by Paul Daniels
In my briefcase, I had my contract with the Beeb.
‘There’s no need to go that far,’ he said and the whole matter was never mentioned again.
I went to work in Naples, to entertain United Nations staff I think. An agent, and now a friend, Kenneth Earle, had fixed it all up and he had put together a mini-show. We had a guitar player who would also be our musical director, eight dancers, a comedian who worked under the stage name Geronimo Tate and me. The order would be dancers, Geronimo, dancers, me, finale with everyone. We went by train. I know that sounds like a horrendous journey, and it was.
There’s something you should know about Geronimo’s act. There is a very famous recording of Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan singing ‘Passing Strangers’. They alternate the lines, Billy’s rich, deep voice contrasting against Sarah’s higher, sweeter sound. These people were big stars and were known as ‘singers’ singers’. Geronimo had turned this into a comedy ending to his act. He had two hats and he would wear the man’s hat and do Billy’s voice switching hats very quickly to do Sarah’s. It was a good bit of business and would always get him off to good applause.
We arrived in Naples quite a few days early which surprised our UN organisers. They asked Kenny if we would mind doing a show up the coast a little for some troops stationed there. The UN organised transport and offered extra money for the extra show so we loaded up and off we went.
I don’t know who built that place but somebody had obviously been to Sunderland and had a look at the designs of north-east clubs. It was a duplicate of a working men’s club and Geronimo and I felt at home. The stage was in the corner of the room and we were to get changed in a curtained-off corridor. We had a lot of backstage visitors because the girls were getting changed in there as well.
The American equivalent of the Concert Chairman came around to inform us how delighted he was to have the Ing-glish show and that he was going to put another act on first to warm the audience up for us. Off he went and we heard an unbelievable introduction, worse than any clubland chairman back home, and this was to a mixed audience. In the UK, it is quite common to see the Chairman knocking on the microphone to see if it is on. He usually hears his knocks coming out of the speakers and then comes out with, ‘Give order, I said give order. Pulleeeze. Right around the room. ATHankYEW’
The American went through a similar routine. He, too, knocked the microphone, but then he announced, ‘Anow HEAR this. ANOW Hear this. Tonight ERLADIES AND GENTLEMEN,’ every consonant was punched into the microphone, ‘we have for you, the Ing-glish Show.’ Loud cheering. ‘These people have come all the way from Ingerland to entertain yew. I do not want to hear any bad language of any type. Do you understand me here? I do not want anybody shouting out f***, c***, b*******,’ and he went through the list. ‘We are going to get the evening started by bringing on another entertainer to get yew all in the mood. Give a big hand to Billy Eckstine.’ Our jaws all hit the ground. Out walked one of the all-time great recording artists and he sang. Geronimo was saying, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ and I told him to do what he always did and it went well when it was his turn.
We went back to Naples and they asked us to do a show in a nightclub in town that was used as a club by the American Navy. More money? No problem. I’ll change the names to protect me. I do know it was not a good place to be. The walls and the pillars holding up the ceiling were painted in what appeared to be black tar. The chairs and tables were cheap and nasty and the whole affair was run by two guys who I will call Max and Louie. I think they had a licence to run the place on behalf of the American government, but to us they looked as though they should have had ‘mafia’ tattooed on their heads. Later, they turned out to be nice guys, but one look and they terrified me.
The club had a stage in the middle of one room with an extension that projected forward into the room. This is always called a runout. The dressing room was behind the band on the stage with no other way out of it but to cross the stage. The American Navy is a ‘dry’ navy, or it was then. No alcoholic drinks were allowed on board. Any type of drug could be had, but no booze.
In this place, the booze was meeting the drugs and as the show continued, you could hear men sitting on the floor in dark corners, giggling in a silly, high, way. Geronimo didn’t last long. Just before I went on, the girls, all dressed in black, did a routine to the music from Shaft. Every black member of the audience was on his feet, punching the air and chanting ‘Shaft, Shaft, Shaft’ in time to the music. The girls finished the routine and formed a gesturing tunnel for me to walk on, carrying my act. The black guys kept chanting even after the girls had gone. I said nothing, just started shuffling cards without speaking. As the shuffles got more and more complicated I stared them down into their seats. The final guy was huge and I thought he would never go, but he did. Only then did I start the act.
If I was to pick the hardest night of my life, that was it. Prostitutes were working the room and would take a guy out into the alley, crossing the stage area to get him there and have him back in his seat before I had finished the trick I was doing when they left. Military police would jump on to the stage, push me off the microphone (literally) and announce, ‘Now hear this. Now hear this. Furlough is cancelled for USS …’ or ‘Now hear this. Now hear this. A wallet has been found in the alley and…’ It didn’t matter one jot that I was up there. I would win the audience round and then lose them again. This happened over and over so I built it into the act and made fun of the police. The sailors loved it and gave me quite an ovation at the end.
I walked into the dressing room and nearly passed out. The concentration had been tremendous and I needed air. I asked the guitarist and Kenny to pack up the act and then I did something really stupid. Dressed in an English dinner suit, complete with evening shirt and bow tie, I walked out into the waterfront streets of Naples. It was foggy, murky and dark. I walked and walked, trying to get the show out of my head. I heard footsteps and it dawned on me where I was. I got my back to the wall and two gorillas came out of the mist. See Naples and die.
‘Is youse called Daniels?’
I nodded.
‘The Boss wants to see ya.’ At last, I was in the movies. With one on either side I was escorted back to the club and taken upstairs where Max and Louie had a restaurant, arguably the best appointed restaurant I have ever been in. The head waiter was in tails and the contrast with downstairs was ludicrous. As they had been waiting for me before starting the meal, I explained where I had been. Max said, ‘that was a very foolish thing to do, Paul. You are lucky that my guys were able to recognise you.’
How many guys are walking around Naples at 1.00am in a dinner suit?
The meal was superb and, as we sat at a long table, Max next to me and then everybody spread down the sides to where Louie was sitting at the other end, I started to do table-top magic. I did tricks and gags with knives, forks, spoons, bread rolls, napkins, bottles and whatever was around. Some were for everybody, some were for Max alone. Eventually, after a card trick, he asked if I played Poker. I lied. I said ‘no’ and asked him about the game. He asked me to deal five cards each to him and me so I shuffled, cut and dealt.
We picked up our hands and he explained about having a pair and having two pairs and so on.
‘What’s the best thing you can have?’ I asked.
‘A Royal Flush, that’s the ten through King in one suit.’
‘You mean like 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace in Hearts?’
He nodded.
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised (what an actor), ‘I’ve got that.’
Out of the corner of his mouth, Max called Louie down to our end of the table. Louie towered over us as we sat there.
‘Look at that, Louie. The guy never even played Poker before and look what he got.’
Louie looked pityingly at Max.
‘Who shuffled the cards, Max?’
‘He did.’
SMACK. Louie hit Max across the face and it wasn’t a light
tap. Max hardly flinched.
‘Who cut the cards, Max?’
‘He did.’
SMACK again.
‘Who dealt the cards, Max?’
‘He did.’
SMACK.
‘Of course he got the Royal Flush, you’ve seen him with a pack of cards. He cheats.’
I hotly denied this scurrilous attack on my honour and told Louie I just got lucky. ‘You do all the shuffling and let’s try again,’ I said. ‘I really want to learn this game.
Louie took the cards, cut them and dealt the cards to me, Max and himself. He tabled the remainder and we all picked up our cards to check them.
‘Oh look,’ I said (and believe me, friends, this is not good Poker to get this excited), ‘I’ve got another one of those Royal things.’
Louie threw down his cards in disbelief, ‘In Spades you ain’t.’ Apparently, this is a common American expression.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘in Spades I have.’ And I laid down the 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of Spades.
Max stood up and smacked Louie.
Then Max raised his glass. The evening which was now morning was coming to an end. In his broad New York accent he said, ‘I wish to make a toast, ladies and gentlemen. I wish us all to drink to this remarkable man. Paul, we was not expecting an arteestee of your calibre.’ He pronounced it ‘cal-eye-burr’. ‘Tonight, downstairs, it was … it was …’ His brain sought a fine compliment, he found it. ‘Tonight, it was like watching a diamond in pig shit.’
CHAPTER 13
MY ‘REAL’ LIFE
In the meantime, as all this television stuff work was continuing in the foreground, I had another ‘real’ life, of course. The lads were growing older. Gary, the youngest, outgrew us all and became an electrician at ICI. He worked really hard and took exam after exam, climbing the ladder of knowledge. Martin, the middle one, worked in the clubs and the corporate scene and eventually broke into television, being a presenter on Game for a Laugh and for a game show as well as guesting on other shows. The press, of course, tried to create mayhem in the family by either saying he was better than me or not as good as me. They missed on a couple of counts here; first, we are great mates; and second, he isn’t me. When he does stand-up then he is his own man and can write comedy as well as anyone I know.
One interview sent Dad into a turmoil and I had to remind him that he, Dad, had had the press publish an interview with him that never took place. It’s very hard for the relatives sometimes.
Paul drifted, sometimes being with us, most times not. He married a lovely girl from Bristol and it didn’t last a year.
When we went on tour sometimes we used to call it a family show. That didn’t mean that it was just for families to come and see, although it was all of that, it meant our family. The show consisted of me on stage, standing in front of beautiful theatre curtains that my mother had made, using props that my father had made, being accompanied by music played by my brother, generally Martin performed as well and, occasionally, Paul assisted on and off stage. I loved those times. Later, when Debbie and I got married, I sometimes felt we should adopt Roy, our stage manager, to complete the family circle.
I needed to sort out the Daniels housing situation. Giffard’s Barn was very nice but I hardly ever got there. Royal Crescent was useful and kept me fit because it had five floors and no lift. The dining room and kitchen were on the ground floor. All the great political leaders of the mid-twentieth century had dined there, as guests of the previous owner. On the first floor I had a lounge and office. Above that was my bedroom with a large jacuzzi bathroom set off it. One day I had Anne Diamond, the television presenter, in my bedroom. No, no, no – you’re wrong. Anne had a flat in Royal Crescent and I was showing her round the house. She said, ‘You do realise that your bedroom is my entire flat.’ There was an answer but I restrained myself.
Then, on the top floor were another couple of bedrooms and a bathroom. I had the basement converted to a completely separate apartment. Martin lived there for a while and Paul lived on the top floor.
Fire worried me in this house. The whole building had only one staircase. So many houses in London were firetraps. There was an advertisement for a fire-escape device and I had one fitted to the rear of the top floor. Metal staircases were out of the question as they were ugly and thieves could use them too easily. This gizmo consisted of two round units fitted by the window. The top one had a clutch system inside and a rope ran through this and was coiled around the bottom unit.
If there was a fire, you threw the bottom reel out of the window and that uncoiled the rope, measured for the distance, down to the ground outside. That left the other end of the rope, complete with a belt, running over the upper clutch and inside the bedroom. You put the belt over your head, tightened it, and jumped out of the window. For the first few seconds it was terrifying but then the clutch grabbed the rope and the system lowered you to the ground, bringing up the bottom end of the rope with another belt on it for the next person. Well, that was the theory and my mother just happened to be there when the gentleman was fitting it all to the wall. He explained how it worked and my mother looked out of the fifth floor window and shuddered. She has a fear of heights.
‘You wouldn’t get me jumping out of there with that thing wrapped round me,’ she said.
‘You would if your arse was on fire,’ he said. Did I say ‘gentleman’?
Early one Sunday morning, there was a ring at the doorbell. I went downstairs and opened the front door. Nowadays, with all his American experience Michael Crawford has a rich, rounded voice, but in those days he really did have more than a hint of his famous comedy part, Frank Spencer, when he spoke.
‘Good morning,’ he said, and continued with the trademark phrase, ‘I’ve got a problem.’
My eyes scanned the street. This had to be a wind-up. Where were the cameras? I pulled him in and shut the door so that I would be safe from prying lenses. He came up to the lounge and explained that he was about to tell me something that I mustn’t tell anyone. The whole of showbusiness was buzzing at the prospect of who was going to play the Phantom in Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical.
‘I’m going to be the Phantom,’ he said and I nearly fell through the floor. I had to stop myself saying what would have come out as a rude and unbelieving – ‘YOU?’
The first time I’d seen Michael he was singing in a high, nasal American voice in the wonderful film Hello, Dolly. Later, I saw him singing in the equally nasal, but now Northern tones in Billy. When he came to see me he was appearing as Barnum in the musical of the same name. I just couldn’t believe he was going to produce the deep lustrous, opera-like voice needed for the part of the Phantom. In everything that he did, Michael was marvellous and I was about to find out why. While performing the arduous role of Barnum he was also taking singing and voice-training lessons. What a pro. I had been to see him in Barnum and, apparently, afterwards had said that if ever he needed help with any stage tricks, all he had to do was ask me.
‘We are having problems with some of the stuff we want to do. If you will do it, I need you to create some effects for me.’ He explained the various needs and I went to work to make them happen. I made him come through the mirror, his image first and, because he wanted fireballs to fire from his hands, created a tall walking stick that fired the balls for him, much safer. I showed him how to find the trapdoors for him ‘to descend to the underworld’ and, of course, made him vanish at the end. That latter was a real problem because they wouldn’t let me have a trapdoor cut into the stage where the chair was situated so, if you see the show, he doesn’t go down a trapdoor. Where does he go? He vanishes!
Every time I called in to check a design, Michael Crawford would be there, on the stage, watching them build sets, looking at where the lights were, talking to technicians and the director. He was more than an actor, more than a singer and knew more about the theatre and the sets than anyone. He was the Phantom.
To m
y design, Dad made one wonderful trick that was never put into the show. The Phantom was to walk down the staircase at the start of the second act, singing ‘masquerade’ and strut around the stage. At the end of the song, the crowd on stage ‘recognise’ him and go to attack him. The stick and the costume suddenly shoot up into the air and fall to the stage in pieces. The Phantom has vanished. The director merely wanted him to be seen descending through a trapdoor to his underworld. Shame.
Various girls had drifted in and out of my life during the early years in Royal Crescent. Caroline, the glamorous solicitor, was the foremost of these. We really had quite a turbulent fling but I was growing more and more towards Debbie. I sold the house and moved in with Deb. We decided that I needed one property that covered all my needs. On a map of London I drew a large circle with the studios at the centre. That circle represented a half-hour drive to work. In the circle I drew a segment, pie chart fashion, to the west of TV Centre and in that segment I drew a small circle around a small penny.
With a photocopy of that I sent a note to all the estate agents in the area, saying that I was looking for something in the region of £750,000, a big increase on Giffard’s Barn. Debbie went to view dozens of the houses that were sent to us and picked a few for me to visit. None were really suitable. Everyone goes through this, don’t they? You can’t put your finger on exactly what you are looking for but you know it when you see it. Debbie even saw a house complete with its own zoo in the back garden which I didn’t bother viewing, but I did go to see one owned, allegedly, by the son of a Middle Eastern prime minister, which had an armoury in case the resident came under attack. The décor in this house was horrible. One of the bathrooms was entirely decorated in a delightful shade of cat-sick green. It would have cost a fortune to put right and it already cost a fortune to buy. Another no-no, but as I was leaving the property, the estate agent said that there was another house nearby that was not on the market but, as it was rarely used, who could tell? The property had been purchased over a year previously and decorated and furnished to the highest standards, but no one had moved in.
