by Paul Daniels
As per his instructions, very early the next morning Debbie and I went down to the foyer and the porters piled up our, by then, considerable amount of luggage. We looked around for a yellow flag and spotted a girl standing by the doors holding one up on a stick. As we approached her she asked, ‘Daniels-san?’ and I said their word for ‘yes’, which sounds like ‘Hi’. She pointed out to a line of buses where another girl was standing with a yellow flag. We walked to the bus and she tore out the first of our tickets. We got on to the bus and, as we seemed to be the last, she got on and in the international language of English started to ask where everyone was from. We were sitting in the middle of a band of Argentinians, which probably doesn’t mean much to you, but you have to remember that we were at war with Argentina at the time. Debbie tried to stop me but I couldn’t resist announcing that we were from England. Strange how the bus went silent, but even stranger was how we got along so well with them on the trip. Ordinary people never want to go to war.
The bus set off and I flipped. I could see that all our luggage was still standing in the hotel foyer. The guide calmed me down and told me not to worry. I worried. We were driven straight to the station without hold-ups and we looked at our next ticket. It had on it the platform number, the carriage letter and the seat number. We walked to our platform to find that it was lettered and painted so that people could form orderly queues to await their train. It was also the first time that I’d seen raised bumps on tiles to give blind people information and warnings. We stood on our letter and waited. At five to seven I thought the train was going to be late. Silly me. At three minutes to seven the train pulled in, our carriage stopped in front of our noses and we found our names on our seats. Remembering how late we had booked our seats and how early in the morning it was, this was the first of the JTB miracles. The interior was immaculate and there were flowers in little wall vases between the windows. As the second hand ticked towards the hour, the doors closed and the train moved off exactly on time. It rocketed through the countryside at an incredible speed and all I could think about was the luggage.
During the journey, our ticket was collected, revealing the slogan ‘Red Flag’ on the next one. As we pulled into a small country station there was a girl standing with a red flag so we got off and were pointed to a bus which took us to a small Japanese hotel, I think they are called riokhan, and there on the counter were two envelopes containing our room keys with our names on the outside. We had never stopped moving since we left our luggage but when we got into the room, there it was. Magic.
That was the way it was for the whole Japanese trip, incredibly efficient. Every room we went to had shaving gear and toothbrushes and kimonos. They thought we were crazy to be carrying all the luggage and I agreed with them. The televisions were bi-lingual and stereo. The first night we slept in a Japanese inn and they pulled the bed out of a cupboard and unrolled it on to the tatami matting all I could think of was that I had just paid £3,000 for a four-poster bed and this was more comfortable.
Japan … Singapore … Bahrain – and it was on the trip to Bahrain that I lost my fear of death. It was an overnight trip and I went to sleep on the floor. I have never been able to sleep while in the seat on a plane. What I didn’t know is that you are not allowed to sleep on the floor but nobody saw me down there. There is a lack of oxygen or something and I woke up dizzy. Thinking that I must get into the toilets, I started to head through the kitchen area of the plane.
I woke up on the floor. Panicking stewards and stewardesses surrounded me. It wasn’t their fault but this was one passenger they didn’t want to lose. An oxygen mask was stuck on my face but at the exact moment I awoke I can clearly remember feeling fine. Some water seemed to trickling down my face and then I knew why they were in a panic. I had cut my face badly on the way down but I had felt no pain. I can remember thinking, ‘I don’t feel very …’ and waking up thinking only a few seconds had passed. I’d been out for a while, apparently.
The next day, by the pool in Bahrain, a man asked if I’d been mugged. I explained what had happened and how strange it had all felt. ‘I think death is like that, ‘ he said and instantly I just knew he was right. One day, not for a while yet, I hope, I will think, ‘I don’t feel very …’ and then I will feel nothing ever again. There will be no pain because that is a physical impossibility. All pain and feelings will stop, so there will be nothing. You can’t be frightened of ‘nothing’, can you? I have never been afraid of death since.
From Bahrain we went to Cairo, where we had a quick look round before going on one of the most interesting and photogenic trips of my life. We flew to join a Sheraton cruiser and cruised down the Nile. Most things haven’t changed there in thousands of years. What made it even better was that there were only two English people, travel agents, on the boat and they didn’t split on me. Debbie and I were anonymous, surrounded, in Egypt, mostly by Jewish ladies from Florida.
It was a truly fascinating trip and I started to call the tour guide by the name that I had heard one of the crew use. It sounded like ‘Affaff ’. She laughed, strangely, but kept friendly. Apparently I was calling her ‘very fat’. How to make friends, by Paul Daniels.
On one outing, I asked her about someone called King Tut. She had been talking about him and I wanted to know if he was a relative of Tutankhamun.
‘It’s the same man,’ she said. ‘At that time in history, all kings, pharaohs, and leaders were given virgin birth and called Son of God. In this case, Tut was called the Son of the Sun God. It’s the same with your Jesus Christ.’
You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather. In that moment, just as some people claim to have seen the light and found Christianity, or Buddhism or any of the world’s religions, I became a Born-Again Atheist. Suddenly I could understand why we needed religion in the past, to keep law and order and discipline among primitive peoples, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why the ancient superstitions and fears were being perpetuated today. Surely by now we could teach a better way of understanding why it is not only wrong, but fairly stupid, to be a bad person, even a criminal.
As the cruise down the Nile came to an end, they held a talent show on board. Everybody had to come to the party in Egyptian-style dress and Affaff went around trying to get people to join in the show. Some said they would belly dance but only for a minute, some Belgians said they would do a sketch, which would last six minutes, and eventually she got to me. ‘Put me down for an hour-and-a-half,’ I said and she laughed out loud.
‘Oh, Mr Daniels, you are so funny.’
Eventually, I persuaded her to put everyone else on first and I would fill in whatever time that was left at the end. I hadn’t worked in months and I got lucky. In the first few minutes I got heckled by one of the guides and was able to ‘attack’ back. At the end, the captain looked at his table of prizes and announced that he felt I should have the lot. I explained that wasn’t fair because I did this for a living, so I just took a bone letter opener as a souvenir.
Back in Cairo, on the last day of our holiday, I inadvertently polished off a drink containing ice whilst trying to design a T-shirt for the Sheraton hotel manager. For three months I had travelled the world avoiding such a mistake. The next morning at the airport, I had Tutankhamun’s revenge and two elderly English nurses literally dragged me into the ladies’ toilet in order to clean me up. I was grateful for these elderly ladies, who cared enough to put their concern into action. Thanks to them, I was able to make it to the plane and home.
In the last couple of weeks of that memorable trip, I had lost my fear of death and also lost my fear of eternal damnation. I felt so much better about the so-called mysteries of life and death. I was happier than ever before. To make sure, I came home and did a lot of reading. It’s all there, in the books, so the guys who run the business of the churches and the religions must know it, too. I wonder why they don’t tell us? Even the Roman Catholic Church, the ‘founders’ of the spread of Christ
ianity, was the result of a decision in the Roman Senate so they could still rule the world when they were losing their military control. Don’t believe me? Run the Time Line in Microsoft’s Encarta and look at when military power ended and religious power began. It’s the same date.
So I returned to England a changed, happier man.
I had more than a shock when I got home. My eldest son, Paul, has a lot of charm and is liked by many people. Sadly, he has never matured and taken responsibility for himself and by no means appeared to want to. He has an excellent brain for solving problems but he has never accepted the task of living and improving his lot in life.
Paul Jnr’s first job at 16 was down at Smith’s Docks near Middlesbrough, but the ports were closing as the industry went into decline. I offered him a job looking after a novelty exhibition and shop that I owned in Blackpool. He took the post of manager and began to oversee the company, but never put his heart into it. He would spend all day playing on the slot machines rather than run the business. When the shop closed at the end of the season, I took him on as part of my stage management team and he looked after my props.
Unfortunately, he was never honest, which I thought was odd, because he was brought up to believe in the value of truthfulness. When he started drinking heavily, this was also in strong contrast to the rest of our family history. None of this behaviour seemed to fit in.
I still kept him on as part of my team at the Prince of Wales Theatre, but money and jewellery would consistently go missing from my dressing room. You never want to think ill of your own child. With no evidence that it was Paul, I started to watch him very closely and on one occasion I saw him remove a bundle of cash. I discovered at this time that Paul lied and, in fact, lied very well. He had become a master of deception but it wasn’t magical.
While I was on my three-month sojourn with Debbie, Paul got drunk and stole my Ferrari. It may be odd to say that my own son stole my car, but I was down on the insurance as the sole driver. It also had the number plate MAG 1C and was the most recognisable car in town. Consequently, the moment he took it out, the police picked him up to find out who on earth was driving Paul Daniels’ car. When the officers stopped him and asked for his name, he said, ‘Paul Daniels’, because that’s who he is. They recognised that he was drunk, arrested him and put my car back in my garage for me. That was nice of them.
Unbelievably, a few nights later, he took it again. This time he was charged and was due to appear in court. It was all such odd behaviour that we had a psychiatrist examine him. The report pointed out that Paul seemed to be suffering from a mild case of schizophrenia. From that moment on, Paul seemed to refuse to want to live in any type of normal, decent world. He certainly didn’t want to be in my world at all and this was, and is, extremely hurtful to me.
There was worse to come but I didn’t know it. You can’t help wishing your kids are going to do better than you have and not necessarily in your own business. Paul had become a real worry.
There was a telephone call from Mervyn that gave me another jolt the first day back from the trip.
‘You are doing a Royal show tomorrow night in honour of those who fought in the Falklands.’
Wherever we had gone in the world, according to all the news programmes and newspapers, we were losing the war with Argentina. We came home expecting to have to learn Spanish. The fact that we’d won came as a big surprise to me and Debbie. I found out where the show was and Mervyn had organised an illusion to be delivered to London from my stores in Milton Keynes.
‘It’s the Backstage Illusion,’ he said.
‘Really? Who’s going in it?’ (This trick involved two people.)
‘Roger Moore and Twiggy,’ came the reply.
‘You’ve got to be kidding. Roger Moore will never fit in it.’
I altered the illusion so that I would ‘present’ it to Roger on stage and he would get a surprise when one person changed into another, in this case Debbie to Twiggy.
The next morning saw me in the theatre and the usual mayhem of a Royal show was going on. Bernard Delfont came and said ‘Hello’ to me in the stalls and asked where I had been and what I was up to, the usual stuff. Robert Nesbitt was directing the action on stage. The Royal Box was being decorated with flowers. As the work was coming to a conclusion, I leaned across and tapped Bernie on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me, Bernie, it’s about the flowers on the Royal Box.’
The cigar twitched in the air. ‘Yes, very nice, very tasteful.’
‘Yes, they look lovely, but aren’t those the colours of the Argentinian flag?’
The cigar froze and then, ‘Robert, Robert …’
And off he went. It was too late to rebuild all the work so they stuck some other flowers in. Not quite as nice looking, but possibly more politically correct.
I rehearsed the trick with Debbie and Twiggy. Roger turned up later and I walked him around it without telling him the end. He went away and I never saw him again until about 15 minutes before we were due onstage. There was a knock at the dressing room door and, when I opened it, Roger stood there swaying slightly.
‘I owe you an apology. I’m pissed.’
Apparently, he had had too many friends in the show and he had spent all the evening enjoying their company.
My entrance came and I did a small opening trick. Roger entered to well-deserved applause and told a slightly risqué joke. In case he had any more up his sleeve, I rapidly went into the trick and pulled him around the stage, pushing his head down to look under the table, lifting him up and practically running through the staging of the illusion. At the end we got the raised eyebrow bemused look for which he was famous through so many ‘hero’ roles as Twiggy appeared and we were off.
What the audience thought of the little conjurer bullying Agent 007 all over the stage I’ll never know.
I had other problems of my own. I still didn’t want to go to work on stage despite Richard Mills asking me to do a season at the Opera House in Blackpool. It’s a great venue but I had no ‘drive’ in me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
The musical Annie was on in Bournemouth and I went to see it with a girlfriend. As the curtain came down on this very uplifting musical, I said to her that the audience all seemed to be on a high.
‘That’s what happens in your show,’ she said.
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘No, surely you must know they all go out really happy?’
I had no idea. You go on stage and you do your thing. I knew I made them laugh but I had no sense of what happened when the curtain came down. WOW. If I could do that, then I should do that! That night I telephoned Richard and asked whether the Opera House was still ‘on’. When he said that it was, I sat up all night and wrote the show.
Next day it was in his office for consideration with all the guest acts, tricks and illusions suggested. Dick Hurran was called in and fought with the Delfont budgets to get the best costumes and scenery. He booked the Valabertinis, who I think came from Czechoslovakia and did an act on very high unicycles. He booked Jean Claude and his footballers and an act called the Koziaks from Hungary. This act had been on my television show and caused me to ponder on the British love of amateurism. The week the show was transmitted a young girl, also from behind the Iron Curtain, had competed in the Olympics. The media had gone crazy over the fact that she had done a backward somersault on the beam. All credit to her for that but the beam is about 4in wide and bolted down solidly at both ends.
The woman in the Koziaks’ act did a double backwards somersault, not on a wide beam, but on a round, flexible, pole vaulter’s pole that was being held at the ends by two men. As she did the somersaults she also managed to go through a hoop that she was holding. A little later she did a forward somersault on the same pole, a much harder thing to do as you can’t see the landing area coming. This woman never even wobbled on landing; it was if she was on the floor with all that space to land on. Nobody in the media noticed.
I got a telephone call from Dick.
‘You know in the scene from Barnum that closes the first half, well, who is going to sing the “Join the Circus” number? Everyone in the show is French or Hungarian or Czech.’
I asked him to let me think about it. The ending of the first half was very important in making the show spectacular and featured illusions built around the theme of the circus. The Ringmaster had to sing the song. I got a copy of the music, telephoned Mary Hammond, one of the best voice coaches and made an appointment. When I arrived I told her that I didn’t have any time for singing lessons but would she listen to me and tell me whether I could handle the number on stage.
‘If I can’t then tell me, because I don’t want to be an idiot up there.’ She asked me to sing a couple of notes that she played on the piano but I explained that the ‘plonk’ of a piano note bore no relationship to the sound of a voice so I couldn’t do that. She played the intro to the song and I couldn’t do it. I felt embarrassed and most peculiar standing there with no audience. I stopped her, took a breather, then closed my eyes and ‘saw’ the theatre. She played, I sang and I can remember at the end hitting a note that I had no idea my voice could reach. Mary had no doubts I could do it so I phoned Dick and told him I would do the number. It made my year! All that ‘rehearsing’ in the bath had finally paid off.
The show we did at the Opera House in Blackpool was the last of the really big Variety shows in that enormous theatre. It seated somewhere in the region of 3,300 people and had a huge stage. As well as the speciality acts, we had a full orchestra pit and 16 dancers. The heyday of summer seasons was coming to a close and in a large auditorium like that, even an audience of 1,500 would only half-fill the place. They loved the show, though, and that’s the important thing.
