by Les Dawson
We had two weeks left of the tour after Julie’s marriage and as always, when the play ended its run, I wished it could go on much longer. In show business, you come together in a production, often as strangers, but as time goes by you become a family, and it’s a wrench when you have to part.
So little time … September now … in a few short weeks pantomime again! Tracy shook her head in despair at our workload, but she did all she could to prepare for yet another long run. This year the pantomime was to be Dick Whittington at the Palace Theatre, Manchester.
It was at the press call held in the circle bar of the Palace Theatre that my forebodings about my future took on a more ominous reality. Over drinks I faced a huge assembly of reporters and photographers.… I waited for questions about the format of the pantomime to be directed at me. The first question shook me rigid: ‘Afternoon, Les, I want to ask you, how does it feel to have both your television shows dropped?’
I looked at the pressman … he’d certainly pulled the rug from under my feet, because nobody at the BBC had said anything about dumping me, either to me or my agent. Yet this reporter knew, and I knew it was the truth by the steady gaze he directed at me. I felt as though I’d been kicked by a mule. Both my shows axed and not a word to me about it.… I couldn’t believe such discourtesy. For over five years I had hosted Blankety Blank on a very successful basis, and now no more, just like that. Somehow I parried his question but the other news-hounds took up the hue and cry. Not one of them appeared interested in the current panto production, only in my downfall.
After the press call and that bombshell, I was very dispirited indeed. Dear Tracy consoled me and I knew that she was more important than a television show, but I was hurt. Oh, I knew that the signs had been around for some time … dwindling fan mail, less interest – indifference even – if I was spotted in the street; was I over the hill?
At least I had some work ahead in the shape of the panto, but what worried me now was, would I be able to pull the crowds in with my name? Being virtually sacked from two major productions presumably because of poor viewing figures was not exactly a recommendation, and I confess I was worried.
Tracy was mad at my attitude.
‘What is the matter with you?’ she railed at me when she got fed up with my self-pity. ‘You’ve been at the top for longer than most, it won’t do you any harm to sit back and allow us both to have some home life. I don’t think being top in the flaming ratings is all that important to be honest – health and someone to care for are more important.’ With that she cried on my shoulder and I knew that I was behaving like a bloody fool. Tracy was so right; why did I keep forgetting the lessons I should have learnt from the past?
God had given me another chance, and another love in my life, and like an idiot, instead of being eternally grateful, I was back to being the selfish, ambitious twit who had twice put himself at the doors of death because of his overriding ego. There and then I decided to try to be halfway intelligent and to be grateful for what I had achieved and now possessed. I felt better, and when yet another reporter buttonholed me and crowed about my losing two shows, I cheerfully said yes, it was true, no, I wasn’t upset, after all I was merely employed by the BBC and if they’d had enough of me, then that was their prerogative. No, I wasn’t upset – of course you can print that, I said, and the reporter hurried away in an exalted state.
Two days later the feature came out and the newspaper printed what I’d said – which was a change – but the article made me sound as if I was on the bottom line with no hope and hated by everybody from the head of the Beeb to the janitor in the cellar.
My agent rang up, furious (which he frequently was, and still is) with me. ‘Dolly’ (his favourite mode of address), ‘will you stop talking to the newspapers,’ he boomed down the line. ‘You are talking a load of cock and it just might interest you to know that the advance booking at the Palace Theatre Manchester for the panto, with you top of the bill, has already broken every existing record. So nobody wants you, hey dolly?’
Good old Norman … my flagging morale rose like an eagle! I embraced Tracy, then saw the look in her eye and remembered to be humble and satisfied with the way things were right now. The news of the solid advance for the pantomime was simply a bonus.
Before rehearsals for the pantomime began in London, Tracy and I had time to be alone together, and with her encouragement I started writing descriptive essays.
It became a habit of mine to take long walks and carry a notebook with me in order to jot down descriptions of what I saw, and now that I was taking things more easily I found I was enjoying things I’d never had time to notice before. Sitting quietly in my garden, for instance, with only the sound of the waterfall giggling into my fish pond, I suddenly noticed a squirrel ambling around. I watched birds swoop and trill and a stoat chasing a rabbit across the conifer bed – these things were happening all around me, in my own backyard – why hadn’t I seen all this before?
Opening night at the Palace Theatre, Manchester was a triumph. John Nettles, the Roly Polys, Anne Sydney, Mark Walker and I took curtain after curtain, and the show was a guaranteed success with the biggest advance in the history of the theatre. Despite ‘bugs’ laying low half the cast during our ten-week run, we never played to less than a full house, even when we lost John Nettles for three weeks with a flu virus.
All the children had tummy problems; it was just as well the audience could not see them throwing up in the many buckets arranged in the wings. I was lucky that season, I only had my customary bowel infection, double pneumonia and yellow fever, so I was able to totter on every night and perform.
Whilst in Manchester the BBC approached me with an idea for a game show entitled Fast Friends. Ah, if only I could have foreseen the consequences.
I left Manchester flushed with triumph. We’d taken so much money, we’d received such wonderful reviews, I was ten and a half feet tall. After a brief few weeks at home, I signed to do Fast Friends, and Tracy and I began our weekly flights to London, and then on to Elstree to record what will probably be known in years to come as the greatest load of crap ever to be committed to film as far as I was concerned.
The show was an American idea and it should have stayed right there in America – preferably on Boot Hill. I’ve dropped some big ones in my time, but agreeing to do that show was akin to heaving an elephant’s testicles down a pit shaft.
From the moment we discussed it, trouble wafted in. My own opinion was that of all the game shows imported from the States, Fast Friends was the most American. Its whole premise rested on the antics of crackpot contestants almost wetting themselves in their excitement, and our American cousins seem to excel at producing this type of inanity.
My agents hated the whole concept from day one, but the BBC begged and pleaded with us to carry on with the project. There then commenced a series of furious arguments of a kind not heard outside the United Nations, and people would stalk off muttering things. It was quite ridiculous.
Rehearsals were full of the sort of happy anticipation usually associated with a grave robber’s lunch break … and nothing went right. Behind me on the platform built on the studio floor was a sort of screen with a string of lights in a semicircle over the top. The contestants sat slightly below me, divided into teams, and each team had to select a team leader, who then pranced on to the rostrum with me, one on each side. I now asked one of them to pick a member of his or her team to answer a question, while the string of lights above me clicked off the number of seconds it took the team member to answer. (Have you got it? Good, because I couldn’t get the hang of the wretched game, and tempers began to fray.)
I don’t think the first programme will ever be forgotten by those who suffered through it, but they say that time is a great healer. For a start, the company who had sold the game show to the Beeb had brought in what can almost be described as ‘professional contestants’. They knew more about game shows than we did. They very nearly took over the
show, and the studio audience sat with their mouths agape watching the battle royal taking place before them … it was one hell of a punch-up. At one stage the contestants surrounded the Head of Variety and the poor devil had virtually to be rescued by armed police!
Eventually, after one attempt to film the epic, we contrived, with the aid of garlic posies and a crucifix, to shoot one show which was appalling. I got rid of some of the ‘professional contestants’ and brought several of the studio audience in as replacements and we did the show again. It was about as enjoyable as watching the slaughter of a bullock; to make matters worse, the replacements were heckled by the original contestants, at least one of whom was blotto.
After the débâcle, we all sat around a table in the bar in a silence reminiscent of that of a long-forgotten tomb. But we were committed: the series was to go ahead. I ignored the good advice offered to me – such as emigrating or committing suicide or becoming a Trappist monk. The rest is history, I suppose. Suffice to say the series didn’t make any waves on the network. It didn’t even make a plop.
The reviews were all ghastly, the ratings were so low the only people who watched it lived in a submarine, and frankly Fast Friends put a man-sized nail in my theatrical coffin.
Tracy, supportive as always, said, ‘The show was no worse than some of the others they put out,’ and to a degree she was right. The trouble was, it was too American for British audiences, and that is all I’m prepared to say without a cheap lawyer around, if there is such a thing.
We returned home from Elstree after canning the series and I wanted to go into immediate hiding, but Tracy pulled me out of the coal cellar. Not only did my fan mail dry up after the screening of Fast Friends but the telephone practically stopped ringing and I began to understand the isolation felt by Robinson Crusoe. I had had no offers for a summer season – nobody seemed to want me. Up to a point I wasn’t too bothered; Tracy and I needed to do a lot to the house and we welcomed the chance to catch up on some social life, but the thought of being rejected by the business did hurt, I must say.
Actually, I had been offered Bournemouth Pier for eight weeks to star in a play called Boeing Boeing, but I felt bound to turn it down – it just wasn’t my cup of tea. The leading character is suave and sophisticated, and that I ain’t.
So the rest of the year yawned in front of us with little work in prospect, a belligerent tax inspector in the wings, a heap of bills the size of an average Alp on my desk, and a hefty overdraft at the bank.
Fortunately Norman and Anne came through as sort of bagel-chewing Messiahs with a commercial to do for the Post Office. I was to supply the voices of two old women gossiping about the benefits of using your local Post Office.
I worked on the ad with a bright young team, and I like to think it is now regarded as a little masterpiece. It was especially welcome to me, because it gave me a chance to bring to life Cissie and Ada, the two characters I’d created for television, with Roy Barraclough as Cissie. Because variety was finished, and because Roy was under sole contract to Coronation Street, the two characters had disappeared from the TV screens, which was sad, because they had been a source of enjoyment to many people. I can still recall the first script I ever wrote for the two elderly windbags, back in 1975 on Yorkshire Television’s Sez Les. There had been some doubts about audience reaction to a pair of old ladies being a bit vulgar, but we needn’t have worried on that score.
CISSIE: Hello, chuck, Leonard and I have been on holiday … in Greece.
ADA: Very nice. Actually Bert and me went to Greece once with Peabody’s Inter-Continental Floral Tours, on HP.
CISSIE: Really? Tell me, did you have the shish kebabs there?
ADA: From the moment we got there.… Bert said it was the warm beer that did it.
CISSIE: You really are pig ignorant, Ada.… Did you see the Acropolis?
ADA: See it? We were never off the damn thing. Bert had to wear rubber pants to stop the chafing.
CISSIE: Leonard took some lovely photos … he’s got a big Polaroid.
ADA: Ooh, they can be painful, does it affect his balance?
CISSIE: I don’t know why I bother with you, Ada. Compared to your Bert my Leonard is a saint. In all things he is most circumspect.
ADA: I never knew he was Jewish.
CISSIE: Oh, you are impossible. Anyway, I can’t stop, I’m going to see Mrs Scattergood, she’s the spiritualist from Acker Street, she talks to the spirit world.
ADA: She talks to dead people? I’ll have to get her to have a word with my Bert … he’s been lifeless for years. We haven’t performed.…
CISSIE: I don’t wish to know about you and Bert doing that. Mrs Scattergood gets in touch with the spirits through her ouija.
ADA: Oh my God.…
CISSIE: She often goes into a trance.
ADA: If she’s talking through her ouija, it’s a wonder she doesn’t get severe cramp.
CISSIE: Very good is Mrs Scattergood, and her husband has a crystal ball.
ADA: Marvellous what they can do today.
CISSIE: He was a prisoner of war in Singapore. The Japanese caught him after he was cut off from his Chindits.
ADA: I often wondered why they had no kids.
The audience howled at the tongue-in-cheek vulgarity, none more so than the middle-aged ladies among them. Cissie and Ada were to live on television for over fourteen years, and not one letter of complaint was ever sent in.
The two characters epitomised those wonderful women of the Lancashire mill towns who, because of the noise of the looms, had to become expert lip-readers in order to communicate with each other. Now, thanks to the Post Office, I could make them live again … all was not lost, was it?
That summer Tracy and I were invited to 10 Downing Street to meet John Major: it was a memorable occasion. There were many artistes and professional people gathered there, but Mr Major and his wife had time to give to every single individual present.
After my umpteenth glass of champagne I decided to tell the Prime Minister, who’d come over to talk to us, how to run the country. His handshake was firm and he looked me squarely in the eye, which let’s face it, is unusual for a politician.
‘Mr Major,’ I boomed as I swayed, ‘in my considered opinion, the only way to restore this country’s economy is to lower income tax at the direct level to less than 20%, then scrap VAT altogether and in its place introduce indirect taxation. This will stop the envy between the haves and the have-nots, and when people have more money to spend at the source of their income I feel that they will go out into the High Street and spend much more.’
I sensed that Mr Major was trying to get away and Tracy was pinching my arm, but nothing – do you hear? nothing – was going to halt the flow of my inspired rhetoric, no sirree.
‘The next thing to do, Mr Major,’ said I with a perceptible burp, ‘is to scrap company tax for the first year on a new enterprise, then impose only half company tax during the second year, and full tax on the third year, thus enabling a business to amass a cash flow. As regards the Common Market, tell ’em to get knotted and woo the Empire back. There is still no diplomacy like gunboat diplomacy.…’
On and on I went until I ran out of ideas. Mr Major looked at me. I half expected him to grab me by the shoulders, plant an ecstatic kiss on each cheek, turn to the assembly and shout: ‘Hail to Britain’s saviour’.… Instead he said, ‘Les, you look after the laughs and I’ll look after the money.’ So ended my stab at a career in politics.
The following afternoon – a glorious one – Tracy and I, togged out in our finery, went to Buckingham Palace for one of the annual Garden Parties. We walked around, feeling so elegant, waving to people, signing autographs, sipping tea and primly chewing cucumber sandwiches. I couldn’t help wondering what my mother and father would have said if they could have seen their ragamuffin son strolling around Buck House.… All they had ever known was grinding poverty and a constant struggle to survive.
I saw again the mean
back streets and the haunted look on the faces of those who lived in the grim two-up and two-downs … and yet, despite the lack of material possessions, my parents had given me so much love that I had the confidence to walk among kings with my head held high.
As we chatted, Prince Philip, in his immaculate grey tails, came striding across the manicured lawns towards our marquee and the crowd hushed. To my astonishment he suddenly shouted out: ‘Where’s Dawson? I want to speak to Dawson.’ The crowd gasped, and Tracy blushed with pride. His Royal Highness shook my hand warmly and Tracy dimpled attractively when the Prince held her hand and smiled. We chatted, and before long the subject of black puddings cropped up yet again. Before we go any further I’d better explain the black-pudding saga.
Some years ago at a club in Luton, I compered a big Variety show that was televised before Prince Philip. The two-hour programme starred among others, the Drifters, Peters and Lee, the Peter Gordeno Dancers and Charlie Smithers, and was in aid of charity.
Afterwards the Prince was escorted to a room to meet local dignitaries and the organisers of the show. I’d found my way to the bar – the drinks were free that evening, and I didn’t want them to think they’d gone to all that trouble for nothing, so I started to demolish a few large ones. Suddenly I heard Prince Philip’s voice: ‘Where’s Dawson?’ I turned and saw him striding towards me. We shook hands and he asked for a beer, then he proceeded to say how much he’d enjoyed the show and so forth. ‘Are you still living in the North?’ he asked. I nodded and he went on to say how much he had enjoyed a visit to Rochdale with Her Majesty the Queen, in order to open a shopping centre. ‘Nice people up there,’ he said. ‘They presented us with some black-puddings, you know. Absolutely delicious, had ’em fried for breakfast.’ I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I did: ‘Actually, sir, you really should boil them, that’s the traditional Northern way.’