Paul Daniels

by Paul Daniels

  As usual on corporate jobs, I entertained the representatives after the show. It was a very late night but I made sure this time that it would be impossible for me to oversleep, with every conceivable alarm clock and wake-up call activated. I’ll give you a tip – never rely on hotel wake-up call systems. Ask any regular traveller. Strangely enough, despite the exhausting week, I was not tired. The adrenalin must have kept me going, but there was no way I could risk missing the morning flight back to London, which would deliver me in time for the Royal Variety rehearsals.

  Sunday – the Royal Variety Show

  A few hours’ rest in a hotel bed was all I had before waking up with the dawn and facing several hours’ drive back across the Spanish wilderness to the airport. We got there in plenty of time, only to discover that the flight back to London had been seriously delayed. So what else is new? Panicking and making numerous telephone calls, I eventually got on a plane and arrived in London four hours late with the possibility of missing the whole event swirling round my mind. I didn’t even pick up my luggage. I just walked straight through the airport and got into the car. I’d pick up the stuff later in the week.

  That particular year, the Royal Variety Show was in the presence of the Queen Mother, with, among others, Vera Lynn, Tommy Trinder, Harry Secombe and Dickie Henderson on the bill. It was to be an amazing lineup and I was the only one I hadn’t heard of! Again!

  I arrived at the stage door and ran straight out on to the stage where the entire cast had finished rehearsing and were being placed in the line-up for their final curtain calls. Every member of the grand parade was spotless, with the men looking like penguins and the women glittering and shining as they do. I stood there bleary eyed, unshaven, in a creased suit, splayed hair and breathing deeply. On stage was the very camp Stage Director placing people very carefully. He turned, saw me and thought I was a stagehand.

  ‘Who on earth are you? Get off. Off. Off. OFF!’

  ‘I’m Paul Daniels and I’ve come to do a show for your mother.’

  Harry Secombe collapsed with laughter and I am probably lucky I am still in the business. The Director glared at me so I explained how I had been delayed travelling back from Spain. He stuck me on the end of the line and we rehearsed our bows.

  Starting to feel a little worse for wear, I squeezed myself into the corner of a packed dressing room and tried to revive my flagging brain. The television Director arrived and asked me what I was going to do.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you get smart with me,’ he snapped.

  I thought he was a bit nasty, especially as I’ve always thought showbusiness should be fun. I really did misunderstand that he meant he needed to know what I was actually going to do on stage, but by this time I was too ‘out of my tree’ to make sense of anything. So I talked him through where and when I would be in my ‘front cloth spot’. That means, of course, that you are working in front of the first curtain or gauze, usually while a bigger stage setting is taking place behind the curtain.

  Tommy Trinder’s introduction was a big let-down: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here is a young man who, I’m told, is making a name for himself in the clubs, though I’ve never heard of him. Here he is, Paul Daniels!’

  I didn’t understand his cockney way and I thought he was being rude. In a way, I’m glad he did it because it made me angry and fired me up from being half-asleep to ‘How dare he!’ and I shot out on stage firing on all cylinders. Usually in the Royal Variety, there is a newcomer who becomes a winner, with everybody talking about them. 1977 was my year.

  At the after-show party, it was amazing. Press and audience members were all over me asking where I had come from. I wasn’t tired any more. The television Director walked past and whispered in my ear, ‘I can still edit you out of the show completely!’

  It didn’t upset me too much, because after a week of two corporate jobs, two major television series, a standing ovation, a trip to Spain and tearing the audience apart at the Royal Variety Show, I knew I had finally made it. Once everybody else had left, I sat alone in the bar on that Sunday and there is no other way to describe the feeling. I remember thinking, ‘Christ, I’m going to be a star.’

  The Director still had his moment, even though the next day the press reported more than favourably on my act and I got rave reviews. He changed my position on the bill. Whether he did it deliberately I don’t know, but either way there was no point to it. When the act I had followed appeared on the television programme a week later, I didn’t follow it and I honestly thought I had been cut. Then I appeared a few acts later. As they say in showbusiness – bitch.

  What a week. Wonderful shows, fantastic reviews and I was going to be on the television. This business doesn’t half level you off, though. The following night, I appeared as the cabaret at Scunthorpe Baths!

  Showbusiness does that to you, lifts you up and then brings you back down to earth with a bump.

  * * *

  Part of the plan laid down in Guernsey was not only to be on television, but also to do better work. The working men’s clubs had been very good to me, but amateurs ran them and I wanted to do more professional venues. I moved into the cabaret clubs and then I wanted to move into theatres. At the time, the Delfont Organisation owned more of the summer season theatres than anyone else. Advertisements used to appear in the showbusiness newspaper The Stage, along the lines of ‘Would anyone knowing the whereabouts of The Flying Waldrons please ask them to get in touch with the Delfont Organisation.’ I wanted to place an advertisement that said, ‘Would anyone knowing the whereabouts of the Delfont Organisation please ask them to get in touch with Paul Daniels.’ Mervyn didn’t think it would be a good idea. ‘You may never work again,’ he said, and maybe he was right.

  As it was we wrote several letters to the Delfonts but received only the usual brush-off replies. We did say how much we wanted when asked, but we didn’t get anywhere.

  Out of the blue, we got a letter to say that one of their show directors, Maurice Fournier, would come and watch me work and asking where he could see me. The nearest place to London was a club in Essex and we told him all the details. He came, he saw, I conquered. I stole that line. He watched me work in a cabaret environment for an hour-and-a-half and afterwards did what all artists love, he came and told me how wonderful I was. Amidst the glow, however, he dropped the bombshell.

  ‘The problem is that I am only looking for a ten-to twelve-minute act.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know …’

  ‘I really can.’

  He couldn’t understand why I would want to give up the full act just to do what was basically a ‘warm-up’ spot in The Val Doonican Show. What he really didn’t understand was how much I wanted to work in real theatres.

  Eventually, he arranged a meeting and off I went to meet the great Bernard Delfont and his Chief Executive Richard Mills. We met in the Prince of Wales theatre in the heart of the West End. After the general chat, the offer was made. If Val Doonican liked me, then I would be booked to do the Christmas season at the Opera House in Manchester, opening the second half of the show. Bernard stated the fee but he quoted the figure from our letter of 12 months earlier. I pointed out that since then I had risen in stature somewhat in the business but he wouldn’t give in. Taking this season would mean a big drop in money. I took the season. I didn’t realise until the second night of the run how much money I’d dropped!

  After meeting Val in his lovely home and discussing what I would do and what we would do together in the show, I went off to Manchester and rehearsed all the lighting and music cues and all the little things that you do to get the show ready. After Val had greeted the audience, he would introduce me and I would come on and apparently teach him the oldest trick in the world, the cup and the ball trick. I worked the trick in such a way that Val got the tag, the laughter and great applause by producing a potato and everyone thought he had done the trick. Then I was off u
ntil the start of the second half when I would do some card shuffles to gags followed by vanishing some money that had been borrowed from a member of the audience. They would then find their money again by breaking open a walnut that I had taken out of an egg. The egg had been removed from a lemon. Average running time 11 minutes with laughs and good magic along the way.

  Opening night, no problems. The show was performed in front of the press and hoteliers, some other invited guests and some paying customers. Val was a major star with a wonderful warm personality. Known for his rich voice, what most people didn’t realise was that his show had so much comedy in it.

  The second night came and I went to the theatre early, just as I used to do in the clubs, and I was amazed to see how early everyone was. All the dancers and the cast were in make-up and costumes and very, very slowly it dawned on me – we were going to do two shows a night and nobody, but nobody, had mentioned this to me anywhere along the way. They all just assumed that I knew that in theatre you did two shows a night. I got ready very quickly and even more quickly realised that Bernard Delfont had got me to agree to a deal where I thought I was negotiating a fee for six shows a week and he was getting twelve. You lives, and you learns.

  The Val Doonican Show was a great show to be in, directed to the full by Dickie Hurran, an ex-hoofer, (oops, sorry, ex-dancer; Debbie will kill me) who was a real ‘tits and feathers’ showman. He loved it all and was as hard as hell with acts and stage crew, hassling them and bullying them to get it right, but he always put on an excellent show. We developed a great relationship over the coming years.

  The Stage Manager was Roy Murray. You couldn’t get a better man for the job. His parents and grandparents had been in showbusiness and Roy knew nothing else. Every scene and prop was checked three times before being revealed to the audience. I have a photograph of Roy’s granddad who had an act called Casey’s Court. In those days, you didn’t just get the character of the pantomime dame at Christmas. ‘Dames’ would tour the theatres with comedy sketches. These weren’t gay drag artists and they made no attempt to disguise the fact that they were men. They just parodied big-busted, blowsy women and the most famous of them all was Norman Evans, who did his act ‘over the garden wall’. Roy’s granddad, Will Murray, had such an act, where he played the landlady in a house full of young men. Looking at the photograph, most of them were just boys and in the play the house was full of mayhem and madness.

  In parts of the North they still say, when things are all going wrong, ‘this place is just like Casey’s Court.’ What makes the photograph interesting are the two young men sitting on either side of Will Murray. One is Charlie Chaplin and the other is Stan Laurel. What an act that must have been. Chaplin must have had one of those ‘convenient’ memories, as in his autobiography he talks about going into the film company’s clothing store, finding a cane and a bowler and creating the character of the tramp. In the photograph, he already has a cane and a bowler. According to Roy, all the funny walks and bits of business were part of Casey’s Court, so Chaplin must have learnt a lot at the school of Will Murray.

  I have so many happy memories of working with Val, the totally ageless, classless, family entertainer. When he walked on you just knew nothing was going to go wrong and you could feel the audience relax into their seats. His family image almost got tarnished one night at the Opera House. Not his fault and nothing to do with him, but in the interval, Paul Burnett, the Musical Director, came backstage and asked whether we had seen the couple in the box on the stage left side (known as Prompt Side) and at stage level. ‘He’s all over her. It’s getting very passionate.’

  I said that during my act I would find a way to calm them down by making some gags about them and on I sailed. During the gags and the card tricks, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that Paul had not been exaggerating at all. They were ‘snogging’ like crazy and his hands were everywhere. Most of the audience in the circles were not watching me and I thought that as soon as I had lost the cards, I would have a go.

  On a chord of music, I dropped all the cards into my box and turned to take them on. They had gone. Good, I thought and headed, thankfully, stage right to borrow some money to do the egg, lemon and walnut trick. Then I heard a strange noise. They were on the floor of the box and it became more and more obvious what was going on. As I continued with my trick, the stalls were craning their necks, the circle was boggle-eyed and the upper circle were just about giving them a standing ovation.

  Suddenly, the girl let out a sort of strangled shriek and I immediately came out with ‘Oh, listen everybody, it’s a Punch and Judy show.’ The audience roared and the spot-light operator swung the lamp around to illuminate the box. The man’s head came up over the front of the box. ‘There’s Mr Punch,’ I said and, as her head appeared, ‘and there’s JUDY!’ Cheers and loud applause. By the time I had finished the act, the front-of-house staff had sent someone around to sort them out, but they had fled.

  It was a great season and I really learnt a lot from Val, one of our finest and often underrated entertainers. Watching the likes of Shirley Bassey and Ella Fitzgerald, I asked myself what it was that made them so different from the rest? What makes them bigger and better? It doesn’t matter whether the star is American or British or French or whatever. Why is it that when Max Bygraves or Val Doonican walk out on stage, the whole theatre relaxes? You can feel it. I realised it was because these big, big stars are never frightened to cry in public. They don’t hold back any emotion at all. They will give everything they have to encourage their audience to come along for the ride. It was important that I learnt to do the same. Audiences work very hard for their money and if they are going to part with some of that in order to have a night out, then I should give them the very best I can.

  You should never make a decision about whether you like or dislike an entertainer by what you see on television. The show that comes into your living room is nothing like the live show at all. The entertainer’s performance is diminished in size (and I can’t risk too much of that at my height) not only by the size of the screen, but also by the angles chosen by the cameramen and director. The editors change his or her timing. The sound, especially of laughter and applause, is unreal. So many times I have had people at the stage door who have said they didn’t want to come but friends or the wife or the kids made them come along. They are always surprised at how funny or colourful the show is when it is live.

  That’s why I don’t think politicians should be allowed on television. We had some acts who came into the studio and were brilliant, but they didn’t come across on the screen. We have had brilliant politicians who have been out-voted for the same reason. It’s bad for the country to pick a ‘media person’. I will now climb off this soapbox and get back to the story. The following summer The Val Doonican Show went to the Futurist Theatre, Scarborough, and I went with it. Did you know that all acts have a nightmare? Actually, they have about two or three and they are all to do with this weird business that we work in. There’s the one where you are in a play, or a musical, or a pantomime and you are the only one that hasn’t been given the script and you don’t know your lines. There’s another where you can’t get to the theatre. All the transport systems that you try, even running, can’t get you there and you know you are going to be ‘off ’ when your cue comes. A variation on that is where you are in the theatre, you can hear the show you are in through the backstage tannoy, but you can’t find your way to the stage. Believe me, these nightmares recur and you wake up sweating. Being ‘off ’ is the worst thing you can do.

  During that first week in Scarborough, I was in my dressing room on the top floor, dawdling around. What I was thinking about I don’t know but way off in the distance something was happening, something was coming through the tannoy. Suddenly the penny dropped. I realised that I had heard Val give me my introduction for the third time. Grabbing the props, I even stuck a metal table into my mouth and ran down the stairs that way, I was shoving stuff into m
y pockets and arrived on the side of the stage where Val was stuck because I wasn’t there. We did the business.

  For the whole of the show I was dying inside. When it had finished, I went to apologise to Mr Doonican. ‘Don’t let it happen again,’ was all he said. I never did.

  In that show, I met and fell in love with Nikki. She was different to any other girl who I’d been out with, being what I called a child of nature. Speeding down the motorway at 100 mph, she’d suddenly say, ‘Oh look! The daisies are coming out.’ She didn’t care what kind of animal it was, Nikki would just walk up and stroke it. Over the years, I have even seen her get too close to a tiger. A truly nice person and both she and her husband Joe are still good friends.

  She came from a nice family, too. At the time I went out with her, they had a really good idea, especially if you want to drive shopkeepers crazy. Have you ever noticed how commercial Christmas is? No? Which planet are you from? Nikki’s family had a rule that Christmas presents had to be made, or built, or painted, or anything other than bought. Brilliant. I think it was her dad who photographed the family all year long and then gave them all annual family ‘diaries’.

  Nikki created the greatest photographic albums I’ve ever seen. Whereas you and I normally just stick our photos straight inside, she cut them all into shapes and somehow made them look as though they were moving on the page. If her name had been Hockney, she’d have made a lot of money, for she was doing it well before him.

  The Scarborough season was a happy one. My sons came for their summer holidays and the town itself is a great seaside resort. I can’t remember which one of us ‘lads’ was the Ace on the shooting stall next to the theatre, but I know it used to close for about 15 minutes every time we were due to go past on the way to the Stage Door, just so we wouldn’t win the prizes. Val packed them in twice nightly. All was right with the world.