I went to Billy, who was by now working the audience.
‘Big Yin, the law approaches,’ I said. I pointed at the policemen, who were heading our way in a slow but purposeful manner.
‘I see them,’ said my pal, in a manner that suggested he was looking forward to the confrontation.
‘Billy, these guys don’t muck about. They’ll bang us up and you have a concert tomorrow night and we don’t need this kind of publicity,’ I said.
He looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Can you dance, Parky?’
I nodded.
‘Can you foxtrot?’ he asked.
I nodded again.
‘Can you dance the lady’s part?’
‘Anything you want to get out of here,’ I said. I started humming ‘Let’s face the music and dance’. I was singing ‘There may be trouble ahead . . .’ as I tried to steer my dancing partner to the car ahead of the police. We just about made it, mainly because the officers found it difficult to negotiate a road which, by now, was full of people doing the foxtrot.
The next night at the Sydney Opera House, Connolly gave one of his greatest performances. Certainly the best I have ever seen. He held the stage for nearly three hours, telling an audience, aching and weary with laughter, ‘I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is I have not finished with you yet. The bad news is they’ve just closed the car park.’ And they had, but no one seemed to care.
Watching him over the years, I have seen his style develop and mature as he grows older and more reflective. There were times when I glimpsed a secret sadness and when I asked about it he said, ‘One day I’ll tell you the story.’
In the end he told it to his wife Pamela who wrote a fascinating account of an abused child who became an alchemist, transforming grief to laughter. When they ask me what he is like, I always say Billy Connolly is many fascinating men, all worth knowing.
Comedians intrigue me. They have the toughest job in the world. I have lost count of the number of actors who have told me how much they envy the comic’s skill and nerve in commanding an audience. I grew up watching music-hall comedians Sandy Powell, Jimmy James, Albert Modley, Frank Randle and the like. Both Richard Drewett and, particularly, John Fisher shared my love for and fascination with funny men. John Fisher wrote a book entitled
Funny Way to Be a Hero
, which is a classic account of the great music-hall comedians of the twentieth century. He also wrote
Always Leave Them Laughing
, a biography of Tommy Cooper.
With most comedians you can detect the difference between the man and the performer. In other words, even though most comics are unable to resist the urge to make companions laugh over dinner or when playing golf – Jimmy Tarbuck is the classic example – there is still a difference between the amusing companion and the stage performer. With Tommy Cooper there was none. The Cooper on stage was the one you encountered in real life. I could never work out if he was one of the brightest men I ever met or the silliest.
Hearing that Tommy was to speak on my behalf at a Foyle’s Literary Lunch, Trevor Howard called me and said he would also make a speech if I would introduce him to Tommy. After the meal Howard and Cooper sat in a corner talking about their particular skills with Howard telling Cooper he thought he was a great actor.
This perplexed Cooper, who said, ‘I’m just playing myself.’
Howard would have none of it. He made the point that what actors did was interpret other peoples’ creations, but what Cooper had done, like Chaplin before him, was create a character any playwright would have been proud of, and brought it to life on stage.
I sat quietly listening, wishing I could have captured every moment on camera. While fascinated by Howard’s analysis of Cooper’s genius, I was still unable to decide whether Tommy’s apparent bafflement was real or play acting.
We eventually managed to get Tommy on to
Parkinson
in 1979. It was a Christmas special. Tommy was to top the bill in a packed show. He wasn’t an easy interviewee because he paid little attention to what you asked, preferring to steer the conversation into comfort zones where he could perform magic tricks or answer a question by putting on a silly hat. The finale was to be the famous guillotine illusion where I stick my head under the blade and Tommy pretends to chop it off.
In rehearsal he walked on wearing a fez. On the show he came on with a saucepan on his head. The conversation went:
ME:
‘What’s that you’ve got on your head?’
COOPER:
‘A bucket.’
ME:
‘That’s not a bucket, it’s a saucepan.’
COOPER, LOOKING SURPRISED:
‘Is it? I’ve got the wrong hat.’
This was the start of a memorable encounter. It went better than we dared hope until the guillotine illusion, which, I later learned, could have provided a spectacular and bloody finale to the show.
John Fisher, my producer, is a magician himself, a member of the Magic Circle, indeed a Gold Star Member, which means he knows how these things work. As I stuck my head in the guillotine, John, watching from the floor, suddenly saw that Tommy had forgotten to set the safety catch on the apparatus.
John wrote in his biography of Cooper: ‘We were only a few gags away from the moment when the blade would have fallen and seriously injured, if not worse, the talk-show host.’
John Palfreyman, Cooper’s technical assistant, managed to creep on set and put the catch into its proper position. I have often wondered, if the worst had happened, would the audience have laughed, as the people did when Tommy died on stage at the London Palladium.
Jimmy Tarbuck, who was hosting that show, said as soon as Tommy collapsed he knew he was dead. The curtains closed over Tommy’s body but left his feet sticking out in view of the audience who started laughing. They thought it was part of the act. His death rattle was picked up by the microphone. It sounded like the noise he made before saying ‘just like that’ and further deceived the audience into believing that what they were seeing was all part of Tommy’s act.
Jimmy Tarbuck, himself one of our finest stand-up comics and a good friend, was deeply affected by the experience. Like all comics, he held Tommy Cooper in something approaching awe. He said, ‘The thing about us comics is that we fall into categories; there are those who say funny things and those who do funny things. It’s a scheme to make people laugh. Tommy Cooper was the rarest comedian of the lot, a genuinely funny man off and on; he couldn’t help it, a total natural. There wasn’t another like him in my time and I doubt there ever will be.’
Eric Morecambe joked on the show about a near-death experience. He said when he suffered a heart attack and was lying on a stretcher in A & E, the man who had taken him to hospital and who had been told how serious his condition was, came to say goodbye. He said, ‘Do you think I could have your autograph . . . before you go?’
I have never seen a better double act than Eric and Ernie. We had them on the show with Raquel Welch, at the time possibly the most beautiful woman in movies. We wanted her to stay on after her interview and join in the talk with Eric and Ernie but her agent would have none of it. He didn’t want Eric looking at her ample bosom, adjusting his glasses, and asking, ‘Is it a fella?’ She was a sumptuous woman and I asked her if she had always been beautiful. She said it had taken a while before ‘the equipment’ arrived but when it did she began to ‘strut her stuff’.
When Eric and Ernie came on Eric said he wanted me to know that his equipment had never arrived, which probably accounted for the fact he’d never had any stuff to strut. Eric was responsible for delivering me a home truth. It came after Mary had accused me of having a boring dress sense and bought me a leather jacket, which she insisted made me look years younger.
I hated the thing but said I would wear it to the office and see what the reaction was before even considering appearing on television wearing the damned thing. So I sat through a meeting at the BBC wearing this smooth black number, convinced my team were being polite and holding back the sniggers. I finally escaped and headed for the lifts, eager to get home and burn the garment. The lift doors opened to reveal Eric Morecambe, who looked at me, did the trick with the glasses, and said in a loud voice, ‘Parky, you look like a tall wallet.’
We organised some classic reunions on the show. We brought together the
Beyond the Fringe
team of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and we reunited the Goons with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Ray Ellington in the studio and Spike Milligan fooling around in Australia.
On one trip to Australia I was staying at the same hotel as Harry and Spike and Billy Connolly.
‘I’d love to meet Spike. He’s one of my heroes,’ said Billy. I told Spike and we all arranged to have lunch. Spike and Billy hit it off and were soon swapping routines. After a couple of hours I was literally exhausted with laughter and could take no more. I went to the gents where I found Harry Secombe leaning against a stall, tears streaming down his face.
‘Can’t stand it. I’ve laughed so much I think I’m going to have a bloody heart attack,’ he said. We didn’t return. We didn’t have the energy. We left them to it. Two great funny men creating a duet of humour.
Spike was an unpredictable man. He suffered with depression and could be difficult, not to say impossible. He could also be generous and warm and wonderfully funny. I interviewed him many times, the best not on television but radio when I was doing a programme at LBC. It was a live show and, during a break, we were told that a strange man who said his name was Milligna, and that he was an unfortunate typing error, was at reception, and wanted to speak to me. What is more, Mr Milligna was wearing what looked like pyjamas under his overcoat.
When Spike arrived at the studio he explained he was recovering from a bout of depression in a nearby nursing home and, hearing me on the radio, thought he would come and have a chat. We put him on the show and he was brilliant.
Pete and Dud were regulars on the TV show. Like Tommy Cooper, Peter was destroyed by drink. I remember seeing them on stage performing
Behind the Fridge
and Dudley was literally holding Peter up and propelling him around the stage. It seemed to me Dudley was assured of his talent for music but less certain of his ability as a funny man compared to what he considered to be the wittier and more erudite of the Fringe team. In fact, in my view, he was the most talented popular entertainer of the lot. Few could resist his boyish attractive persona; none could deny his great talent as a musician. He was one of the best jazz pianists – certainly the most swinging – this country has produced.
He also had a wicked sense of humour. During the seventies my friend Douglas Hayward opened a restaurant in London called Burke’s. Now and again Dudley would come and play piano for the diners. One night I arrived late and a little drunk for a dinner party and Dudley was playing as I entered. At the end of his number he announced he was glad to see I had finally arrived, particularly as the audience should know that I was a better singer than an interviewer.
This was news to me as well as the audience.
Therefore, said my friend, he would like to invite me on stage to sing my favourite song which was ‘Moon River’. I like ‘Moon River’, indeed any song written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer has a lot going for it, but it wasn’t my favourite. I calculated I knew enough of the lyrics to get by and, in any event, was so emboldened by drink I frankly didn’t care. Dudley gave me that mischievous grin, suggested a key and away we went.
The first indication things were not as they should be was when he started mucking about with the key so I sounded worse than, in fact, I was. It was a bit like being accompanied by Les Dawson. I started to panic and looked in desperation to my pal. Again that lovely twinkly grin as he held my gaze and nodded toward the nearby tables. Still singing ‘Moon River’, I looked where he was indicating and there sat Andy Williams with his head in his hands.
30
WHY DO ACTORS DO IT ?
Peter Sellers said he would do a one-man show, provided we could have lunch and talk things through. Our meetings consisted of Peter talking in great detail about how he had fallen in love with various leading ladies, including Sophia Loren. He also spent a considerable time with Patricia Houlihan, one of our senior researchers, who reported that, while nervous, he seemed to be looking forward to the interview. He had never done a one-man interview and the research showed he had a fascinating story to tell. It was a big event. Sellers was a huge star. In Britain he had established an everlasting reputation because of
The Goon Show
and films such as
The Ladykillers
and
I’m All Right Jack
. In Hollywood he reached new heights of international stardom with
Dr Strangelove
, and by creating the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.
Come the eve of the show and I was called at home by Theo Cowan, a wonderful and funny man who was Peter’s press agent.
‘You will be aware that while my client possesses an incomparable talent, he can also behave in a reprehensible manner,’ he said. ‘Therefore I have to tell you he won’t be doing the show for reasons I don’t quite understand. I have tried to change his mind but he seems adamant. I give up. If you ring this number you may talk to him yourself. If a Chinaman answers take no notice. That will be my client pretending to be someone else, which he is very good at.’
I called the number and the Chinaman answered. After a minute or two he became Peters Sellers and said he couldn’t do the show because he didn’t like being interviewed and was too nervous to walk down the stairs. I said we had announced the show and that we didn’t have a replacement, so what did he suggest I tell the British public as they watched sixty minutes of blank screen. He said I didn’t understand. I said I was willing to be sympathetic if he told me the real reason for not appearing.