be told that we had gone over in such and such a direction and all the time I was watching the altimeter showing that we were going down and down in what appeared to us to be thick fog. We were flying completely blind.
I leaned over and gently reminded the pilot that there was a very tall object that stuck up in the air in this town called Blackpool Tower. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we should be well south of that.’
‘SHOULD BE? SHOULD BE?’ yelled Reg. Howard calmed him down as we continued our descent.
The altimeter showed that we had landed. We hadn’t, but we must have been very low.
Suddenly – very, very suddenly – we shot out of cloud into clear air. I swear this is true. A few feet away, on either side of the wingtips, were roofs. We could see people in the street with their heads snapping from side to side as we flew past them.
There was a scream, not from Reg. It was the pilot. ‘WHERE ARE WE?’ For some strange reason that I have never been able to fathom, I never panicked, so I was able to answer the question calmly and quickly. ‘Pontins!’
We had flown into the holiday camp at the end of the airfield.
‘Where the hell is the airfield?’ asked the pilot and, not knowing technical terms like port and starboard, I said, ‘left.’
He turned left. He stood the damn plane on one wing and turned left. How he didn’t crash into one of the chalets I don’t know but now he was faced with a high wire netting fence.
Amazingly, he levelled the plane and raised it just enough to clear the fence and drop the aircraft on to the grass on the other side.
Reg was no longer with us but he came to as we trundled across the grass and came to a h
alt.
Calm as you like, the pilot became a salesman again, turned to me and asked, ‘Well, what do you think?’
I told him that I still thought it was a bit too small and that I would think about it. We unloaded the plane and just before he set off to return the plane to Doncaster, he asked Reg if he wanted to have a lift to Manchester.
I think that you can imagine Reg’s answer for yourself. I’m too nice a guy to repeat it.
The season at the North Pier drew to a close and, at the final performance, the last-night gags were worse than usual. While in the middle of an appearing rabbit routine, my co-star Marti Caine entered stage right in an old trench mackintosh. With her back to the audience, she opened her mac to reveal that she was stark naked. I tried to retain my composure as she closed her mac, smiled at the audience and slowly walked off. The audience knew it was a gag but didn’t know it was for real.
Taking a moment’s pause, I then looked straight out into the audience with, ‘right! Now I remember where I left my wand!’ The audience roared and I carried on.
During the interval, I dashed out of the theatre and down the pier to the shops where I purchased a few items and ran back to my dressing room where Mam had already started stitching some bits together for me. The second half started and Marti is now on stage doing her act. During one of her loveliest songs, I walked out on stage in a full-length coat, similar to the one she had worn earlier. Smiling at the audience, I then turned my back and opened my coat. I was naked apart from a cardboard tubular striped walking stick dangling from my … loins, with a garter belt complete with suspenders hanging all the way down to my evening dress socks and shoes. Marti lost her place in the song and, as the music ground to a halt, she fell about laughing.
I then discovered that one should never use Sellotape in your pubic area, because pulling it off was a nightmare!
Too few years later, Marti died of cancer. That’s not fair.
Just before they launched the The Paul Daniels Magic Show as a series, the BBC asked me to guest on The Shirley Bassey Show. Did Britain ever produce a bigger international singing star? I certainly don’t believe they have ever produced a better one. I am not talking Spice Girls or any other ‘created’ pop group that comes and goes in a couple of years at most. I am talking enduring star status here. Even in the rehearsals, she was sensational. Miss Bassey had, according to all reports, come through some unhappy relationships (hadn’t we all?) but when I met her for the first time she was happy and in great form. She was the epitome of the word ‘star’ and acted it to the full, loving every minute of it. The moment came in the rehearsal where she finished a song and then introduced me. I was to do a small card trick and then Miss Bassey joined me on my part of the set and the Producer wanted me to do something with her. Unfortunately, he wanted me do to something the public could watch so I had picked out a comedy card routine that would really get her involved.
