by Danny Baker
It was a call from my agent saying that, though this was highly irregular, Radio 5 had been told in advance that I was going to get the gold and they were offering to fly me home to collect it. The network was struggling a bit and this boost to their profile would be a real shot in the arm. Well, while happy to be a hit once more, I had to reply that there was zero chance I was going to leave Donald Duck and Snow White behind in order to traipse up Park Lane and drink warm white wine with Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart.
The following day the red light was flashing again. This time it was to flag up that the station felt if I wasn’t present at the do, they might gift the award to someone who was. As you can imagine, I reacted to this with some force. Either a bloke was their radio personality of the year or he wasn’t. To give it to someone simply because they didn’t have much on that day seemed, in my amateur opinion, to smack of flightiness. Such an award might be perceived to lack depth.
And there the matter rested. For another twenty-four hours. The solution next presented remains just about the most fantastical thing any person could hear while knocking about what the deadbeats still insist is this vale of tears.
‘Would it be possible,’ my agent enquired, ‘if they could get the award out to Florida in time, for you to accept it over a satellite link from Disney World?’ And if I had no objections, would I ask Jonathan Ross to present it to me?
I mulled this over for a few sumptuous seconds then said I would consent to this, provided they didn’t keep me away from my French toast and coffee too long. Then I sauntered along to Jonathan’s room and knocked on the door.
‘Old mate,’ I said as he opened it, ‘I am SO sorry about this, but would you present me with a glittering trophy next Tuesday? I’ve won most handsome man or something, and you know what children these organizers are – they insist on me getting the thing. They will probably require you to say a few words about how magnificent I am, so I’d get right to work on that if I were you. Oh, and it’s all being beamed back live to London, so put a tie on, eh?’
And that’s what happened. At 10 a.m. on the little beach that borders the Seven Seas Lagoon, a US camera crew linked to a satellite truck, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Jonathan Ross and myself, all waved at everyone back at the Dorchester, they all applauded, and I thanked them for this wonderful honour that Jonathan had just passed over to me with gritted teeth. I was, it seemed, making a habit of picking up prizes while wearing swim shorts.
About two months later I was more properly dressed when presented with a further Radio Personality of the Year by the Television & Radio Industries Club at yet another hotel bash where Sir David Frost was dishing out the faux-bronze statuettes. As he handed me mine, I noticed it was wobbling a bit on its wooden base and I made a joke about this from the stage. A week later it fell off the shelf on which I’d placed it and broke in half on contact with the floor tiles. It would be well into the next decade before anyone bunged another award my way, although, without doubt, it was these three rapid industry plaudits that launched the staggering bonanza and spectacular over-exposure I was to experience over the next two years.
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
In case anybody is getting the idea that life was suddenly all jet planes, hot media projects and wild celebrations where starry new friends exchanged specious awards, I should point out that I spent a good deal of time during the early nineties on the decidedly modest Piper’s Caravan Site, Dymchurch, Kent. This was where my dad had acquired a very basic caravan under circumstances that were never fully explained. The only clue to its true registration was in the instruction that, while there, should any strangers ever call by asking for either ‘George’ or ‘Roy’ then they should be pointed toward Fred, my father, who, of course, was better known as Spud. This unfixed attitude toward his own name was not a new thing and reached its apogee for me one day when, as he was driving me to some appointment or other, Dad said he just had to shoot into an arch to talk to a bloke who had a bit of work for him. The job in question was to help clear everything out from the former newsreel cinema on Waterloo Station in preparation for a more modern incoming business. These miniature theatres, seating a hundred patrons at most, were quite common up until the seventies and could be found on several London mainline terminuses as well as dotted about the capital, where they squeezed into any spaces between bigger buildings. For a small entrance fee customers would watch a sixty-minute programme consisting of an edition of Pathé News, a breezy short documentary in the series Look at Life, plus a string of Warner Brothers or Tom & Jerry cartoons. When I was a youngster my old man would often say on slow days indoors, ‘Fancy the cartoon cinema for an hour, boy?’ and off we’d go on the bus to the very one he was now being hired to gut, or the one in Piccadilly.
As an alternative to the spectacle of Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Cat, Dad sometimes took us to a destination that, for some extraordinary reason, seems never to have been attended by anyone else of my generation that I’ve come across: the courtrooms of the Old Bailey. On days when he’d take my brother and I up to town for a trip to the zoo or Trafalgar Square, we’d toddle off afterwards for a lunchtime sausage sandwich and a cup of tea, and he would say, ‘I know where we can go next . . .’ Then we’d take the tube to St Paul’s for an afternoon watching justice dispensed. All I remember of these unusual excursions was an almost church-like atmosphere as we climbed the steps up to the public gallery, where Dad would ask us to wait while he had a short discussion with the uniformed men who stood in the ante chamber that lead to the various courtrooms. Presumably to make sure we didn’t hear explicit details in any of the sexual trials underway, I do recall him always asking, ‘Is it all right for them?’ although this may have been in reference to a thirteen-year-old and an eight-year-old being allowed in. He would also canvass as to which court currently had a ‘good ’un’ in. It is entirely likely that the odd two quid changed hands to get us access. Inching along the polished pine pews high above the action, I truly enjoyed the performances and the atmosphere, though I was seldom able to follow what was going on. Spud sometimes leaned over occasionally to ask if I was following the story and when I replied, ‘Not really,’ he would whisper in my ear, bringing me up to speed with the proceedings:
‘That bloke there says he wasn’t with that bloke over there when that woman says he was. I can’t quite gather what the plot is, but I think her husband’s disappeared and him in the yellow tie reckons she’s in on it.’
After about an hour he would look at Michael and me and say, ‘Had enough?’ and we would all leave. On the way out, I can remember Dad having another chat with the police on duty, usually laughing about how the trial he had been watching was turning out.
Anyway, to get back to Spud’s prospective job of eviscerating the little picture house on Waterloo Station: I followed him into an arch just off Southwark Park Road where he called out to a man stacking large wooden pallets against a far wall.
‘Are you Barry?’ said Dad.
‘No. We ain’t got a Barry here,’ replied the worker, making sure his fag stayed lodged between his lips.
‘How about Bob?’ Spud offered, to see if that would stick.
‘Nope,’ said pallet man. ‘Who you looking for?’
‘Not sure. Harry Sarti sent me, about clearing the shit out of the Waterloo Station place.’
‘Frank-ie! Someone to see ya,’ yelled the bloke, and from a rickety lean-to ‘office’ to our right an enormous fat fellow in a sweatshirt emerged.
‘Whass going on?’ he asked.
‘Harry Sarti said about the picture house,’ Dad told him. ‘Said I ought to ask for Barry. Might have been Bob.’
‘Well, it don’t matter, does it?’ said the sweatshirt. ‘I’m here now – so d’you fancy it?’
Dad said he did and the fat chap walked back into the office and fished out some keys on a ring.
‘Give them to Harry and tell him he’s got all of next week, but try and
spin it out till at least Sunday. It should only take two days though, so don’t go mad. How many of you doing it?’
Dad said just the two of them.
‘All right,’ responded Barry or Frankie or Bob. ‘I can weigh you out middle of next week, if you want. He’s told you how much, has he?’
Dad said he had and took the keys. As we turned to leave, the following exchange gave this already unusual conversation a new twist:
‘What’s your name, mate?’ called the fat fellow.
Dad looked at him. ‘What do you think it is?’ was his bizarre reply.
‘I dunno. Henry?’ replied the bloke.
‘That’s it – Henry!’ Dad shot back, and out we went.
Once we were in the car, I asked him why he was Henry at this place.
‘Well, when it’s all cash in hand, you just have to give a name, don’t ya? Henry’ll do. I was Mick when I worked at the car shop, Terry on the cleaning gang. They don’t care, they just need a name.’
Many years later I was stopped by a man in the street who said he knew who I was from the telly and told me to tell my dad Charlie that Ronnie’s mum had died. I still have no idea whether he had the right person or not.
Piper’s Caravan Site sat some way back from the seafront on a winding lane that opened onto the Kentish marshes. It had no clubhouse, no available activities, no pool, just a small shop at the entrance and a couple of swings for the toddlers. Even in the mid-nineties it was a slow, serene location, mainly occupied by Londoners whose children had grown up and moved on. The sound of kettles being filled every so often punctuated the bleating of lambs or the welcome whistle of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch miniature steam railway chugging by, taking day-trippers to Dungeness lighthouse. The caravan we had there was of the old school, with no modern facilities bar a single tiny toilet that you were loath to use in company because of the inescapable noise even the smallest piddle would rouse. The van had gas lamps and only a cold tap above a minuscule sink. There were two narrow, cramped bedrooms to the rear, one fitted with rudimentary bunks; the living space consisted of a little dining table, a few shelves and a couple of bench seats that, when lifted, contained the bedding that allowed extra people to sleep over, providing they stayed on their sides.
It was, of course, the very primitiveness of the accommodation that made everyone so adore the time we spent there. The only drawback was when ablutions rolled around and you had to walk over to the low concrete bath-house to muck in at the sinks, showers and latrines with everyone else. This struck us all as a bit too close to life in the prison block and the trick became either to rise very early or very late to avoid the often noisome clamour.
One weekend Wendy, Bonnie, Sonny and I were down at the caravan and the weather on our last evening there was awful. It was a Sunday and the very next day I was due back in London for a lunch-time screen test with Leo Burnett, the American-based advertising agency who wanted me to become the face of their Daz washing powder campaign. This of course would turn out to be the job that most people would come to identify me with, and some still hope it will bring me up short if they ‘cheekily’ bring up the brand in conversation. Ironically, this is a manoeuvre that simply won’t wash, but we’ll get to my time as the nation’s number one commercial salesman presently.
When the weather turns gloomy over the desolate marshes on the Kent–Sussex border it is easy to see why the creepy legend and ghoulish visage of the eighteenth-century smuggler Dr Syn continues to hold such potency in the region. As the huge ominous skies and forked lightning bear down on the dismal terrain, you can convince yourself that you see loose mares driven mad by the storm and distant gibbets creaking under the weight of recently executed felons. At least, these were just a few of the images I was conjuring up as I sat at the large window of the caravan with Bonnie, Sonny and their cousin Becky all sitting spellbound alongside. They were absolutely, deliciously terrified as they listened to the details of Syn’s ghostly rides across the landscape, their imaginations racing as my wild descriptions competed against the driving rain on the caravan roof.
Now the truth is I am not entirely sure of the component parts of the Syn story and so there was every chance I was laying it on a bit thick and borrowing from sources as disparate as Frankenstein, Great Expectations and the Abominable Dr Phibes. Anyway, I held them absolutely rapt and had the pay-off good and ready. My plan was to tell the kids that I was just nipping to the toilet and that they were to keep a lookout and tell me if they saw anything that even remotely looked like a headless horseman racing across the marshes with fire coming from his eye sockets. At first they begged me not to go, but I said that it would be quite safe because Dr Syn had, under an ancient treaty, promised never to come on to Piper’s Caravan Site because he had once loved Lady Marion Piper whose tragic early death had, in fact, sent him round the bend in the first place. This seemed reasonable to them and as I crept away they held on to each other, eyes front, peering out through the squall and across the bleak fields beyond.
Wendy’s sister Carol was staying with us and the two women shot me silent looks as if to say, ‘What are you up to?’ and ‘You know they won’t sleep tonight now?’
I put a finger to my lips and opened the caravan door as if it were made of delicate high explosive. Once I judged it sufficiently ajar, I eased myself through the gap and stood on the sodden grass outside. Here’s what I intended to do next: I was going to race around to the front of the ’van and suddenly leap out in front of the window the children were breathlessly looking through, shouting, ‘Behold, Dr Syn!’ with my arms spread wide. This would undoubtedly give them a big shock and the tension release that I felt they secretly all wanted. Taking a moment to gather myself and allow a stifled private giggle, off I ran. I figured the swifter I came around the vehicle’s corner, the less time they would have to register it was me.
Now then. In my mind I had the lie of the land all mapped out. I had been around the exterior of our caravan countless time and from all angles. So familiar was I with the humble old retreat that I had ceased to think of it as any sort of mobile home and more of a tumbledown chalet. I believe it was this oversight that made me completely forget that these things are not permanent and can be towed anywhere. In order to be towed, of course, they have to have tow-bars fitted on them, and it was this heavy, two-foot long, solid metal extension to the premises that I made no allowance for as I rounded the corner at about ninety miles an hour.
Before I had chance to say my line and perform my star jump, I blindly hurtled into the tow-bar at full pelt, hitting one leg just below my knee and the other full across the shinbone. Later I was told that, from inside, all anyone remembers was hearing something like a sonic boom before I appeared to fly at high speed straight past the window and off to the other side. Carol says the caravan lifted up on to one wheel and almost toppled over, but I think that must be an exaggeration. What everyone agreed on was that, as I sailed past, I had an expression on my face that, while still bearing traces of the glee I had been trying to suppress but a nanosecond earlier, was now overwhelmingly giving way to one of utter horrified confusion.
I hit the ground with an almighty thud and the wet conditions caused me to slide along the grass until I came to a stop almost entirely underneath the caravan next door. The pain throbbing up from my legs was immense and I lay there among our neighbour’s tanks of Calor Gas, deflated airbeds and long-forgotten tennis balls for about a minute before gingerly edging myself back out into the pouring rain. I could barely stand. With a wide unsteady gait that must have looked like I’d been caught short on my way to the communal khazis, I lurched back toward the scene of my calamity. Pushing open the door, I stood in the frame and at first the words failed to come as both Wendy and her sister put their hands to their mouths in shock. This was quickly replaced by the exact same failure to suppress hysteria that I’d noted when I knocked myself out in the cellar.
The kids were much more concerned. While Sonny and B
ecky burst into tears – possibly believing Dr Syn had just ‘got’ me – Bonnie ran across and hugged me around my thighs. This loving gesture actually managed to put extra pressure on the blood vessels in my legs and it was all I could do not to pass out completely.
‘Oh my God, what happened?’ Wendy eventually managed to blurt out in a voice that wobbled dangerously on the edge of convulsive laughter.
As with the balloon incident, the more I tried to recollect the accident in my scrambled mind, the funnier it struck the women present.
‘I was trying to frighten the kids,’ I stuttered hoarsely. ‘I ran straight into the tow bar. I went flying.’
Wendy looked down at my shins and the merriment monetarily disappeared from her face. ‘Oh my God, your legs!’ she gasped.
Looking down I saw two raw contusions with pure white gatherings at their centre and blood starting to ooze in thin lines from the narrow gashes within. I don’t think I have ever experienced more acute pain in my life and I stood rooted, trying to control the agony. A few seconds later, Bonnie, who had stopped her comforting, arrived back at my side. Knowing I liked a slice of pork and egg pie on occasion, she had quietly got me a slice from the fridge and put it on a saucer along with a fork. ‘Here, Daddy, eat this . . .’ she said. Dazed and not wanting to hurt her feelings, I even lifted it to my lips but in that moment simply couldn’t remember how you ate things. ‘I’ll have it later,’ I mumbled, but the truth is I don’t think I have so much as looked at a slice since.
