On the Road with George Melly

by Digby Fairweather

  ‘“Well, last night I saw my mistress in a baby-doll nightdress bending over the oven. And I couldn’t resist it, could I? I went and got the old leg over!”

  ‘“So has she sent you here to have you put down?”

  ‘“No! She’s brought me here to have me nails trimmed!”’

  George, of course, loved his home town of Liverpool, and this became a theme for another favourite.

  ‘People sometimes ask me, “Why haven’t you got a Liverpool accent?” “Well, I haven’t, but I can do one and I’ll tell you a joke to prove it.” [He relapses into authentic Scouse.]

  ‘A bloke comes home and finds his wife in tears. “Wharra marra then?”

  ‘“It’s the kids! They never stop swurring! Swurr, swurr, swurr – that’s all they ever do!”

  ‘So the man says, “I can see you’re oopset! Well, you stay in bed in the morning and I’ll bring you oop a nice cuppa tea. And then I’ll go down and I’ll sort ’em out.”

  ‘So next morning he goes down to find the two boys – one nine, one eleven – and he says to the eldest one, “Wharra yer want for your breakfast, son?” And th’ boy says, “I’ll ’ave a fuckin’ egg!” Bang, crash [this part of the narrative illustrated with spirited swipes at the air], leaves him snivelling in a corner. So then he says to the younger son, “And what do you want for your breakfast, son?’ And the younger boy says, “Well, I won’ ’ave a fuckin’ egg for a start.”’

  Quite the rudest one was usually saved for the show’s end when all the ice was not only broken but in a state of total meltdown.

  ‘I live in Shepherd’s Bush. They have a market there which sells RUBBISH in general. And one day while I was there I saw two ladies coming out of a flower stall. And one says to the other (this in perfect Max Miller cockney):

  ‘“Isn’t that your old man coming out of that flower stall?”

  ‘“Yes, and ’e’s got two dozen roses – blast it!”

  ‘“Why ‘blast it’?”

  ‘“Well, it means I’ve got to spend the ’ole of the weekend on me back with me legs in the air.” [A long pause.]

  ‘“Oh . . . why don’t you buy a vase?”’

  Very few people complained to us about such ribaldry; in fact only one person ever did. A dignified lady in Blackpool made her displeasure felt to me but what could one say? ‘If you come to see George Melly,’ I tried to explain, ‘you come to see George Melly.’ Possibly any sense of outrage was defused because the Half-Dozen were sturdy and ever-enthusiastic straight men and made a point of laughing themselves silly on-stage, even if they’d heard the joke several dozen times before. This was a contrast to the Feetwarmers who, at least later on, tended to present an on-stage image of reserve, leaving the laughter to the audience. But occasionally, and perhaps a little wickedly, in a form of showbusiness hara-kiri, George would call our collective bluff.

  ‘You’ve heard it before, you know!’

  ‘It’s the way you tell ’em’ was our only available response. But what was flattering and good to hear from audiences was that they liked the way we supported George on-stage. ‘You really do look after him,’ supporters were often heard to say. And, beyond pleasure, the only possible response was, ‘We wouldn’t be here without him!’

  Only twice did I feel an (unjustified) twitch of reserve. Perhaps on a concert in Derry, it may have been a risky place to tell this one:

  ‘An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman were discussing their preferred watering holes. And the Englishman said, “Well, near where I live in Guildford [George’s jokes were often tinted with small focused details] I know a pub where between 6 and 7 you actually get all your beer for half price. They call it the Happy Hour.” And the Scotsman looks scornful and says, “Aye, that’s nothing. I know a tavern in Glasgow where if you buy a pint of ale you get a wee-heavy whisky for nothing!” And the Irishman says, “That’s nothing. I know a place where you get all your drink free – all night – and at the end of the night you get laid too!” So the Englishman and Scotsman look at him in amazement and say, “Have you been there? Where is it?” And the Irishman says, “Well, I’ve not been there meself – but me sister has!”’

  George’s mindshifts occasionally lent his jokes a surreal turn. Strangely enough, as a practised drinker myself, I could often identify the moment when he might slip or (very occasionally) fluff a punchline producing what Julian aptly called ‘the Tumbleweed effect’ – bewildered silence from the audience. But one day he had me fooled. We were playing in Birmingham in a beautiful open-air square in front of a handsome church, and our journey to the Second City had recalled the ribald tale of a fellow musician, known to us all, and his Black Country girlfriend. He had picked her up from work and asked if she’d like a coffee.

  ‘Naow, luv! Can we go ’ome right away? I’ve bin feelin’ foonye all day.’

  So home they went to go straight to bed. And afterwards our friend had asked if everything was all right.

  ‘Foine!’ said his friend. ‘I’ve coom twice actuallie!’

  This story tickled George immensely and the punchline stayed in his mind. So that when he arrived on-stage, facing not only a capacity crowd but the vicar of the handsome building to his rear as well as his wife and several sub-teenage children, he looked absently down, announced to his audience ‘I’ve coom twice actuallie!’ and burst into roars of laughter. While the gentleman of the cloth and his family stared back mystified – and presumably mortified too.

  For the remainder of 2004 we carried on working steadily: at the beautiful Court Theatre in Tring; back to Cole Mathieson’s Concorde Club in Eastleigh, Epsom Playhouse, the magnificent Reading Concert Halls, Telford, Chelmsford and Barrow-in-Furness. Years before, George’s outdoor knee-tremble after a gig in Barrow with Mick Mulligan’s band had been unexpectedly illuminated for all to see by the eruption of a nearby blast furnace. ‘I could see old Fat’s arse,’ reported drummer Pete Appleby, similarly engaged at the time, ‘going up and down like the clappers!’

  It was early in April that year, though, that I had my first small disagreement with George. We had gone to play two nights at the Plough Arts Centre, Torrington, in Devon, a small but exquisite venue with hosts nearby who lived in an ancient, but magnificently restored, antique manor house, complete with wooden pews around a roaring open fire, mulled wine and bedrooms hidden above the winding turret stairs of an east and west wing.

  But the row began after the second show when, tired and loaded with vodka, I was busy dismantling George’s stall, repacking his books and CDs and wrestling with the recurring troublesome questions of commission to the venue and VAT invoices. I had promised to bring George his favourite Irish whiskey but had forgotten in all the business. Over came our star.

  ‘You said five minutes!’ he hissed, pointing ostentatiously to his watch. ‘And now it’s exactly seventeen!’

  ‘I’ll be with you,’ I said briefly; I bought the whiskey and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps next time you’ll remember that it’s me – not you – that arranges your sales, packs your books and makes all the money while you take it easy. I really don’t see why you can’t buy your own.’ And I walked off in a huff.

  This would not be our first disagreement over the next year or so. I began to realise more vividly that working for George did not just entail playing for – or with – him. You were often hired help. And slowly – just as it may have done for John Chilton – the worm of jealousy began to stir within me. I had led the band, written the arrangements and provided George with a new musical context which was plainly working, and an album which he quickly described as his ‘best ever’. And yet here I was, carting boxes of books, folding trestle tables and acting visibly to our departing audience, not as a high-profile bandleader who’d just left the stand, but as an off-stage serf. I tried to resist the feelings. And next morning, as the vodka and ire had cooled off simultaneously, I was as quick to apologise to him as he was to me.

  We continued our busy roun
d, regularly three or four concerts in a row, in Northampton, Pinner, Sevenoaks, Hungerford, lovely Horsham, Leek in Staffordshire, four nights at the Maidstone Pizza Express, East Kilbride, Carlton in Bedfordshire at John Tusting’s wonderful barn theatre (‘Let’s do the show right here!’), Leeds, Stockton-on-Tees, Winchfield, Blackpool, Royal Tunbridge Wells, at the legendary Bull’s Head for Dan Fleming in Barnes; all these had us referring to our battered atlases until July. But soon a new unforeseen hazard was to assail us. It would become immortalised to the Half-Dozen as ‘the Watfords’.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Blues for Watford Gap

  In late July 2004 we were due to take to the road again, this time for Altringham, then on to Bury for two days at their Arts Centre. Altringham, as usual, was a sell-out and our comfortable hotel a pleasure. Next morning Lisa, as ever my faithful driver and tireless helper, had checked out with me and together we were awaiting George in the hotel car park. There he was, making his dignified walk towards the car, candy-cane suit unmistakeable in the morning sun. But, as he opened the door, he turned back.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ he said.

  But he was gone some time and after a while I crossed the car park to chat with Julian and Craig waiting, in their own vehicle at the roadside, the departure of our convoy to Bury.

  ‘I don’t know where he’s gone,’ I said at last.

  ‘There he is,’ said Julian.

  And indeed it was George who appeared, as he remade his way across the long parking area, to have swapped his suit trousers for a natty pair of shorts, scarcely visible beneath his jacket.

  ‘I’ve never seen him wear those before,’ I said.

  ‘Wear what?’ said Julian. ‘I don’t want to worry you, Dig. But I don’t think he’s wearing anything at all.’

  As George got closer, it was clear that Julian was right. Our star was naked from the waist down and as I walked back to Lisa’s car he greeted the two of us jovially.

  ‘Had a bit of an accident,’ he said. ‘Haven’t shat myself in some time now. But I’ve had to dump most of my stuff in the hotel gents. IMPOSSIBLE [George still frequently talked in capitals] to get to the room in time.’

  This was awkward. The clean-up operation had not been entirely successful and tell-tale hints, both visual and sensory, lent vivid witness to the problem as George settled himself, as nature intended, into the back seat and our bizarre convoy began its journey.

  On arrival in Bury it was necessary to get George – semi-naked but gloriously unconcerned – into our guesthouse and cleaned up. I was perturbed; this was a new threat to us, though tales of George’s incontinence had echoed around the jazz scene for several years. One fan, back in the Feetwarmers days, had visited the men’s room only to find the star of the show chatting happily as he washed his underpants out in the basin.

  Lisa as ever was a tower of strength. Together we went shopping for new tracksuit trousers, towels and underwear, a crusade which took up most of the afternoon. Once the trip was complete, there was just time to re-equip our star, make for the theatre for a sound check and then hurry back for an all-too-brief sojourn in our accommodation before heading back to the theatre again for the show proper.

  George, delightfully, wasn’t worried at all, but I was. The problem – compounded by a day without my usual siesta – meant that I hit the stage rather too full of vodka for comfort and by the end of the night – after a show featuring a similarly inebriated George – I was both drunk and furious. A spat with drummer Bobby Worth fuelled my rage and – despite Lisa’s wise advice to ‘let it go’ – I galloped down the stairs to confront my star.

  ‘Damn it all, I’ve had enough. First you cover our car in shit. Then you get drunk! The show was bloody awful. Really I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing! Frankly, I’ve fucking well had enough.’

  George – to his credit – seldom lost his temper as I did that night and his responses were blurred but measured and conciliatory. But I couldn’t be comforted or pacified and slammed up to my room in a huff. ‘That’s it,’ I said to Lisa, who knew that when drunk I had a temper. As usual, she absorbed my anger with philosophic resignation, knowing that, come the morning, anger would have given way to alcoholic remorse.

  Which of course it did. By the journey home, George and I had become the best of friends again. But the gloves had come off and might well do so again: our honeymoon period had come to an end. I also began to understand why John Chilton had passed through his own ‘drinking days’ at one earlier point in his career. It was obvious that driving Mr Melly, as well as being his bandleader, produced its share of unscheduled complications as well as the ones I was getting used to.

  And John Chilton, so said George, had had temper tantrums too. On one occasion, after a sell-out concert at the Red Lion, Hatfield, the Feetwarmers had been refused a drink. ‘Oh,’ said John, ‘no drink, eh? Well, then, you won’t be needing these, will you?’ And with a grand sweep of his arm he had sent a barful of empty glasses crashing to the floor. Later on in his career John drank nothing stronger than tea.

  The big problem we faced now was that members of the Half-Dozen were less than willing to drive George to and from his concerts. Plainly the band fee of £50 was no longer enough for the new risks involved. Once again Lisa came to the rescue. She had had to have her car valeted following the Altringham altercation and contacted Diana Melly with whom she was good friends. An arrangement was made. From now on any driver who transported George would be paid a full £150 plus a proportion of his petrol costs. This was a huge improvement and much reduced the tension with which I had to face the business of delegating the driving chores. Including our concert fee (usually around £160), a member of the Half-Dozen could make over £300 for a night’s work, provided he was prepared to take the gamble of a Melly-induced back-seat crisis. And although a few members continued to abstain from offering their vehicles as transport facilities, Julian, Dominic, Craig, and later Nick Millward, remained happy and hospitable auto-hosts to their venerable guest.

  The actual crises thereafter were comparatively few, though in the months to come several members of the Half-Dozen answered the imperious call from the back seat requesting, ‘We have to stop – now!’ On a busy motorway where actually pulling over to stop was illegal, this could present problems, but on at least one occasion Craig was forced to the roadside while his passenger lowered everything below the waist at maximum speed to the bemused preoccupation of drivers passing at a similar rate. When George had to go, he had to go – and fast. On another occasion in Worcester – at less than five minutes to our destination in the middle of the busy town centre – Dominic and I were forced to plant ourselves at pavement-side while George, squatting on his seat with an open back door, turned ninety degrees to pee prolifically into another rolling river of shoppers engaged in Saturday-afternoon retail therapy. At one point, when such crises had come to a temporary halt, the Melly management proposed that our supplementary payment be confined to occasions on which emergency evacuations actually took place but – after much thought – I decided to remain firm, on the clear-and-present-danger principle.

  And what were we to call this increased wage? A week or so after its negotiation Lisa and I drove passed Watford Gap and – aficionados of rhyming slang that we were – the new rate would for ever after be known as ‘the Watford’ allowance.

  After Altringham and Bury, it was perhaps lucky that we had a month to refocus our thoughts, negotiate the Watford agreement and take things (a little) easier. For the first time since our first concert two years previously, work looked like steadying up a little. Nonetheless, as summer moved into autumn, we played both the Exeter Jazz Festival and luxurious Waddesdon Festival on the Rothschild Estate where every musician was given a beautiful ornamental clock (in addition to a handsome fee) and where, in compensation, a large brandy and a beer cost £12.

  Meantime, I was still busy and working again with the Pizza All Stars, and on occasion
, George Webb’s legendary Dixielanders. Following a visit to the Guernsey Jazz Festival for good friend Trevor Cleveland, I toured the Channel Islands – Sark, Alderney and Jersey – with Craig Milverton and a new friend, bassist Bill Coleman, who doubled his brilliant bass playing with a long career as special-material writer for nationally known comedians and a long sojourn with the brilliant comedy rock group the Barron Knights. Bill’s routines were as funny as his bass playing was superb and he could easily be left on-stage to keep people amused for hours.

  ‘A man’s walking through the Pigalle in Paris late one night and a soft feminine voice whispers, “Excuse-moi, monsieur. How would you like soixante-neuf?”

  ‘“So what am I going to do with five dozen eggs at this time of night?”’

  By October we were busy again: Jack Higgins’s marvellous Giants of Jazz show was back on the road, visiting both the tiny Swan Theatre in High Wycombe and the magnificent Lowry Theatre in Salford and back to Royal Tunbridge Wells. Now that George knew he no longer had cancer he was back to his normal exhuberant form. Our journeys – now fortified with protective blankets, cushions and a select supply of sanitary underwear – remained hilarious (and untarnished by nature).

  At the end of November 2004 we returned to a packed Norwich Playhouse, then flew to Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow for a three-night tour of Scotland with Chris Barber’s band. It was on this trip that I got to know Chris: a master of bandleading who gave me useful tips about our presentation (‘Some of the numbers a bit long perhaps?’) and taught me an invaluable bit of domestic knowhow – always put the milk in after the boiling water has hit the teabag.

  Then, following a charming trip to the tiny St Donat’s Arts Centre in Wales, it was time to buckle our belts for our second sell-out Ronnie’s season – Monday, 13 December through to New Year’s Day with just three days off to be with family and friends – Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This time Craig and I stayed at the empty flat of a north London friend, Daphne Shoolman, ate well every day and spent most of the rest of the daylight hours reading, relaxing or just sleeping. For the second year, Ronnie’s was having its way with us. And top of the bill with Ray Gelato’s Giants in roaring support we were – in that good old jazz phrase – having ourselves a ball.