Of course, it didn’t. I made Glen and his group Brandysnaps88 my house band and, while not expecting an unending gush of gratitude, I was anticipating a little bit of respect. What I got from Glen, alongside rank amateurism and off-kilter comic timing, was literally a slap in the face89 – and that hurt me. It hurt me a lot.90
Full disclosure. My first choice for house band had been the Jeff Lovell Orchestra, the outfit who had re-recorded the theme to Knowing Me Knowing You for my Radio 4 show, but Jeff was something of a recluse, having badly disfigured his hands saving an oboe from a van fire. He was also perhaps a little ill-suited to the top-of-the-show comic banter that the role required, having lost his sense of humour in a van fire.
That said, I still had high hopes for Glen and his band.91 But from the get-go, I realised I’d made an error. A week before the show, I’d ordered Glen to get a haircut and he had reluctantly obliged, losing his waist-length corkscrew curls in favour of a shorter, smarter style. But, like an adolescent Samson, it was as if the loss of his locks created a lackadaisical attitude to the basics of live TV: rehearsal, attitude, deference, obeying instruction from the exec producer.92
This resulted in a number of mis-steps in the live broadcasts – unexpected cymbal crashes, Glen mumbling and an all-pervading surliness from the band – which really put me off my stride. My professionalism was such that I didn’t betray even a flicker of displeasure on camera, until I was sadly left with literally no choice other than to dismiss him live on air in our fifth show.
Let me just lay to rest, here and now, a baseless accusation. Some have suggested that my relationship with Glen soured when I learnt he was gay. For crying out loud, if I really couldn’t bear to consort with homosexuals, do you really think I’d have pursued a career in television? At the BBC of all places?? Be real. I have no issue with gaymen. I’m a firm friend of Dale Winton, for example, one of the gayest men in Europe. (Dale and I spent a lovely weekend hanging out at the Earls Court boat show and he was delightful company – and knows a lot about rigid inflatable boats.)
(I also once shared a stage at a charity dinner with Elton John [see picture section]. Then again he did used to be married to a woman. I know he’s with David Furnish now but I’ve long suspected that relationship is just a cover for his heterosexuality.)
No, Glen’s sexuality was not a factor – at least not for me. My assistant was a different story. She had enjoyed Glen’s company tremendously, and would probably have classed him as a friend. But her attitude towards him changed like that93 when she learnt he was gay. Why? Well, she was and is a devout Baptist and, for all their handshaking and tambourine-bashing and shouty singing, many of them are staggeringly hard-hearted when it comes to ‘sins of the flesh’. My assistant was typical of this world-view, somehow managing to reconcile the twin passions of home baking and homo-bashing.
But back to the sacking. Glen consulted his lawyer, citing unfair dismissal. His argument, that ‘insubordination’ is a disciplinary issue only in the military and therefore not grounds for dismissal in the private sector, saw him (temporarily) reinstated pending a tribunal, in time for the final episode of the series.
We muddled through that, a little frostily. But what followed was a regrettable period in which we began to sue and counter-sue each other on a juvenile, tit-for-tat basis. It was vindictive, uncalled for, and cripplingly expensive.
After several years, Glen and I managed to patch up our differences. We shared the common ground of both despising our respective lawyers and would often laugh about how much we were spending on their unnecessary legal advice. (Glen lost his flat as a result and lived in a YMCA for six months.)94
I dropped my legal actions against him some time ago, but he apologetically intends to pursue his against me, because his bandmates are currently suing him for unpaid earnings and he needs the money.
And so it is that he forges ahead with his live shows, long past the point that he derives any enjoyment from them. Indeed, with severely arthritic fingers, every swish of the baton is agony for him. I still go and watch from time to time and afterwards we go out for a Nando’s together (you know which one!).95
(I enjoy the taste of chicken and chips enormously, and am only slightly put off by Nando’s bewildering ordering system in which customers must pay for food at the counter, set the table themselves and then wait for the waiter to bring the meal over. Interestingly,96 Glen and I have developed an unspoken but quietly effective NES – Nando’s Efficiency System – in which we ensure that not a second is wasted. We secure a table and then, with coats draped over the backs of our chairs, we separate. My role is to grab a menu and secure a place in the queue. From there, I loudly read out the food options so that Glen can hear. He, meanwhile, is scurrying to the far side of the restaurant to grab cutlery, napkins and condiments, but all the while he is listening to me and shouting back his order. I place it and pay. We usually end up back at the table at roughly the same time and then enjoy our chicken dinners, while chuckling at the many people who are still waiting for theirs despite having arrived way before us.)
Of course things take on a different hue if you dine solo. Last time I went to Nando’s I was Glen-less. I placed my order but forgot about the cutlery. My food arrived and I had neither knife, fork or spoon. Admittedly, in a chicken-and-chips scenario the spoon is less important, but I could sure have done with a knife and fork – the former to cut with, the latter to maintain carcass stability.
Cursing the absence of my partner-in-chicken I went over to get the required eating tools, walking as fast as I could without breaking into a run. Just my luck – they were awaiting a refill on both the knives and the forks! Spoons, on the other hand? Dozens of them. I had no choice. With a lateral shake of the head and a vertical raise of the eyebrow, I return to my table. I’ve made the effort to find cutlery, I’m darn well going to use it. And I have to say it worked out okay. I shovelled the chips into my mouth as if I was eating pudding, and as for the chicken – it was just a question of trying to drag the meat off the bone by using the spoon as a paw.
And what of me and Ponder? Well I don’t talk much about our rekindled friendship. My assistant still harbours an openly bigoted dislike of Glen and his husband (whose name I don’t know). But I enjoy it, and I’m proud to be friends with the greatest bossa-nova maestro this country has ever produced.
87 Press play on Track 22.
88 Current name: Vajazzle.
89 Not literally.
90 Not literally.
91 Current name: Popsox. (I’m writing this footnote on a different day to footnote 88.)
92 I was the exec producer.
93 I just did another click. A loud one.
94 And I apologise to Glen for my ‘kid in a sweet shop’ comments around this time.
95 The one that used to be Café Symphony. I mentioned it earlier?
96 It is.
Chapter 13
Lift Off, Show-Wise
‘GOOD MORNING, PEARTREE!’ I bellow as I enter the offices of my prod co (production company).
‘Good morning, Alan!’ reply my staff.
‘How are we today?’ I continue, genuinely wanting to know.
‘Great/not bad/back’s still playing up/very well/fine/bit tired as my neighbour decided to do the fucking hoovering at two o’clock in the fucking morning,’ reply my staff.
By now Peartree Productions was a well-oiled machine. We had some great people, working at optimum level.
Jason had been promoted to an assistant producer and had a newfound confidence since his psoriasis had cleared up. I had taken on George Dwyer as creative director. He had worked as PR man for the Russian Circus97 and had some daring, out-there ideas, few of which made it through compliance. He’s been living in the Wormwood area of west London for ten years.
Jill on reception was good to have around the place, clinging on to the last of her good looks and happy to buy choc treats for us all every Friday. Rupert Summers, who had exp
erience of live TV from manning the telephones on ITV Telethon ’88, would produce the show.
But it was Lewis Hurst, a theatrical agent who had invested some money in the company, who really pulled the strings. A bearlike homosexual, he was well-connected and well-to-do in a way that puts some people98 massively on edge. But it was Lewis who had put in a call to Roger Moore and secured him as a guest in our first show. I was so pleased I insisted he join me round the back of the office block to take a photographic record of my feelings (see picture section).
It was also he, with a trademark tuft of jet-black nasal hair hanging down from each nostril, who had rushed into my office one day to tell me that celebrated chanteuse Gina Langland had agreed to appear in show three.99
But there were quite a few others in the company too who I’m unable to name. I’ve not forgotten them, having not known what they were called in the first place. My management style was that of an estranged father. At times caring, at times distant and with little to no interest in the individuals under my charge. And believe me, it just works.
The show began and was an unmitigated success. Viewing figures collapsed as the series went on, but only because it was getting lighter in the evenings and more people were out rambling or sitting in beer gardens.
The fan mail came in by the sack-load. Jason suggested I save it until the end of the series so that I could maintain concentration, which I did.100
There were one or two hiccups, but that’s the nature of live television and I honestly don’t think people noticed. Again, some of the guests were a little surly, but that has to come down to the booker and at the end of the series Jason was duly dismissed. (He went on to make his name producing a certain Orwellian house-based reality show that demeans us all.)
Tony Hayers gave us a few notes after the first show, and repeated the same ones after the second, third and fourth, but crucially didn’t after the fifth or sixth, which suggests he was deeply satisfied with the trajectory of the series. We also bore in mind that he was only in the role to cover Georgia Harrison’s maternity leave, so we didn’t need to keep him onside for the long-term.
Success came very naturally to me. I’d go into a steakhouse or swimming pool and people would turn and exchange knowing glances. I was suddenly hot, appearing on Through the Keyhole and Points of View. I was also a guest on Clive Anderson’s chat show (see picture section), embarrassing my host by revealing to the audience that he had started out as a humble barista. (I remember he resorted to feigning bewilderment at one point when I yelled at him, ‘Now get me a mocha, baldy!’)
I could get tables101 at a moment’s notice. I was stopped on the street by people telling me how ‘unbelievable’ my show was. I was hot and it felt gooooooood.
And then, live on air in the sixth and final episode of my chat show, I shot a man through the heart with a gun.
97 Not the State Circus, another one.
98 But not me.
99 Better still, she would join me in singing an Abba medley live on air (see picture section). And what a medley it was! It was so in-tune it was almost out-of-tune!
Behind the scenes, though, it hadn’t been quite so easy. On the night Gina had chosen to wear one of those dresses that stops before the armpits. She looked amazing in it but odour-wise it was an error. So while my eyes were happy, my nose was anything but. I’d spotted the potential whiff prob in our dress rehearsal and had quietly asked my people to take the microphone I was going to use for our duet and spray it with aftershave or, failing that, some of that lovely air-freshener from the loos. And it really did the trick. Whenever I got a second to turn away from the audience I was able to raise the microphone upwards and give it a good, deep sniff. It was basically an improvised nose sorbet.
100 The sacks of letters were sadly destroyed in a fire before I could peruse them.
101 Restaurant or snooker.
Chapter 14
The Death of Forbes McAllister
CANTANKEROUS BON VIVEUR FORBES McAllister had brought with him two of Lord Byron’s duelling pistols, purchased in auction from under the considerable nose of Michael Winner. As I politely inspected them mid-interview, I discharged one and the bullet penetrated and destroyed Forbes’s heart. As with so many gunshot wounds to the heart, it proved fatal.
I won’t have been the first British chat show host to kill a man on air, and I won’t be the last. But I make no excuse for what happened. I accept complete responsibility and you’ll not find me making mealy-mouthed excuses for what was a truly tragic event.
What I will say is this. Forbes McAllister had led a long and full life, but with a diet rich in cholesterol and alcoholic booze, it’s very probable that his health was failing. We can only speculate as to how badly his health would have deteriorated or how painfully drawn out his eventual death would have been – because I ended his life in episode six of my chat show.
Forbes, who may or may not have had a violent temper, was to be the final guest on my show. I remember in the green room before the show that he had incredibly sweaty hands. It’s rare that I notice another’s man palm-piss because my own inner-hands tend to work up a torrent of clamminess straight after towelling, one of the many reasons why I often greet new acquaintances with a curt nod or a wave. But I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, now they’re wet.’
This should have rung an alarm bell, because although I didn’t know it at the time, our perspiration would soon create a lethal lubricative effect, which when combined with studio lights and a hair-trigger pistol would blast a man’s chest into kingdom come. (Note that this in no way tallies with the findings of the coroner. These are my findings, not the Crown’s.)
The show had been quite a strong one. It was certainly a little fruity. Of the six people on the sofa, 50% were gay. (Two lesbians and a gayman – although the gayman, Scott Maclean, was only ten at the time and probably unaware of his sexual trajectory.)102
Not on the sofa, but undeniably on the show were Joe Beasley and Cheeky Monkey. Having Joe appear was my one big regret in this episode.103 I’d seen him at Bournemouth Hoseasons way back in 1979, before so-called ‘alternative’ so-called ‘comedy’ had been foisted upon the world. Joe was streets ahead of his time, writing his own material and bringing a fresh perspective to the art of stand-up comedy. Unlike ‘alternative’ ‘comedians’, Joe’s act – classy ventriloquism mixed with snappy one-liners – was mercifully unencumbered by the need to provide ‘social commentary’, unless he represented the Tories and the monkey whose rectum he forced his hand up represented coal miners or something.104
At Hoseasons, he’d raised the roof. I saw members of the audience doubled over, desperately trying not to wet themselves. Afterwards, Joe modestly suggested this was more to do with their age than his act, but I know good comedy when I see it. So I promised him I’d remember his name and give him a TV break as soon as I could. I honoured that promise on 21 October 1994.
I don’t feel that Joe prepared properly for the show, and his act suffered as a result. I happen to believe that his joke about a Swedish Fred Flintstone105 is a quite beautiful piece of writing, but he struggled to remember its precise mechanics and it slithered out of his mouth like a bad oyster. I stepped in to put him out of his misery106 after about 90 seconds.
It had been an experience best forgotten but shamefully, in the years that followed, Joe did his best to trade on his disastrous TV appearance – he even attempted (unsuccessfully) to claim legal ownership of the sobriquet ‘troubled TV funnyman’ when the whole Barrymore thing blew up. Lesson learnt, Alan! I’ve never given anyone a break since then. It’s just not worth it. Joe never bothered to apologise, not even through the medium of the monkey.
But ignore that. This chapter is about Forbes McAllister. And I’d hate for my guests’ unprofessionalism or sexual peccadillos to detract from the solemn death of a good107 man.
To be fair to myself for a change, Forbes had been a pretty awkward guest and had brought the pistols on to the sho
w himself and had very sweaty hands and was making sudden movements and saying some pretty off-putting things about bagpipers.
But, as I say, no excuses. At the show’s denouement – trust Mr Professional here to time the slaying so it gave the show a neat conclusion! – Forbes gave me his sweat-drenched guns to inspect and shocked me with a loud bark of ‘Be careful with that!’ One thing led to another, and a bullet led to his heart.
I covered him with a plastic replica of my face and did my best to close the show. The two lesbians, Wanda Harvey and Bridie McMahon, went a bit hysterical. They’d been told to stick around on the sofa until the credits rolled, but when Forbes’s remains slumped in their general direction, they bolted – in a pretty craven attempt to spoil the series sign-off. For that, I’ve never forgiven them.
It was a bit of a blur after that. My producer Rupert Summers lost his head and said a few mean things to me. I let that go. He was in shock and needed help not censure.
The police arrived and with Forbes bleeding over the sofas, which we’d actually only hired,108 I signed off series one.
Then I looked over to where a policeman was putting the pistols carefully into transparent freezer bags. Those flippin’ guns, I thought. I hated them just then. In the intervening years, I have received a great many letters from gunsmiths who have said that the greatest professional sadness a gunmaker endures lies in spending hours perfecting the release mechanism of a flintlock pistol, only for a collector to display it ornamentally. This was exactly what Forbes had in mind for them. I had at least prevented that. (I always think that like a dangerous dog sinking its teeth into the waddling rump of a fat postman, a pistol must experience the bittersweet bliss of fulfilled destiny at the moment of discharge – before quite rightly being destroyed.)
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 10