by Danny Baker
This clunky look at low-level cons and sellers of stolen goods even boasted a studio audience – poor souls must have written in for tickets to Benny Hill and got lumbered with us as a booby prize. Worst of all, given the programme’s brief, how long would it be until my own father popped up on the agenda?
The show tanked after just six episodes, but as you’re probably anticipating, if I hadn’t donned that cape and fought for truth, justice and a temporary pay packet, then my subsequent career in broadcasting might never have happened. First off, I got myself an agent: Alex Armitage of Noel Gay Artists, under whose umbrella I remain to this day. Second, while lying about in Emma Freud’s dressing room, the pair of us having the usual clandestine fits at the piss-poor fare we were about to drop on a public who had done little to warrant such a rotten trick, Emma mentioned that she’d been asked to expand her role at GLR, the BBC’s local radio station for London. Having previously done two shifts at the weekend, she would now be taking over a daily slot.
‘You should come on one of them, Dan. Talk about music and that. You’d be good on the radio, you would.’
I filled Emma in on the only radio show I’d ever haunted, a woeful guest spot to promote my first television show Twentieth Century Box. The full and terrible details of that fiasco can be found in Going to Sea in a Sieve, but suffice to say I had taken to the medium like a duck to . . . well, radio. I literally thought no more about it but, happily for the upward arc of this story, Emma did.
Once the Bottom Line sank out of sight like a barge full of clinker, I had absolutely nothing to do and absolutely no money in the bank. I penned a few pieces for various publications but all the time letters would arrive from Barclays pointing out that no substantial deposits had been noted for some months now and could I pop in to see them? In fact, these letters were a salvation in themselves because they were written by one Mervyn Willcock, who is the sort of bank manager I suspect only I could run into. Mervyn was an extremely funny and accommodating man. His letters were always inventive, always amusing and, most crucially of all, always hinting that if I wanted to extend the overdraft a little further, that’d be OK with him. I think he must have found my bullet-proof optimism both refreshing and somewhat admirable, given the prospects facing me. His letters would be longish affairs, plainly typed out for kicks between a welter of more formal admonishments, and I was overjoyed to find when looking for photos for this book that I’d actually kept some of his riper missives. Typically, he would ramble into a fantasy world where everything was plainly his fault, but if I could at some time pop by his padded cell and remind him of his former life and correct him on some of the illusions he’d formed about our relationship, he would be eternally grateful. Another one, addressed entirely to Wendy, he wrote as a condolence letter following my death. This he had concluded would be the only possible reason I was ignoring him, and he closed it by saying, ‘If there is anything I can do at this difficult time then please leave a lamp in an upstairs window so I may see it from across the Thames. Alternatively, could we think about some kind of séance whereby I might speak directly with your late husband to hear his views about reducing your facility with us from beyond the veil.’ In yet another, he contrasted with supreme wit the circumstances that had led him to be shivering in his office at Holborn with the colourful postcard I’d recently sent him from Estepona in Spain, where I was holidaying.
‘Factually your card is a little incorrect in that the manager of our Estepona branch is a Mr Charlie “The Mad Axeman” Smith and I have written to him thanking him on your behalf for the superb service you are receiving . . . If, and here I have my doubts, you do have any potatoes or traveller’s cheques left, please let me have them and I will be only too willing to place them into your account.’
Can you imagine such a magical human being working within the banking system today? But there he was and it was purely through his generous, dotty nature that I wafted along on little but fumes for a considerable period in the late eighties. I sincerely don’t remember feeling any pressure because my theory that you can continue to live well, albeit at a reduced rate, and wait for the next currency boost to reveal itself lived up to the test. Thus I would call Mervyn and say, ‘If you were to go right round the bend, how much could you free me up at this moment?’
‘But I raised the overdraft last week,’ he might say. ‘Has this film you were talking about directing fallen through?’
‘Film, Mervyn, film?’ I wailed, reminding him to keep the conversation respectable. ‘Must you always be thinking about work? I’m planning a short break soon so I can come up with hundreds more ideas – but I can’t do that if you’re forever nagging me about old motion picture projects. I need £300 to get away on the Norfolk Broads for a bit – £300! My God, you’ve probably got that in your hat band right now!’
And off to the Broads we all went. While we were there an incident typical of my relations with Barclays occurred, and again I wonder whether it would be given any credence today. We arrived at one of the smaller outposts on the riverways and after mooring up the boat began a pleasant, if longish, walk through the woods toward the village. Here in one of the antiques/junk shops Wendy saw a couple of things that would look really terrific in the beautiful old dresser we had in our dining room and there was a clutch of old LPs that I certainly wasn’t going to leave behind either. What was needed now was the cash because we had no chequebook with us, and even if the hamlet had a cashpoint you couldn’t reason with a machine like you could Magnificent Mervyn. Bowling over to a phone box, I rang him in London.
‘Mervyn,’ I began brightly. ‘Baker here in sunny Norfolk.’
He may have groaned theatrically.
‘I need an emergency fifty in cash.’
He pointed out that there was that amount available in the newly restructured overdraft.
‘I know that,’ I impatiently shot him down, ‘but we’re in some thimble of a village and no chequebook or card with us. There is a little Barclays though. Could you ring them and have somebody fork over the necessary?’
Weighing this, he said he probably could, even if it meant legging it out of some important meetings concerning international consortiums investing in Dubai. I think he was being sarcastic. The only stipulation would be, he averred, they would require some form of identification.
‘But I don’t have any,’ I stressed, and it was true. I didn’t drive then and had figured that Norfolk, though it has its own definite ways, wouldn’t require me to produce a passport.
‘Well, is there anything I can tell them to ask for?’ he pleaded.
I mulled on this then, looking down, I had it. ‘I’m wearing fake leopardskin shoes!’ I announced brightly.
A heavy sigh came at me down the line before he said, ‘All right then. I’ll tell them to look out for you.’
Marching along to the adorable little branch I joined a short queue and waited for the single window to become available. About five minutes later I stood facing a woman in her fifties who regarded my smiling face with a curdled interest.
‘Yes?’ she asked.
Slipping off my right shoe I held it beside my head and said confidently, ‘I think you’re expecting me. I’d like fifty pounds please!’
She had no idea what I was talking about, but I insisted that if she just made a few enquiries she would find that everything was in order. She got up and went to talk to somebody in a small office behind her. All the while I stood there with my shoe high up, facing front. Within thirty seconds she came back and without any further discussion, squinted at my animal-print brothel creeper for a moment, then said:
‘How would you like your money, Mr Baker? Tens all right?’
As I left the place I like to believe that the old man who was in the line after me went up to the same woman, took off both his shoes and said, ‘In that case can I have a hundred?’ but we can leave that to the sketch writers. The extraordinary truth is that this was the kind of financial fairyland
I inhabited during my skint year.
And then things became really critical in what I believe is often referred to as ‘the dark before the dawn’.
I mentioned watching Button Moon with the kids earlier, and I suppose I had become rather expert in the minutiae of toddlers’ TV, what with hanging around our new house all day. It was a time when ITV really led the field in this genre and I had tremendous affection, as well as some strict opinions, about the shows that ruled the designated lunchtime spots for under-5s. Today, looking back and without undue nostalgia, I should say that the top six programmes were as follows. In reverse order:
6. Orm and Cheep
5. Tickle on the Tum
4. Emu at the Pink Windmill
3. Allsorts
2. Button Moon
1. Rainbow
Some may raise an eyebrow at the omission of Sooty & Sweep, but you must remember this was before Matthew Corbett had resuscitated his father’s brand and the team were very much between projects. By the early nineties when they were turning out episodes like ‘Super Sweep’, ‘Burglar Box’ and ‘Cousin Scrappy Comes to Stay’, I would have no hesitation in including them in the top three, but I have to keep this journal true to the times.
Anyway, it was while I was watching a corking edition of the number three on that list wherein Spike, the secretly talking dog, had been playing a practical joke on Jiffy, his keeper, by progressively hiding all the things he was laying out for their day at the beach, that the front door bell went.
Taking Sonny off my lap and placing him inside the upturned box that had once contained our washing machine but now Bonnie liked to use as a sort of Second World War coastal lookout through which she would watch her shows, I went to answer the door. Two men stood there and asked me to confirm who I was. There may have been other chit-chat between us, but I can’t recall any details. What I do know is pretty soon they got down to the reason for the visit. They asked me if I had £15,000 to give them. I remember the amount very specifically, chiefly because it was fifteen thousand pounds. They may as well have asked me, ‘Do you think if you flap your arms hard enough you could fly to the moon?’
These people were from the VAT office, a branch of government that I’d only previously encountered via their signs in London’s electrical retailers where they claimed not to apply to foreigners. From their tone as they stood on my doorstep I ascertained they didn’t consider me a visitor to these shores. But fifteen thousand pounds? Were they entirely sure? Was there not a chance that somebody up at their HQ had accidentally nudged the old abacus as they passed, causing one of the beads to slip along an extra zero? Mind you, that would still be fifteen hundred pounds, and even Mervyn at the bank wasn’t going to OK that with a light laugh, no matter how many shoes I showed him. Fifteen thousand! Our house had only cost twenty-eight. I did toy with the idea of asking them if they were fans of Kenneth Williams.
Once I had patted my pockets a few times and looked under the Welcome mat, I told them that I couldn’t quite guarantee the sum they were looking for. To this they said they would come back at five o’clock that afternoon and if I failed to provide the full amount they had licence to start carting off house contents in lieu. Closing the door on them again I went back into the front room and tried to pick up the plot on Allsorts.
‘Daddy, why is Spike hiding Jiffy’s bucket and spade under the bed again?’ asked Bonnie.
Even though I like to think I am there to answer all my children’s questions in life I have to say I didn’t answer this one. In fact I mutely watched the rest of the episode in something of a daze. It was twelve thirty by this time; when Wendy came back from Sainsbury’s I waited till she had put down the last of the bags and finished her usual stream of cathartic outbursts about how many ‘barmy people’ there are out there before I told her it probably wasn’t worth unpacking all the steaks, vegetables and bottles of Comfort because the carrier bags would make it easier for the VAT people carry them out again just as they were.
People who learn of my cavalier attitude to finance often tend to assume that my wife must be the wise old head in the relationship, who, while indulging my extravagant ways, actually makes sure that at least one of us keeps our head out of the clouds. Not a bit of it. Wendy can burn through a pound note at a rate almost the match of mine. In a way, it’s her unbending resilience in the face of a problem such as we had at that moment that is the ultimate expression of her faith in me. Her first reaction is to go on the attack.
‘Fucking bastards, ain’t they, some people? When you think about what they get up to in the City and Margaret Thatcher’s fucking mates.’ Steam let off, she set about devising a solution.
‘Well, you’ll have to ring Rodney and get it from him for now,’ she said, starting to put away each piece of shopping with a punctuating thump.
Rodney, Wendy’s nearest brother in age, headed up a small but hectic business out of a couple of railway arches in Herne Hill. Here, along with the designs for department store windows, he and his team also made props for various exhibitions and even feature films. One of the first times I met Rod I went back to the fantastic flat he had in a condemned yet still sturdy old council block and found his hallway difficult to pass through because it was totally dominated by one of the huge Jabberwocky monsters used in the film by Terry Gilliam. Rod had also made all of the terrifying tableaus on display in the London Dungeon. He’d either personally created or supervised the authenticity of every single sore, boil and bubo in the building, along with all the racks, thumbscrews, gibbets, coffins and gallows. During this mammoth task he had gently press-ganged all members of the family into having their faces ‘life-moulded’ so as to provide the array of different heads he’d need. For this process your entire face has to be covered in a thick warm pink goop for about fifteen minutes with a couple of thin cardboard cylinders placed up your nostrils to allow you to breathe. Once cool, this is then peeled off to form the vessel from which a new mannequin’s face can be cast. Even when my children were very small, they would never be truly alarmed when visiting the Dungeon because they recognized Auntie Maddie was the witch being burned, Uncle Brian having his fingernails pulled out, Cousin Sean dying of the plague and, why, there’s Daddy in a cauldron being boiled alive. It was tremendous fun to do and a rollicking in-joke on the many occasions I strolled those grimy chambers with friends. Wizard with his hands though Rod is, he too has never been one to knuckle down to sensible fiscal planning. When the London Dungeon was being created, the owners offered him a share in its future profits in return for agreeing a reduced lump sum for his work. He declined and took the pretty modest payment in full. Today, whenever he passes the famous attraction, as he has done for almost thirty years, he looks at the long lines of tourists patiently waiting to get in and says, ‘Yep, that’s me. A regular Richard Branson.’ Nonetheless Rod’s business always had a steady turnover and so it seemed possible I might dip into his till for a loan. I rang him and after a few chuckles and ‘fucking hells!’ he said I could go straight over and collect the required sum.
At five o’clock the doorbell went again, right on cue. I opened it smartly and before a word was spoken shoved the cheque out toward them.
‘OK?’ I said brightly.
They took it, looked at it and said OK back to me. I closed the door swiftly and that was the end of that.
Talking to my dad the following day he of course thought I’d caved in needlessly. ‘First off,’ he began, ‘you don’t open the fucking door to ’em. If you do, size ’em up and see if you can tell which one of ’em is the most approachable, then get him away from the other one.’
Approachable was Dad’s word for ‘bribeable’. In his world, everyone had their hand out. I attempted to explain that above all other branches of authority VAT inspectors had a cast-iron reputation for utter probity, but I didn’t get to finish the thought. Eyes closed, shaking his head, he knew he was dealing with a complete novice in these matters.
‘Ne�
�mind about reputations – everybody’s on the lookout, don’t you worry about that. You shoulda rung me up. I’d have come round and straightened one or the other. When there’s two of ’em you can guarantee if one’s a ponce the other will be one of the chaps. Every time. You just need to give a tug to the right one. Have a look at the motor they come in. If it’s an old banger, ask whose it is. Then ask the other one what he drives. If it’s a fucking Rolls-Royce – that’s yer man.’
There may, of course, be something in this, but to put it to the test you have to have the sort of brazen fearlessness my dad displayed in all his dealings with authority. While hardly one to embarrass easily, I have no such nerve when attempting to circumvent the system.
The breathtaking extent of Dad’s boldness was brought home to me when I was no more than seven years old. Very early one Sunday morning there came a repeated rap at the door. From Mum and Dad’s bedroom window you could look straight down at the street door and, ascertaining the caller was wearing a tie, Spud figured he was after a payment of some kind; possibly a loan club, an insurance man or hire-purchase recovery. I imagine, as he walked around to my room to wake me up, he would have said, ‘Fucking cheek, this time on a Sunday morning . . .’ Rousing me from my dreams of Dusty Springfield, he told me to go down and tell the man he wasn’t in. I’d done this many times before, but perhaps not quite so groggily. Taking the chain off the door, I opened up to him.
