by Jon Pertwee
‘Let’s move it on out,’ said Ronnie, our now dead-eyed, green-faced leader.
‘Vous êtes anglais? cried French persons crawling out of the woodwork. ‘Venez prendre un petit coup.’
At that we were whisked into a barn, where as if by magic several bottles of calvados appeared and the party began. If you think I’ve said all that before, you’re right, and I’ll say it again and again and again. For as soon as our Union Jack was sighted that is precisely what happened at practically every farm house we stopped at. The only difference being that this time, most of us were careful not to insult the young ladies by lack of ‘gentlemanly’ attention.
Early one morning a Major in the field security police and a Commander from NID ran us to earth. They wanted to know how we were getting on and if we were gleaning anything of interest from the French.
‘Oh yes, indeed sir, yes indeed,’ said a bleary-eyed Captain Ronnie, the previous murrain of pustules upon his face now miraculously gone. ‘But we’ve been having terrible trouble with the recording equipment. Practically every interview to date is US so we’ll have to start all over again.’ It was just as well that our visitors never heard what little we had recorded, for I’m certain the background of the interviews would’ve been liberally interspersed with shouts of ‘Vive les Anglais. Prenez un autre, mon cher, servez-vous! servez-vous!! All we have is yours.’ Followed quickly by Gallic cries of ‘Stop that, you naughty boy’, or conversely, ‘Don’t stop, you naughty boy.’ It was a riotous trip, utterly useless, of course, but wonderful for public relations. We returned home, laden with gifts for our loved ones, and modestly prepared to receive their plaudits, for our valiance and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
My father was a great lover of cheese, so my gift to him was a two-foot high Brie, packed between two sheets of straw and two pieces of three-ply wood. He and my step-mother Kitty were out when I delivered it to their flat in Cottesmore Court, Kensington, so I put it in a narrow gun-cupboard in the hall and told the cleaning lady, who had let me in, to be sure to tell my father, that there was a two-foot high cheese in there. It was about six weeks before I got a chance to go there again and when I did it was to make a startling discovery.
‘Hello, Dad, etc. etc. How did you enjoy the cheese I left for you?’
‘What cheese?’
‘The cheese I put in the gun-cupboard, the Brie.’
‘My God! So that’s what the smell was,’ said my father. We advanced to the cupboard filled with dread at what we might discover. There it wasn’t. The two pieces of wood were, so also was the straw, but of the cheese there was no sign. Like any ripe Brie is wont to do, it had moved irrevocably on. For when a Brie gets over ripe, it melts, and left on its side will run completely away leaving only two pieces of wood, two sheets of straw and a crusty rind. Mine had behaved true to form and had, on its onward march, found its way through the cracks in the floor boards.
‘The smell has been diabolical,’ said my father. ‘But it didn’t seem to come from that cupboard at all, rather from under the sitting-room floor.’
He was probably right, as the cheese would’ve passed through that area on its stinking peregrination.
‘We even called in the ARP wardens to inspect the roof’ (their flat was on the top floor) ‘in case there was a decomposing corpse up there.’
It seems that the cleaning lady had also moved irrevocably on, and had neglected to tell my father of the cheese’s existence, let alone its whereabouts, before she left for doorsteps new.
One day in 1945 Kim Peacock sent me to the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly where a certain Lieutenant Eric Barker RNVR was to record his Naval version of Mediterranean Merry-Go-Round, the other two versions being performed by Army and RAF casts. Stationed in Lowestoft, Lieutenant Barker would come down to London with his wife, WRN Pearl Hackney, and Petty Officer George Crow and his Blue Mariners Dance Band, which featured one of the world’s greatest saxophonists, Petty Officer Freddie Gardiner. Now it seemed that Lieutenant Barker was going a bit over the top with some of his political jibes and jokes, so in order to get an official report on his verbal shenanigans, my CO duly dispatched me to find out if there was any truth in the allegations.
Sitting in the gloom at the back of the pit, I heard Eric Barker ask, ‘Where’s Lieutenant Nelson-Burton?’ (now a successful Director of television and films in the USA.)
‘Sorry but he can’t get here today, Eric, he’s on duty.’
‘Can’t get here? Then who’s going to shout out the lines from the audience?
My hand shot up. ‘I will,’ I cried.
‘Who said that?’ said Eric, shielding his eyes from the spotlights’ glare as he peered into the darkness.
‘Me, Mr Barker.’
‘Who is me?’
‘Er – Lieutenant Pertwee.’
‘What are you doing here, Lieutenant?’
‘Oh, I’m a spy,’ I said.
‘And very nice too,’ said Eric. ‘But who exactly are you spying on?’
‘You, sir, I’ve been sent down from Admiralty to check on the veracity of several complaints made against you.’
‘Me? What am I supposed to have done?’
‘Upset members of His Majesty’s Government by your insensitive barbs,’ I replied. ‘But I’ll tell you what, if you let me shout out those lines from the audience, my report about you will be as pure white as snowdrops from a Mother Superior’s garden.’
‘OK, Lieutenant you’re on,’ said Eric. ‘Incidentally are you related to Roland Pertwee?’
‘Yes, sir, son.’
‘Then you better be good, son, because your father is a man of real talent.’
Eric and Pearl were arguing and Pearl was definitely getting the best of it. This was where I came in. Leaping to my feet from my place in the stalls I delivered the first comedy line of a career on radio that was to span forty years.
‘Why don’t you leave ’im alone?’ I shouted to Pearl in raucous cockney. ‘You’re always pickin’ on the poor perisher.’
‘Who on earth is that?’ asked a bewildered Pearl Hackney, after my first laugh on radio had died down.
‘That?’ said Eric. ‘Oh, that’s the Minister of Education.’
This was precisely the type of joke that I had been sent down to report on and prevent, for the incumbent Minister of Education was a badly disguised cockney to the core. But I was as good as my word and reported Lieutenant Barker’s script as smelling only of violets.
‘Can you come back in three weeks?’ asked Eric. ‘I think we can find a place for you on our team!’
Every actor throughout history has waited for his break and this really was mine. Three weeks later I joined the cast and remained with Eric for the next five years, playing dozens of characters in both Merry-Go-Round and later in the top-rated civilian spin-off Waterlogged Spa.
Some that you may remember were Svenson the Norwegian seaman, who only ever said, ‘Er-yaydon yowdon yaydon, neggerdi-crop dibombit.’
This was a regularly repeated line I had taken from the world news at nine o’clock. ‘And here,’ the announcer used to say, ‘is the news in Norwegian, ‘Er yaydon yowdon yaydow neggerdicrop dibombit . . .’ etc. etc.
Which, as I understood it, had something to do with bombing and air raids. But no Norwegian I ever encountered, even though I will swear to its accuracy, could make any sense of it.
The years of ‘44 and ‘45 heard the beginning of the radio catchphrase, and all over the UK people were repeating my characters’ phrases. Like the bugler from Plymouth Barracks with his ‘Buglin’ buglin’ the ’ole time buglin’.’ The nervous and stuttering Mr Cook and his ‘Dabra-dabra-dabra, that’s right, yes!’ The schizophrenic efficiency expert Robin Fly, who on hearing music immediately changed from a hard ultra-efficient machine, to a fey, musing fairy, eulogising about his Nanny with his ‘Ah, music.’
Lord Waterlogged’s daughter, the honourable Phoeb’s ‘affianced’, Mr Wetherby Wett. Th
e security-conscious Commander High-Price, late of the secret service: ‘Hush, keep it dark!’
And the best known of the lot ‘The Postman’ of Waterlogged Spa, who always finished up saying, ‘Well, what does it matter what you do, as long as you tear ’em up?’
They were great days, those early days of steam radio, and were my stepping stone to bigger and better things. For this I thank most sincerely my mentor Eric Barker. He was a brilliant writer, broadcaster and film actor with an immense future before him. Tragically, he was incapacitated by a stroke and forced into an early retirement.
If it was not for him and the ‘break’ that he gave me, I would in all probability still be a jobbing actor.
*
When I first began to write this book, I felt apprehensive, for although I have done many things in my life, writing about them, with the hopeful prospect of entertaining you, was something entirely new to me and seemed an awesome task. Memory is notoriously unreliable and I was convinced that sooner or later it would let me down. The early years of my life seemed vague and blurry and apart from a few fading photographs and some old scrapbooks I had little to connect me with the past. So, after due deliberation, I decided to skim through my childhood and adolescence and embark as quickly as possible on the far safer subject of my 47 year career in the theatre. I would tell of my extensive and adventurous travels around the world; of my encounters with the famous, the infamous and the eccentric; of love and marriage; of sport, motor-racing, hydroplane racing, sub-aqua diving, the starting of water skiing; my days in Ibiza before it became the Fourth Reich.
But to my surprise, as I forced my memory back over my early life, I discovered that one recollection sparked off another and yet another long forgotten incident. It was like splitting the atom of memory. Suddenly back came people, places and events that I had buried long, long ago among the jumble of my mind. Self-indulgently I travelled back through time and rediscovered my early years. And I found that I had written 200 pages about the period I had intended to skim through. Before I reached the stage of being ‘full of wise saws and modern instances’ (for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, that’s the Seven Ages of Man again), I stopped – for how could I pack the experiences of 65 active and lively years into a manageable book without leaving yawning gaps in the intricate pattern that shaped the life of
Yours sincerely
Appendix – Photographs
As a CW candidate in HMS King Alfred, Lancing : I’m second row third from the right, with Ray Roberts in the same row, second from left and Tommy Thomas fourth row third from left
I became an officer
The Isle of Man, 1941 : Divisional Officer J. Pertwee of HMS Valkyrie
My beautiful ‘Brescia’ Bugatti
The ‘Adolph Hitler’ picture with which I infiltrated HMS Vernon when I was a Security Officer for Naval Intelligence
A drawing of my mother, Avice, by my father
My father, Roland (Photo by Angela Huth)
Granny with the hockey team she organised, 1919
An elegant portrait of my aunt Decima, Lady Moore-Guggisberg
An early picture of Michael and me with Granny in the background
A family group with ‘D’ and Geoffrey Colbourne on the left, Granny, Uncle Guy, Roland and Nanny Hankins
With Michael and Granny at Caterham
Me, Coby and Michael
Uncle Keith Scholtz
My first infatuation, Peggy Burnell
Louis de la Garde, my mother’s second husband
Me with my father
Me at my most angelic at Wellington House
My first report from Wellington House – I was already an undistinguished pupil
With my school friend Laurence Jolivet in his father’s aeroplane on a visit to Elstree Airfield
At the age of 12 I heard the Prime Minister talking about the country’s unstable economy, and sent him half-a-crown. Downing Street responded graciously to this patriotic gesture
An early dramatic appearance in the open air theatre I started at Frensham Heights – I’m on the right, playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek
A lunch break at RADA, 1936 with William Dickinson and Ione ‘Olde Lanterne’ Kinkum. Dickie advertised himself as ‘available for repertory’ in Spotlight for years, but as far as I know never got a job.
The Arts League of Service Travelling Theatre Company, 1937; me on the left
The ALS travelling poster
Louise Spitzel – ‘Kippy’ – in hospital
Cambridge Rep, in Shaw’s The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: l. to r., me, Brandon Acton Bond, Sarah Churchill and Wileen Wilson. Sarah’s father, Winston, took us to tea after performances
Ordinary Seaman Pertwee J.D.R. PJX178358
On the upper desk of HMS Hood with naval writer Geoffrey Clarke
HMS Hood at her best (Keystone Press)
An ‘Agreement for Post-War Reunion’ made tragically only weeks before the Hood went down
The Navy Lark 1961: top, Ronnie Barker, me, Michael Bates, Tenniel Evans; centre, Stephen Murray, Richard Caldicot, Leslie Phillips; front, Heather Chasen, Judy Cornwell (BBC Copyright Photograph)
With Ronnie Barker in a relaxed moment during The Navy Lark (BBC Copyright Photograph)
We did a special show aboard HMS Belfast to mark the breaking up of the real HMS Troubridge in 1975. With members of Her Majest’s Navy are: back, producer Alistair Scott-Johnston, Richard Caldicot, Stephen Murray, Tenniel Evans; front, Heaher Chasen, April Walker, me, Leslie Phillips, Michael Bates
66 Chester Row, during the latter part of the war; I used to nip across the road to my friendly barber’s for a shave, a cup of tea and the newspaper until the press caught up with me (Daily Mail)
The bathroom at Chester Row – made from a coal hole, it was a perfect air-raid shelter
An early script conference with David Jacobs on left
BBC’s Mediterranean Merry-Go-Round: l. to r., Postman ‘What does it matter what you do as long as you tear ’em up’ Pertwee, Eric Barker, Margaret Lockwood, Humphrey ‘Flying Office Kyte’ Lestocq, Pearl Hackney, Richard ‘Lord Waterlogged’ Grey, Barbara Summer and Horace Percival, conducted by ‘Herr’ George Crow
Moon Boots and Dinner Suits
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Appendix – Photographs