Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2

by Danny Baker

  When I got it home Wendy said, ‘Blimey, what you got in that bag, a couple of oxygen tanks? Isn’t this gonna be a bit much to wear in a hot studio?’ I of course told her that only nervous performers felt uncomfortable on camera and I would be no more ill at ease than if I were in a loose T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. I saw no reason to revise this opinion even when the burden of the jacket alone caused the coat hanger I had placed it on to crash to the bedroom floor.

  ‘Do you need anything pressing?’ said the woman from wardrobe on the night I planned to unveil the look. I told her I didn’t and unzipped the suit bag to show her my choice.

  ‘Ooh, dear, are you sure about that?’ she puzzled. ‘Isn’t that going to get unbearable under the lights? It looks very heavy.’

  I laughed again. What was it with these fashionistas and their obsession with the perfect temperature? I was going into a TV studio for a couple of hours, not jogging through the rain forest! Could nobody just appreciate how fine I was going to look in this cutting-edge combo? Perhaps these people wanted to pigeonhole me as the garishly-patterned-shirt-wearing youth they had grown up with on Win, Lose or Draw and the Six O’Clock Show. Hadn’t they noticed I was a mature broadcaster now? I had my own BBC chat show and everything.

  After she left, I began to get ready. To set off my new sober, dark-grey sensation I had decided to accompany it with a white collarless shirt. This would have to be buttoned all the way up because I don’t think these things really work when they are left to flap where they ought to encircle. Next I put on the trousers and, yes, as I held them up, they did, for the first time, strike me as a little more substantial than some other trousers I have owned. If I hadn’t been in such denial I might have conceded they tipped the scales at a weight close to the combined mass of the Cutty Sark’s sails and furthermore, to button them up, I was forced to contort myself as though tearing in half the 1982 London phone directory. Why had I not registered any of this at the tailor’s? Now for the waistcoat. Lifting this from the bag by its shoulders I couldn’t believe I was actually going to climb inside what to all intents and purpose was a Victorian bulletproof vest. This too now appeared extraordinarily snug, with the middle button in particular under such tensile strength I feared if it gave way during the show it would put somebody’s eye out.

  There came a knock at the dressing-room door. It was the sound department wondering if they could wire me up because it was getting very close to show time. I asked for a few more minutes. There is an old Norman Wisdom film, On the Beat, where he is denied a job as a policeman because he is not tall enough. In one bathetic scene he tries on his father’s old police uniform and looks at himself in the mirror and, though swamped by the overflowing material, still attempts to look confident and commanding. As I heaved on the leaden, one-ton drape coat that completed my appearance I saw that I had inescapably become his hapless Pitkin character for real, and now I was going to have the moment recorded for all time on national television.

  Momentarily my knees buckled at the realization of this indignity, aided and abetted by the gargantuan weight of the suit’s mass bearing down on my frame. Eventually exiting the room with the exact gait of Jacob Marley hauling his burden of cash boxes through eternity, I made my way slowly to the studio. We were pre-recording a section of After All . . . that was to be inserted later. It was as I puffed my way through this not overly amusing skit, sweat cascading from my brow like those mocking Erith raindrops back at the dawn of my TV career, that I glimpsed the hairless halo confirming I was now going totally bald.

  This jig, I inwardly reasoned, will very soon be up. And I have to say that as I sat there at the height of my ignominy, issuing steam like another kind of old geyser entirely, the prospect of the next phase of the voyage, whatever that might be, strangely excited me.

  Mine is one of the last generations to not only use the expression ‘Come in number fifty-nine, your time is up,’ but to have actually experienced it. For anyone too tender in years to know the origin of the phrase, it stems from the era when most public parks had lakes in them where, for a shilling a throw, you could hire out a rowing boat to pass away the time on a hot summer’s day. These rudimentary craft would be clearly numbered and rented by the half-hour. Thus when the thirty minutes had elapsed the park keeper on duty would bellow the necessary command through a battered old tin mega-phone. The words later came to mean anyone or anything that had outstayed their welcome and, though hardly anybody uses it these days, I should like to employ it one last time to accurately reflect what happened to my star status as 1996 hove into view.

  The precise moment my popularity boat was instructed to return to port forthwith is easy to pinpoint. I was in the front room of Scawen Road rubbing Twizzle’s belly in the precise spot that used to make his back leg whizz round in circles. This, along with throwing an invisible ball that he would set off after at great speed before realizing he’d once again been tricked, were among our favourite games. The phone went. On the other end was a journalist from the Daily Mirror who wanted my reaction to the fact that I had been replaced as host of Pets Win Prizes by Dale Winton. This was news to me and I said as much, probably giving him the scoop he was after. After hanging up, I sat down on the settee. Then I lay down on it. Wendy came into the room and, noting my furrowed brow, asked if everything was OK.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied after some thought. ‘You remember you told me your family once moved house while your dad was in the army and didn’t tell him the new address?’ She confirmed the story. ‘Well, I think the BBC are pulling the same gag on me.’

  The thing that shocked me wasn’t so much the loss of the job but the discovery I had become one of the woebegone tabloid Aunt Sallys who laid themselves open to such folly.

  Now there may be some people who think that being removed as host of a show like Pets Win Prizes was tantamount to a last-minute reprieve from the hangman, but that’s not how I saw it. Pets Win Prizes, the wonderful idea of a friend of mine from the Six O’Clock Show, Andy Meyer and his writing partner David McGrath, was a fantastic lunatic conceit that may be one of the few things to which I will attach the words ‘ahead of its time’. Normally I shrink from this idiotic phrase with its suggestion that a current generation is somehow culturally superior to those that came before. I have heard everything from Oscar Wilde to the Marx Brothers to The Beatles described by this arrogance of chronology, ignoring that all of these artists were hugely successful in their own day and that a genius like W. C. Fields would be unlikely to find international fame in today’s conservative world of mass marketing. Even somebody like Nick Drake, a complete commercial washout during the years he was recording, was very much of his time and not ahead of it and being of your time is a much harder trick than people imagine. I concede it may be argued that it is astoundingly presumptuous to elevate a vehicle like Pets Win Prizes to such august company. That is not for me to say, though I suspect one day History Will Vindicate Me. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the programme’s much-castigated presence in the schedules would have found a more ready appreciation in the rapidly approaching irony-drenched, throwaway era that saw the decline of television. For sure, the BBC were very nervous about it at the time. They fretted that people would see it as a great clumping betrayal of its charter, that the very title shrieked of the cod and the cornball, and that to put chickens, sausage dogs and parrots in competition on prime-time TV might be interpreted as hopelessly low brow by the organization’s vulture-like critics. These qualities, naturally, were what appealed to me most about the show and, having been shown the initial outline by its two creators, I personally took it to the controllers as what I wanted to do next. Leaning heavily on David Letterman’s magnificent regular feature ‘Stupid Pet Tricks’ it struck me as an absolute hoot of an idea and on the pilot episode I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more. I even came up with an instant catchphrase for the series. One round had featured three roosters that had fallen into a doze in their large cages
that had been covered with a blackout cloth. As far as these cocks were concerned, night had fallen and all was quiet upon the farm. Then, to the accompaniment of Grieg’s ‘Morning’, the covers were removed and, in front of a hushed and expectant studio audience, the birds began to rouse themselves. The deal was that the first one of the trio to go ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ would be the winner. I may have been involved with more gripping slices of broadcasting in my time, but if I have I certainly can’t recall one. Almost eight minutes went by with no result and every onlooker’s nerves were stretched to breaking point. Occasionally one of the contestants would issue a low ‘caw’, but we decided not to allow these. It had to be the full crowing or else the entire exercise would be pointless. I have to tell you that when the middle of the three roosters suddenly flapped its wings and let go with its lusty alarm call, the release of tension in the studio was enormous. I have never heard applause like it. Elated and knowing a hit when I saw one, I raced across to my main camera and, gripping the lens by the corners of its cover, shouted directly into it above the cacophony, ‘It’s Pets Win Prizes! It’s your licence fee at work!’

  This became my go-to cry for the rest of the series, along with the equally true ‘Pets Win Prizes! Yes, it’s come to this!’ and ‘This is exactly what Lord Reith had in mind when he legged it down the Patent Office!’

  Sadly, when the shows started going out, such wilful exuberance was edited down to a compromised twee mush. Every mention of licence fees or the collapse of Reithian values was excised and wherever I had announced games with intentionally provocative declarations such as, ‘Now we present a sensational round, possibly to the death, called “I Guarantee My Dog Will Sing”’ I found they had cut that and inserted instead lame captions featuring ‘cute’ dog illustrations and the words, ‘It’s Pavarotti Pooches!’ Well, I mean, what? Talk about making a fellow look like a sap. The tone was shifted completely, from one of swashbuckling defiance to pusillanimous collapse. For the love of God, it now looked like we were serious with all this hamster-based guff. Even so, the show was a ratings success, possibly, I suspect, to the embarrassment of BBC management.

  About a week before they jettisoned me from the show I had been taken out to lunch to see if Pets Win Prizes could be made ‘any better’ for its second series. I voiced my views about how we needed to address the basic ludicrousness of the premise head on and not for a second try to appease all the pompous dopes who couldn’t see anything at all wonderful in actual rat races. I was shown some sketches of some of the complicated sets they had built for this second season and also told that one of the spots on the show had tested badly with the audience and would not be returning this time around. This bit featured naturalist Terry Nutkins, who would pop up during items to bring us a few tips and facts about the pets involved and thus clunkily satisfy someone’s dreary need to bring an educational angle to the merriment.

  Of course, when the series did arrive back on BBC1, it wasn’t Brer Nutkins who had been thrown overboard. Terry was all present and correct, telling us how we should keep an eye on the length of our guinea pig’s teeth before handing over to Dale with this week’s ‘Crazy Kitten Capers’ or some such rot. I stayed at home and brooded, wondering if the BBC would have been quite so swift to dump Professor Jacob Bronowski had The Ascent of Man’s producers cut out all his best gags. But dumped I had been, and plainly it was the talk of salons all over London where the smart set were doubtless creating stinging haikus celebrating my demise and ladies gossiped behind their fans, giggling, ‘Have you heard about that portion of stinking fish, Baker? Not even fit to present programmes featuring pigs playing billiards these days, my dear. The nation seems to have come to its senses at last . . .’

  So now what?

  After The Goldrush

  In ending the previous chapter with the frankly disingenuous phrase ‘So now what?’ I see I have given in to the temptation to set up a cliffhanger where, in reality, none existed. The only way I could justify such ominous ruminating was if we now entered my shadowy years of inactivity, substance abuse and failed business ventures culminating in my being rediscovered while selling matches and boot-laces from a tray outside one of London’s busier Tube stations. However, that’s where fiction trumps autobiography every time. The facts are that, having had five years of being a monkey up a stick, I once again found that as the whole potty phase wound down, fate was simply looking around for the next helping hand into which it could place the baton of my fortune.

  It is perhaps indicative of my time as a teen idol that, apart from a gaggle of ten-minute programmes called TV Heroes that I made early on in the rise, and that remains my favourite project on which I have worked, I never wrote a single script for any of the shows I’d been part of. By and large these were not programmes that required too much structuring, so aside from routinely re-wording any links I was required to say – although more often than not I would just ad-lib my way through the nonsense – I played no part in the writing. When it came to writing for other people, however, it was a different matter. I had been writing scripts for established comedians and fellow presenters the entire time I was myself uttering some of the most notable bilge on British TV. This professional schizophrenia probably reached its zenith during the years I was providing waspish style and outrageous comment for both Angus Deayton and Jonathan Ross while, certainly in the public’s eyes, being the performer furthest away from the cutting edge those two so brilliantly represented. To be behind the scenes like this never bothered me in the slightest. I have heard many times that writers of jokes secretly resent the stars who get the laughs and that even the lowliest foot soldier carries the field marshal’s baton in his knapsack, waiting for the chance to leap from behind the curtains. This is poppycock of a rare hue. Your sole job as a scriptwriter is to make the turn look as bulletproof as possible, verbally nimble and utterly secure, and above all to give them status once they step out on to the stage. They are the talent. A beautifully written line will crumble into rust if it is not delivered by a gifted original, and I can’t think of a single thing that I have ever written that would have been improved if I had said it myself. Besides, your own voice should not be present in the work. Whoever I am writing for should sound exactly the way the public expect them to, whether it’s the actor Dennis Hopper or big bad Jeremy Clarkson – to name but two disparate chumps for whom I’ve penned. On top of all these considerations, though, is the fact that I genuinely love writing for funny people and charge considerable amounts to indulge that pleasure. ‘Win, win’ is the current phrase for this, I believe.

  So when television stardom handed me my hat in 1996 I found I was travelling back and forth to studios almost as much as I had in the earlier part of the decade. The difference was that the shows I was working on now people actually seemed to like. Within months of my last BBC TV contract expiring I was to become involved in one of the greatest extravaganzas and magnificent adventures of my working life.

  It all began with a phone call from an old friend called John Revell. John had been one of the best producers at GLR and his association with Chris Evans had flourished beyond the local station into the formation of Ginger TV, the production company responsible for Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, the enormous success of which, rightly or wrongly, continues to influence British TV to this day. As a follow-up to Toothbrush, Chris was hoping to create a brand-new kind of pop culture hub, a true slab of era-defining TV incorporating wild live music, original comedy and stellar guests. He also wanted it staged in ‘the best bar in Britain’, while exuding an endearing shabbiness that would root even the most famous headliners in a world far distant from their limousines and entourages. The show already had the title TFI Friday – the F, he explained, was for ‘Four’, the channel stumping up the eye-watering weekly budget for the project. Nobody believed him.

  Over the phone, John explained that while the basic ideas were in place it just wasn’t hanging together right. The comedy needed help and wo
uld I come along to the rehearsal rooms next week to have a look at what they’d got so far? ‘It’ll only take an hour or so,’ he said. In fact, I would stay for the next four seismic and breathtaking years.

  Meanwhile I was still opening the front door down in Deptford to delivery men or someone who’d come to fix the boiler and seeing them do a double take. Invariably they would then say, ‘You Danny Baker? Blimey, I thought you’d live in a mansion somewhere! Don’t see you on the telly much any more – did it all fall through?’ And so help me I’d say I was mainly a writer now, often desperately adding, ‘In fact I always was . . .’ This cut so little ice with the workers that I may as well have said I was performing poetry down mines.

  ‘Blimey, just shows ya,’ they would say, setting down their tool bags. ‘You have to grab the work while it’s there, eh? You was on everything a couple of years back, weren’t ya? Oh well, mate, I hope it picks up again for ya . . .’

  At this I would usually check to make sure the arse wasn’t literally hanging out of my trousers. One bizarre incident came when a man who had had to return to us after his initial repairs to our washing machine had proved incomplete, produced from his bag a large jar of horseradish. ‘Do you remember yesterday when I was here I told you about my allotment?’ he said.

  I didn’t, but being the sort who likes the day to go with some swing, I helpfully said, ‘Oh yes! How’s that going?’ as though in the last twenty-four hours events down at his veg patch could have altered dramatically.

  ‘No, you remember I said about me horseradish? How you can’t whack real horseradish ’cos you’d only ever had the supermarket jars?’

  The man seemed to be hallucinating or something. I’d never eaten horseradish in my life, and as for a conversational topic I’d place it a few notches below the varying coarseness of differing sandpapers. But naturally I nodded and may even have licked a lip as he shook the cream-coloured mulch about in its container.