by Jon Pertwee
‘What the Hell kind of plane is that?’ I asked a trifle anxiously.
‘That,’ said Uncle Guy as if he had an ear to Hermann Goering himself, ‘that, my boy is Hitler’s new secret weapon.’
For months Hitler had been hinting that the war would take an abrupt swing in his favour once his devastating secret weapon had been put into operation. Thank Heavens, due to the accuracy of our coastal batteries, the skill of our pilots and the inaccuracy of the information supplied to German intelligence by the famous double agent ‘Garbo’, the effect of the V1s was nullified. But as a ‘terror’ weapon it succeeded admirably. When the ‘fluttering’ stopped, if you had any sense, so did you, and made for ground as quickly as possible, although once the engine had stopped the ungodly machine became completely unpredictable and glided every which way and that. Once, when I was walking up Regent Street with the great Australian comic actor Dick Bentley, a flying bomb stopped its engine over Piccadilly Circus and headed in a fast glide up the street we were on.
‘It’s only a suggestion, mind,’ Dick said. ‘But why don’t we take a left here and make our way with all speed to Bond Street?’
‘A good idea,’ I said as we turned and hurried up Vigo Street.
We had just got to the back entrance of the Albany when Dick looked over his shoulder to find to his dismay that the bomb had banked sharply to the left and was heading down towards us.
Jesus H. Christ,’ said Dick, upping the tempo of his steps, ‘the bloody bomb’s following us.’
We were showing a remarkable interest in a string of pearls in a Burlington Arcade jewellers when the bomb burst a quarter of a mile away in Bruton Street.
Within a few weeks the nerves of the city were jangling from the incessant stream of flying bombs raining down on us, and by now the even more alarming V2 rockets were landing on London. This was the only bomb that you heard coming down after it had exploded. If you didn’t hear it, you were probably dead. At the time of these raids I was sharing the flat with a Captain in the South African Army, painter D’Oyly-John, who like me was very anxious to survive the war, whose end at last seemed to be just over the horizon. My bathroom in Chester Row was constructed out of a coal cellar and made a perfect air-raid shelter. As soon as we heard the devilish fluttering of an approaching V1 we would cry out simultaneously, ‘I think I’m going to have a bath’ and would both rush headlong into the bathroom. Whosoever was first, jumped into the bath fully clothed while the other sat on the laundry basket until the bomb had gone on over or exploded. When we had friends in, the small cellar became somewhat reminiscent of the famous Marx Brothers scene in the ship’s cabin, and resulted in much hilarity. But behind all the laughter there lurked the desperate wish that by going to ground in this seemingly cowardly way one was in fact building up the odds against death, and improving the chance of surviving the six year war after all.
*
Over a drink one evening, a brother Naval Officer and I got involved in an argument concerning the British trait of letting extraordinary things unfold before them without batting an eyelid. I had, I told him, some months before, met a man in a pub who looked a dead ringer for Adolf Hitler, so I had asked the gentleman if I might take a photograph of him, as an evil idea was germinating in my mind. Taking the resulting photo to an expert in the field, I had an official Naval pass made out, in the name of the Fuhrer himself to which the aforementioned photo was neatly affixed.
Arriving at HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, the following week, in my capacity as a Security Officer of NID, I was challenged at the main gate by a sentry.
‘Can I see your pass please, sir?’
‘Mein Pass? Ja, Ja, natürlich,’ I said in an appalling cod German accent.
The sentry took the fake pass, studied it carefully, handed it back to me, and said, ‘Thank you very much, sir, do you know your way?’
‘Nein, but I’m sure zat if I vanted a guided tour of ze most secret parts of zis establishment, you vood be ze best man for ze job.’ It was only then that he began to look apprehensive. In retrospect, he must’ve looked a lot worse after the Commander’s report the next morning.
My Naval friend found the story hard to believe.
‘Oh come on! He must’ve seen that the photograph wasn’t you and would’ve recognised the name and Adolf’s picture as soon as he gave it a second look.’
So to prove the veracity of my belief that people can go temporarily blind, I dared him to join me in a little experiment, albeit one with a modicum of danger. The next morning saw the two of us walking slowly up Regent Street immaculately dressed by Monty Berman’s Theatrical Costumiers as two German Army Officers, with appropriate decorations, high leather boots, belts, side-arms, correctly badged caps, and in my case monocled a la Conrad Veidt. My point was proved to his complete satisfaction when we arrived at the top of Regent Street without once being stopped and questioned. Not only did we walk the whole street unmolested, but we had the honour of being smartly saluted by several members of His Majesty’s Forces, including a Junior Officer in the RAF, who did, I admit, give me a pretty funny look when I returned his salute by raising my palm backwards and upwards. In retrospect it was not a very good joke, for if we had been physically roughed up, we would’ve had no recourse whatsoever. But it had proved conclusively that if you are bold enough, you can play with impunity on the national characteristic of ‘not getting involved’, whether it be conscious or unconscious.
Years later when I first stepped into the street of Hampshire’s Braishfield village dressed and made-up as the scarecrow Worzel Gummidge with his carrot nose, corn eyebrows, warts, twigs, straw and cocky robin peeking from a hole in his pullover, several female villagers standing outside the general store answered my greeting (in Worzel’s quirky nasal voice) of ‘Good mornin’ ladies, lovely day fer scarin’ rooks’, by momentarily ceasing their tittle-tattle, turning towards me and saying, without any reaction whatsoever to the uniquely ugly figure standing before them, ‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’ And with that, they turned from me and continued with their gossiping, seemingly unaware anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
During my time with NID I had to attend many official cocktail parties and receptions. Standing in the line with my invitation card was frequently embarrassing, as somehow I always seemed to follow the nobs.
‘The Duke and Duchess of Sunderland,’ the Redcoat would announce, ‘Lord and Lady Anthill!’
‘The Prime Minister of Uganda, Mr Limpopo, RSC, DOF!’
‘Brigadier General Sir Harold Farnsbarnes, VC, DSO.’
And then as if a nasty smell was synonymous with my name, he would announce with distaste, ‘Lieutenant Pertwit!’
On one wonderful occasion, a most eminent member of the Royal Air Force preceded me, and was desperately fumbling in his pockets for something.
‘I’m so sorry, but I seem to have mislaid my invitation card,’ he said to the Master of Ceremonies.
‘That’s quate all right, sir. Can I have your name, please?
‘Of course, it’s Air Chief Marshall Henry Robert Moore Brooke-Popham, GCVO, CB, KCB, CMG, DSO, AFC.’
The MC looked stunned.
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Would you mind repeating that?’
‘Certainly. Air Chief Marshall Henry Robert Moore Brooke-Popham, GCVO, CB, KCB, CMG, DSO, AFC.’
The MC’s jaw dropped fractionally, and he seemed to have suddenly contracted Bright’s Disease, for his eyes were popping out of his head. Taking a deep breath and raising his eyes to Heaven, he bellowed, ‘Air Pophaml!’
The net result of this diminution of the Air Chief Marshall’s name and title was my hurried dash from the room to avoid a vulgar display of hysteria being seen in public!
*
Harold Warrender was a big brown bear of a man whose small round mouth when angry would emit air as if from a blow-hole. When our CO was away, Harold, being the next Senior Officer, took over and instantly assumed the mantle of Captain Bligh. For some re
ason I became his Fletcher Christian. It was ‘Pertwee do this’ and ‘Pertwee do that’, as if I was still on the lower deck and not a brother Officer of almost equal rank. One day I entered the office and said, ‘Oh Harold, I wonder –’ His withering glance stopped me dead in my tracks. ‘I am your Commanding Officer, Pertwee. You will kindly address me correctly and call me “sir”!’
He must be jesting, I thought. He was a Lieutenant and I a Sub-Lieutenant, not enough seniority to warrant addressing him as ‘sir’, except perhaps when on duty and within the hearing of ratings.
‘You are joking aren’t you?’ I said. ‘You can’t possibly be serious.’ If he was, our future Prime Minister had better look to his laurels and stop calling me ‘mate’.
‘I am very serious’ he replied.
‘But why only me?’ I noticed his ruling did not seem to apply to others in the section, including Able Seaman Jim Callaghan.
‘Because, Pertwee,’ ‘Sir’ went on, ‘you strike me as being the type of young man, that if I gave you an inch, you would take a mile.’
It was a strange quirk of fate that nine months later brought Lieutenant Warrender before me as my possible assistant, when I was also a Lieutenant and Number Two in the Naval Broadcasting Section.
‘My dear old Jon,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
He was a sitting duck – ‘I’m very well, thank you, Warrender, but if we are to have any sort of rapport in the future, as your Senior Officer I shall expect you to address me correctly by calling me “sir”.’
He had a short memory for an actor and didn’t seem to get the irony of my remark.
‘Why on earth should I call you “Sir”?’ he asked, falling right into the trap.
‘Because,’ I said with schoolboy glee, ‘apart from anything else, you strike me as being the type of young man, that is so slow off the mark that if I gave you a mile you’d only take an inch!’
It was only then that the penny dropped, and with an embarrassed grin of his little O, he slunk his six foot plus frame out of my office. From then on we had a very good working relationship and continued working happily together on the radio for several years after the war.
*
It was my six years on both the lower and the upper decks of the Navy that gave me the background experience of Navy life and humour that was to prove so invaluable to me years later, when, on being offered a radio series by the BBC, I persuaded them to allow me to do one about the Navy.
My experience, in turn, became a priceless asset to Lawrie Wyman, and later George Evans, who used me as a ‘sounding board’ for information, ideas and anecdotes when they wrote what was to become the highly successful radio show, The Navy Lark.
Chapter Ten
In 1958, Michael Standing, who was then Head of Programmes for BBC Radio, sent for me and intimated that the BBC would like me to do a new radio series for them.
‘Splendid,’ I said. ‘What ideas have you got?’
He told me and I was frankly unimpressed, but being the perspicacious man he was, he said, ‘All right, Jon. What ideas have you got?’
I had been thinking for quite sometime that the war had been over long enough, now, for a new Services show on radio. After all, The Army Game was doing very well on ITV and Sergeant Bilko was getting enormous figures on BBC Television. It was surely time for radio to jump on the band wagon, I said.
‘I agree,’ he replied. ‘What service had you in mind?’
‘The Royal Navy,’ I said promptly, and the Royal Navy it was!
The next step was to find a producer for the show, and Michael introduced me to Alastair Scott-Johnston, with whom I had already worked on such successful ‘one-off’ radio spot shows as Vic Oliver’s Variety Playhouse and London Lights. Alastair was an excellent choice, for he knew his comedy backwards, and how he handled our extremely self-willed cast, seemingly without any undue effort, for the next eighteen years is still beyond my comprehension.
Alastair was the author of the ‘W’ Plan, an original theory on how situation comedy writing should be constructively tackled. You aimed for certain ‘peaks’, and it worked like this. First, you started at the top, the first peak of the ‘W’ with a very funny scene to grab your audience and get them hooked. Then you slackened off a little to get the point of the story over, then back should come your laughs to take you to the peak of the middle of the ‘W’.
With your audience now thoroughly ‘with’ the show, you could afford to let them simmer down a little, because unless you are careful an audience can laugh itself out. Then penultimately, back you come to the final peak of the ‘W’ where, if you’ve done your job properly, the audience should be hysterical with laughter and falling out of their seats. The denouement should be short and to the point, to let the audience come down to earth, and, you hope, leave the studio saying what a thundering good show it was and could they come back next week!
Alastair suggested a writer by the name of Lawrie Wyman. Lawrie was highly experienced, and at the time was writing for various shows in one of many small offices in Light Entertainment’s Aeolian Hall, which were known in the trade as ‘horse-boxes’. Lawrie’s first job, therefore, was to write a pilot of the show to ‘sell’ to Michael Standing, so I just sat back and awaited results.
Now the curious thing was, that if it had been left up to Lawrie The Navy Lark would never have seen the dust and death-watch beetles of the BBC archives. For some unknown reason, after his meeting with Alastair and me, Lawrie sat reluctantly at his typewriter and proceeded to write a script with about as much humour in it as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This done, he sent it off and forgot all about it. The redoubtable Alastair, casting his experienced eye over the uninspired script, completely re-wrote it. That done, he popped it into Michael Standing’s ‘In’ tray, and then he, too, sat back and waited.
Like the late Sir Noel Coward and many others in our precarious and insecure profession, I have what Sir Noel calls in his Diaries ‘An unworthy and sordid preoccupation with money’. So a few weeks later, having heard nothing from the BBC, I was to be found sitting in my flat in Chester Row, totting up how much I had to cosset me from starvation from my Insurance Policies, and looking back over my shoulder to see if the Ghost of Unemployment Past was chasing me, once again.
I remember it was around 3:15 when a cock-a-hoop Alastair Scott-Johnston rang me. Most BBC radio producers rang before one o’clock and after three o’clock, because in the great days of steam radio, during those two intervening hours, they could almost always be found taking a glass in the Grosvenor Arms pub, just round the corner from the Aeolian Hall.
The Grosvenor in those days was the focal point of radio. Writers, producers, agents and artists met there to discuss new ideas and formats for shows. Many of the legendary successes were born or developed there, like Life With The Lyons with Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, Take It From Here with June Whitfield, Jimmy Edwards and Dick Bentley, ’Ancock’s ’Arf-hour, The Arthur Haynes Show, ITMA and many more.
I picked up the phone.
‘Yes?’
‘Is that you, Jon?’
‘Yes, Alastair.’
‘It’s on! Auntie has commissioned a pilot script! Isn’t that marvellous?’
It was indeed marvellous, for that pilot script of The Navy Lark gave rise to radio’s longest-ever running situation comedy show, either side of the Atlantic. Destined to sail over the BBC’s sound waves for more than eighteen years!
‘Congratulations, Alastair,’ I said, ‘that’s great! Does Lawrie know?’
‘I’m going to phone him now,’ he said, and rang off.
Apparently the Scott Johnston-Lawrie Wyman telephone conversation went something like this . . .
‘Hello, is that you, Lawrie?’
‘Yes, Alastair.’
‘Great news! The Beeb have commissioned “The Navy Lark!”’
(Sotto) ‘Sod it!’
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘I said great! Great!’
‘Funnily enough, Alastair, I’ve already got one!’
‘That’s what you think,’ said Alastair, a trifle smugly.
When it came to casting, I told Alastair that I would like at least two names comparable with mine, because anything I’d ever done before that was a ‘Team Show’, had always succeeded. A lot of actors make the mistake of trying to do everything themselves. And there were certain stars who refused to have actors of equal stature anywhere near them. Sir Donald Wolfit was one of those utterly averse to any competition whatsoever.
Alastair agreed and suggested stage and filmstar Leslie Phillips to play the idiotic Sub-Lieutenant, and Dennis Price, comedy star of British films as the superior and suave Captain of HMS Troutbridge.
Our fictitious HMS Troutbridge, as a mark of esteem was later officially made a sister ship to HMS Trowbridge, an actual frigate in the Royal Navy, and once captained by my cousin James Pertwee who provided us with endless factual material.
The supporting character actors in the show, who played all the extra male parts, were not as well-known then as we three, but all future stars in their own right.
They were Ronnie Barker, the late Michael Bates, and Tenniel Evans, and they each turned in memorable cameo performances with an incredible and bewildering display of voice variation.