I also heard that she could turn someone upside down on the stage and my producer, Peter Duncan, said, ‘Well, you’d better go along and see if she can.’
So I went on the stage at the Chiswick Empire, with this result:
[Tape recording]
Brian: ‘Now, I challenge you to lift me now in front of all these people. Will you?’
Joan: ‘Here we go then. OK?’
Brian: ‘Well now, she is just putting her hand under my knee and she has got her arm round my waist and she’s lifting me up … Ooh! Ow! … [thump] … She’s dropped me! We didn’t do that in rehearsal. What are we going to do about it?’
Joan: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, that one is from Peter Duncan.’
Brian: ‘Oh, is it! Thank you very much, Peter. Well now, I’ll give you one more chance to do it, and do it properly this time. My kidneys aren’t what they were. Right, well now she is doing it again. Her arms are underneath my legs, she’s round my waist and my head is down now. I’m looking right up at the ceiling and …Oh! … [sound of money falling on the stage] … All my week’s wages have gone!’
[Laughter]
‘I’m in a terrible state here. The blood is rushing to my head. Now, can you hold me a bit longer, Joan? I can see the roof up there, the light is shining in my eyes. I absolutely agree you can lift a man of fourteen and a half stone. I plead for mercy. Spare me! Get me up! Help!’
[More laughter and applause]
The things people asked me to do! Someone once said, ‘Why don’t you jump off Nelson’s Column with an umbrella as a parachute?’ which I didn’t think was a good idea.
One man did make me do something, where I was so frightened you could hear my heart beating like a huge drum. He was called Joe Hitchcock and he was the News of the World darts champion for three years running. He used to do an act in a pub with six-inch nails – very sharp. He had a stooge who would stand about six feet away with his back to him and he’d have a cigarette sticking out of his ear. Joe would throw a nail and knock the cigarette out.
Then he’d turn sideways and balance a penny on his nose and Joe would hit it with the nail. Luckily it wouldn’t work on my nose! They challenged me to try it and I said I would agree to the cigarette trick. We put the microphone against my heart and it was pounding like mad. Joe missed deliberately once or twice, but he got it in the end. What a mad thing to have done! If he’d missed by just a little, it would have gone through the back of my head. I was absolutely terrified.
After that I found a chap called Mad Johnny Davis. He used to do stunts on motorbikes and he said to me, ‘I do a thing where I charge across a field for about a hundred yards and I go through a pyramid of barrels about eight feet high. It’s quite safe, I do it regularly. You come on the pillion behind me and we’ll broadcast.’
So this is what it sounded like:
[Tape recording]
Johnny: ‘OK, Brian?’
Brian: ‘Yes, all right, Johnny. I’ve got my head down. I’m leaning forward into Johnny and we are going up about a hundred yards away to have a run at these barrels. We’re going up now and I am clinging on and I can promise you it’s the most frightening of anything I have done.
‘He is just turning round to get into the straight to run at these barrels. I can see them in the distance, a white pyramid, and we’re off! We’re going off now … twenty, thirty miles an hour, I should say. The barrels are coming … about ten yards away. Hang on! Here we go … [crash] … Oohwoah! We’re through all right!’
Well, I was all right, because I tell you he was an expert. But it was rather frightening.
Finally, because I think it is interesting, it wasn’t until 1949 that the lights came up in Piccadilly Circus. They had to repair them, I think, and the London County Council said we could broadcast it live on In Town Tonight in our Saturday night programme. So I went out on the balcony of the Criterion at Piccadilly Circus and looked down on the crowds all around Eros’s statue, and this is what it sounded like:
[Tape recording]
Brian: ‘I expect many of us during the war, when we dreamed of this sight, were cheered up by a certain song called “I’m Going to Get Lit Up When the Lights Go Up in London”. Well now, on this balcony with me, not only have we got Hubert Gregg, the chap who wrote it, but on my right, complete in top hat, white tie and tails, we’ve got the girl he wrote it for and who sang it. Zoe Gail.
‘Now Zoe, you’re going to sing the song in a second … [cheers] … you can hear the crowd now – but just before, we want one or two more lights to come up. Would you like to try a little bit of magic?’
Zoe: ‘Oh, I always wanted to be a magician. Now let me think of something original. Hey presto! Abracadabra! Let the lights go up in London!’
[Roar from the crowd]
Brian: ‘And, my goodness, it worked! In front of me now I see some of the signs you all know so well. There’s a clock over there which tells you it’s time for something [the Guinness clock]. There’s a big sign there with eight-foot letters – the oldest sign on the buildings in Piccadilly Circus. The stars are shooting up, there are rockets, different coloured lights, white, yellow, it’s marvellous. Well now, Zoe, let’s have the song. What about it?’
[A piano starts to play]
Zoe: ‘Oh, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for for years … [she begins to sing] … I’m going to get lit up when the lights go up in London …’
Well that was quite an occasion and I hope you noticed the little ‘deliberate mistake’ by the commentator. I said, ‘There’s a clock there which tells you it’s time for something.’ What the …? It’s an interesting point, because that was live and if it had been recorded, they would have said, ‘Do it again.’ But that went out, so these little slips did occur.
Before we all have a drink, can I just tell you a little bit about Down Your Way? This programme ran from 1946 up to 1987, in the format in which I did it. Since then it has changed. But the idea was to go to a city, a town or a village – a hamlet, even – and interview six people. We would find out the history of the place, what it made in the way of industry, any unusual hobbies, the annual ceremonies (if there were any) and all the old traditions, and we would talk to the local characters.
It started in 1946 and Stewart MacPherson, the boxing commentator, did the first twelve programmes. In those days, they didn’t arrange it with people beforehand, they used to get a list from the Post Office. They did streets in London for the first twelve, and they would look down the list and say, ‘We’ll go to number five,’ or wherever.
After Stewart had done eleven programmes, he was going down one street in London and said, ‘Let’s try number four – Mrs Wilson,’ and knocked on the door of this house. A huge man came to the door and Stewart said, ‘Is Mrs Wilson in?’
And this chap said, ‘Ah! You’re the chap who’s been after my missus,’ and slugged him one!
So he decided to stick to boxing. It was safer! Then dear old Richard Dimbleby did three hundred of them, until he got too busy on television. After him, Franklin Englemann, whom we called Jingle, took over and he did seven hundred and thirty-three over twenty-two years, which is a long time, but he didn’t do every week of the year. He did about forty each year and did other programmes as well.
Alas, he recorded one on a Wednesday afternoon, went back home and died that night. That programme went out on the following Sunday, but they never had any spares. So the next week, someone would have to go and record another programme. And I suppose you could say I was lucky, because I was walking down a corridor at Broadcasting House and someone popped their head out from an office and said, ‘Did you hear about poor Jingle? He’s died. Someone’s got to record his programme next week. Would you like to do Down Your Way?’ And I did it for the next fifteen years!
I did the same number as Franklin Englemann – seven hundred and thirty-three – because I copied exactly what Johnny Francome had done with Peter Scudamore. In 1982, Peter Scudamore
was way ahead with the number of winners in the steeplechase jockey table, when he fell off and broke his collar-bone and couldn’t ride for the rest of the season.
Johnny Francome gradually drew level with him and one afternoon, when he realised that he had the same number of winners, he threw away his whip and his saddle and said, ‘I’m not riding anymore – poor old Peter can do nothing about it in hospital. We’ll finish level.’
I thought I would do the same with Jingle, because he was up there [points to heaven] and couldn’t do any more. I chose my last one to be at Lord’s and they did me proud. I remember walking into the ground that morning and on the scoreboard was seven hundred and thirty-three not out. That’s the highest score ever registered on the Grandstand scoreboard. Any cricket buff will know, the highest genuine score was seven hundred and twenty-nine for six by Australia in 1930, when Bradman made two hundred and fifty-four, but mine was the highest!
It was a great programme to do, because you read in the paper about awful things like famine and rape and bombings, and all the stuff that goes on around the world. But if you came around Great Britain with me, as I did for fifteen years, you’d realise what a marvellous nation we are.
Everybody in every place seemed to be doing things for other people; they can be official bodies like the Round Table, Rotary or Lions, but also the Women’s Institute, Mothers’ Union, Help the Aged, Meals on Wheels – all these people are doing things for other people. It’s good news, but it doesn’t ever get in the papers. So we are a marvellous nation and I was very lucky to meet so many of them.
I have got one or two favourites. My favourite was someone called Mrs Emily Brewster. She was in Radcliffe-on-Trent and she had just reached a hundred. I went to see her after her birthday and she was surrounded by great grandchildren. I said, ‘Did you have a good birthday, Mrs Brewster?’
‘Yes, a very good birthday, thank you.’
‘Did you get a telegram from the Queen?’
‘Yes, I did, but I was a bit disappointed.’
‘Disappointed?’ I said. ‘With a telegram from the Queen?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t in her own handwriting!’
I visited a lovely lady in Penkridge in Staffordshire. She was aged eighty-five and still delivering milk every day. She lived in an old farmhouse and she said to me (and this to me is astonishing) that she had never slept a single night of her life outside that house. She had been on a day trip to Great Yarmouth and a day trip to London, but every night she would come back. When you consider how we all rush about the place nowadays and stay away on holidays, that was remarkable.
There was this man down in Usk in Wales. He told me that at the beginning of the war he was sent to India to look after the mules in a regiment out there. He was a vegetarian, and he knew you don’t eat the green stuff if you can help it in India, so he thought he would take some packets of mustard and cress seeds. He took hundreds of packets and after he had spent a hot day with the mules he used to take off his wellies, put some mustard and cress seeds in the bottom and go to sleep. And in the morning he would have mustard and cress for breakfast!
I can’t help it. That’s what he told me and I’m sure it’s true.
I interviewed a lovely chap at Biggleswade and he had a ferret down his trousers while I was talking to him. He did give me one big tip. If ever you want to put a ferret down your trousers, make sure it’s the male. He’s all right, but if it’s the female – it’s ‘gobble time’, he tells me!
That’s a good tip. You’re never likely to do it, but you never know. And I interviewed a rat catcher at Stockport. He was a very well-known rat catcher. He caught all the local rats but if he saw a particularly fine specimen of rat, he would keep it alive, take it to the vet to have it inoculated and put it in a cage in his garden. When I went, there were a hundred brown rats in there. He used to use them for films, for scenes in sewers and so on. While I was interviewing him, a rat was running all over him. Euggh! Awful!
And then the things people collect. There was a man at Tenterden in Kent who collected prams. He had three hundred and twenty-nine prams in his garden or in his house: two wheelers, four wheelers, some with hoods and some not. I went up to his bedroom and there were prams all in his bedroom too. He said, ‘Sadly, my wife has died.’
I nearly said, ‘Well, I don’t blame her!’
Another man in Sussex collected pipes. He had twenty thousand pipes and I saw them all – unbelievable. A man up in Cumberland collected bottles. He had eight thousand bottles of all different descriptions and people came from all over the world to see them.
So you met all these interesting people and you never really knew if someone was going to tell you a funny story or not. I interviewed a dentist once and I said afterwards, ‘You didn’t tell me a story.’
‘No, I had one,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t like to tell you in case it wasn’t good enough.’
So I said, ‘What was it?’
‘Well,’ said the dentist, ‘an old lady came to have her teeth filled recently and I got the drill up to her mouth but had to withdraw it quickly. I said, “Excuse me, madam. Do you realise your right hand is gripping me in a very painful place?”
‘And she said, “Yes, we’re not going to hurt each other, are we?”’
Finally, someone who did tell me a good story once was the Archbishop of York. I had interviewed him when we did York Minster and I was in his palace at Bishopthorpe, when he said, ‘Let’s have a glass of sherry and I’ll tell you a story.’
Marvellous, I thought, from an Archbishop.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you remember when Our Lord and Moses were negotiating about the Commandments? They went up on to Mount Sinai for seven days and seven nights, working out the Commandments. On the eighth morning, Moses came down the side of the mountain and he said, “Gather round, multitudes, gather round. I’ve got two bits of news about the Commandments. One good, one bad.”
‘They said, “Let’s have the good news first, Moses.”
‘“Right,” he said, “the good news is, we’ve got them down to ten,” and there was loud applause.
‘“What about the bad news?” they said.
‘“Oh,” said Moses, “the bad news is that adultery is still in!”’
I must tell you one thing that happened. We were going to Brinsworth House in Twickenham, which is where all the old actors and variety artists go in their old age. It is a marvellous place and that is what the Royal Variety Performance is always in aid of. We were going to spend the whole day there and we arrived, going through Richmond, at about ten o’clock.
There was a policeman standing at the crossroads and I said, ‘Can you show me the way to Brinsworth House?’
He said, ‘Certainly, sir. Go up there, first right, second left, take the right fork, go across the traffic lights and it’s up there about two hundred yards on your right.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said and, believe it or not, I remembered all that and we got there. We did the programme and finished about four o’clock and came back. When we came through Richmond, the same policeman – I hope he’d had lunch – was standing at the same place. I just couldn’t resist it. I wound down my window and said, ‘Officer, did you say first left or second left?’
Now, we always asked people for bits of music, which were then slotted in between the interviews, which was why the programme had to be recorded. You couldn’t do it live, because people always had whatever music they wanted, and we couldn’t carry a thousand records around with us. The producer had to go back and find the records at the BBC and then slot them in.
The interviewees took great pride in what they chose and they always answered very quickly, except for one man, Richard Booth, who was in Hay-on-Wye. If you’ve never been there, it’s on the Herefordshire/Welsh border and it is a book town. Richard started six second-hand bookshops and there are millions of books on any subject you want – bridge, gardening – he has about five hundred boo
ks on every topic.
So he was a bit eccentric. He lived in a ruined castle and declared UDI on behalf of Hay-on-Wye and sent out ambassadors to places. He was a bit dotty! Anyhow, I interviewed him about his books and then asked him for a piece of music. Unfortunately, he caught my eye and got the giggles and took rather a long time to get out what he wanted. Like this:
[Tape recording]
Brian: ‘Right, Richard, now we want a piece of music. I don’t know what your taste is in that direction?’
Richard: ‘I would like … er, “Golden Years” …’ [starts to giggle]
Brian: ‘Right, Richard, now we want a piece of music from you. I don’t know what your taste is in that direction?’
Richard [laughs]: ‘I don’t know …!’
Brian: ‘Right, Richard, now we want a piece of music from you. I don’t know what your taste is in that direction?’
Richard [splutters]: ‘Erm …’
Brian [now he’s got the giggles too]: ‘Don’t look at me!’
An Evening with Johnners Page 5