by Danny Baker
If anyone had told me that I would one day use the hoary old turn of phrase ‘it wasn’t the money, it was the memories’ about a job where I was required at one point to wear nothing but a grass skirt, I’m sure I would have thrashed them about the private parts with a rolled-up newspaper. Yet I’m afraid I have to because, coin-free though my labours on stage in East London were to be, I had a truly wonderful time during my brief diversion into panto. The producer/director of it – and as it turned out the secret arch-villain – was a man called Paddy Dailey. In the seventies heyday of British comedy double acts there were four major turns. In order of importance, the list ran:
1. Morecambe & Wise
2. Mike & Bernie Winters
3. Hope & Keen
4. Dailey & Wayne
Only the first two are remembered much these days, and even Mike & Bernie’s star is now fading fast. Absolutely no one remembers Dailey & Wayne. Yet they had generated quite a bit of celebrity heat for a while, until Bill Wayne’s early death left Paddy high and dry. I certainly hadn’t thought about them in decades until I sat with Paddy in a café noting the appalled look on his face as I told him I had no experience at all in live theatre, had never been to a pantomime and had no idea what the expressions he kept dropping in regarding bits of stage business could possibly mean.
‘But you know what I’m saying when I say we could do “Syphons” in Act Two, right?’ he begged, as though even a pre-school toddler would know this most basic routine for a duo.
I told him that I had as much idea about ‘syphons’ as I’d had about his previous mentions of ‘counting out’ and ‘the walk around’.
‘Christ. Listen, I’ll come round to yours on Thursday and I’ll learn you how they go. It’ll be a crash course, but you can record it and play it back when I’ve gone. If you can’t, then I hope you know how to entertain people by trick cycling or something!’
I told him I couldn’t ride a bike either.
The day Paddy came round and began rehearsing me in all the ancient bits of business I would need to amuse a junior audience was one of the most satisfying of my working life. Every spin, slap, verbal misunderstanding, ‘cheeky’ response and slapstick pay-off he taught me felt like being allowed into a welcoming secret society. He even brought with him two soda syphons so that I might master the correct way to give and receive the series of water-jets required to build to the big moment when he finally got it straight in the kisser. I couldn’t wait to lay this gold on the toddlers.
The only time I rebelled against tradition was at the initial read-through. Also in the cast was Blue Peter’s Michael Sundin, sitcom actresses Sarah Dangerfield and Sally Hughes and, a particular thrill for me, Michael Robbins, best known as ‘Arthur’ from On the Buses. As we flicked through the pages of Paddy Dailey’s adapted script, all the seasoned pros seemed a little detached from its content while I gave all my corn such bursting enthusiasm that ‘Arthur’ said at one point, ‘Save something for the night, eh, boy?’ Looking back I can understand that playing down the bill to a local TV reporter at the Barking Broadway Theatre over Christmas had probably not been the dream they envisaged at stage school.
The moment I clashed with the piece’s author came very early on.
My entrance was about five minutes into the show. The Ship’s Captain (Paddy Dailey) is talking on the quayside to Alderman Fitzwarren (Michael Robbins) and his daughter Alice (Sally Hughes) about the tremendous difficulty he’s been having recruiting new hands for his upcoming trip to South America. Just as he says, ‘There doesn’t seem to be one likely lad in the whole of this town!’ the band strike up ‘Consider Yourself’ from Lionel Bart’s Oliver and I (Idle Jack) stride on from stage right to deliver a powerful rendition of this borrowed standard. At its conclusion, the Ship’s Captain grabs my arm and the following dialogue ensues:
SC: You there! You look like a lively prospect! How would you like to go on an adventure?
IJ: Oh, I’d like that very much, sir!
SC: Well, before I take you aboard, I need to ask you a few questions to confirm your suitability, OK?
IJ: Fire away, Captain.
SC: Now question number one: name me a bird that can’t fly.
IJ: A penguin.
SC: A penguin? Why can’t that fly?
IJ: Because it’s a chocolate biscuit!
Well, I ask you? Do you see my objection? That feeble bit of word-play was to be my first joke of the night, my calling card in hoping to win over the restless hordes of under-tens waiting to see if an interloper from television had the chops to carry an entire production. I could imagine them hearing this pancake of a whizz-bang and, looking up in disappointment at their parents, pinching their little noses with thumb and forefinger as much as to say, ‘Oh-oh. Told you we should have gone to Cinderella. This hambone is really laying an egg.’
So I objected. Once the reading was through, I asked Paddy if he had a moment.
‘Paddy, it’s this opening gag of mine,’ I said, hoping not to completely crush his faith in his own abilities.
‘What gag? Chocolate biscuit?’ he replied sensing rebellion.
‘Yes, I’m not entirely sure about it. I mean, it’s strong, of course, but is it strong enough?’ I thought I’d let him down gently.
‘It’ll be fine,’ assured Paddy and he went to walk away. I stopped him.
‘See, I know you probably only know me as the bloke from the Six O’Clock Show but . . .’
‘And the other one,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve put that on your billing too.’
‘The other one?’ I muttered, suddenly derailed.
‘Yes, the Bottom Line. The thing you did on ITV. I’ve included that on the posters as well.’
I screamed inwardly. Did this man not want to sell any tickets?
‘Well, anyway, Paddy,’ I continued, thoroughly rattled now, ‘see, I have done a bit of writing myself and I wondered, you know, if I could change it to something . . . a bit cleverer.’
‘Clever?’ Now he looked affronted. ‘You don’t think they’ll like the Penguin joke?’
‘I just think they might be expecting something a bit more up to date. Can I mess around with it and come up with a few alternatives?’ I stopped short of providing him with some of my celebrated triumphs with photo captions at the NME.
‘Whatever you want, Dan,’ he suddenly conceded. ‘Just do it my way in the first show, please. If that doesn’t work – change it to what you think will.’
Great. I set to work on several different exchanges that I fancied would get the crowd checking their programmes to see if this was a new work by Neil Simon.
On the opening night I decided that I would be big about the distressing old groaner that opened my dialogue and give it the best shot I could. At least then Paddy wouldn’t be able to say I buried it on purpose. On I went. ‘Consider Yourself’ went over well enough, but all the time I was telling the packed house in song that it was clear, we’re going to get along, I was thinking how all this promised bonhomie would soon vanish once they heard my deathly jest about flightless birds. Song over, I embarked on my first ever stab at comic cross-talk, a stab I knew I was attempting with a very blunt blade. The big moment arrived:
SC: Now, question number one. Name me a bird that can’t fly.
IJ: A penguin.
SC: A penguin? Why can’t that fly?
IJ: Because it’s a chocolate biscuit.
Now then. The loudest noise I had ever heard in my life until that moment had been the opening bars of a Deep Purple concert in 1972. But what exploded after I completed the second syllable of the word ‘biscuit’ made those chords seem like the sigh of a far-off dormouse across a fresh-mown field. The joke not only got a Krakatoa of an initial laugh but as the kids savoured the full nuance and invention of the line it seemed it would simply never end. Paddy and I looked at each other smiling as the guffaws bellowing down from the balcony met the uprising howls from the stalls and rushed over the stage like
a whirlwind. Just before the noise began to abate, he leaned in to me and, barely moving his lips, mumbled,
‘Anything else you wanna fucking change?’
In wonder and with due deference I shook my head almost imperceptibly. Nurses administered oxygen to many of the toddlers who remained helpless. Once order was restored, Paddy winked at me knowingly and we moved on.
Not all the off-colour stage whispers during the run went so skilfully unheard. The actor playing our Dame was called Terri Gardener. He had once been part of a very successful drag double act and had appeared in many lavish post-war pantos as well as several feature films. Terri was every bit as bawdy in life as the blowsy old washer-women and cooks he specialized in onstage and one night as I stood in the wings waiting for the ingénue, Alice Fitzwarren, to finish the frankly soupy ballad she was required to stop the action with, he came up behind me in the dark and held me round the waist.
‘I know you think that’s my rolling pin you can feel against your arse, darling, but it’s not . . .’ he growled in my ear.
I laughed, but Paddy, standing just beside us, hissed, ‘Terri, come on now, no time for that.’
Our Dame, who had a voice identical to the camp coarse rasp of his more famous friend Danny La Rue, momentarily forgot himself and, raising his tone to address Alderman Fitzwarren, remarked,
‘There’s time enough for a wank!’
Horrified at his own volume, Terri put his hand over his mouth straight away and we all checked to see if the wee tots and their parents in rows A to F had picked up on this unusual embellishment to the story of London’s first mayor. Remarkably, they didn’t seem to have done, although Alice Fitzwarren, sitting beside her wishing well, mid-song, shot a startled look to her left, clearly alarmed that Dick Whittington might have decided to take their romance to an unexpected new level.
After the performance Terri was given a written warning about his gaffe. Removing his make-up he chuckled with me.
‘I got into terrible trouble once, doing that,’ he said. ‘I was at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road doing Sleeping Beauty with my partner. In them days, for the finale they used to use real horses, enormous drays, to bring on the coach. Nothing like this . . .’ He looked despairingly at the modest surroundings and waved toward our stage with its simple painted backdrops. ‘This was proper no-expense-spared stuff in the fifties and the finale was the big setpiece of the show. So there we all were, stood stock-still, the costumes, the head-dresses, arms up, tits and teeth, everyone awaiting the big finish, which is the arrival of the prince and princess in their golden carriage. All the music is swelling up and on comes the horses. Well, I looked at one of them and I could see it wasn’t only the music that was swelling up. It was aroused. How they could have let it come out on to the stage like that I do not know. I looked at this enormous thing hanging beneath this dray horse then turned to my partner who was next to me and said, ‘Oh my God – if only I could take the weight!’ Well, I didn’t think anyone could hear me above the orchestra, but they did apparently and quite a lot of people complained. I didn’t get fired, but I didn’t half get a bollocking, that’s for sure.’
As the run continued I found myself loving the job more and more. I’d even been given permission to leave the stage when the children of the chorus performed their five-minute dance routine. Previously I’d been asked to stay to one side of their synchronized shuffle and perform a few spontaneous steps of my own. ‘Just skip and laugh,’ Paddy had said, ‘as though you want to join in but they won’t let you.’ Too wet behind the ears to question this awful prospect I had, in the first few performances done just that, but at best I looked spare and at worst like I couldn’t bear to surrender the spotlight for one second for fear these youngsters would upstage me. I had prepared nothing, hoping, as with the radio, I would just discover inspiration when it was needed. But the first time the band began to play their gentle theme and the children all held hands to begin their sweet presentation, there I was doing a series of meaningless high kicks and rapid arm flaps completely at odds with their delicate gyrations. I even ran around them in a circle a couple of times completely distracting everyone from whatever mood the youngsters were trying to put across. The audience must have thought I’d lost my mind, and as I pointlessly raced about I thought the only way I might win them back would be to tell them the penguin joke again. The nadir came on the third day when, trying to limit my movements so I wouldn’t appear such a manic limelight hog, I hit upon the idea of whistling along to the song while lightly jumping from foot to foot.
It is important to understand here that I do have a special skill with whistling. I’m very limited in the usual way of doing it, but I learned as a boy that I had a real gift for blowing into my cupped hands and creating a loud noise not unlike an owl hooting. Quite a lot of people can do this to make a single satisfying note, but I discovered that if, while my hands were forming the necessary hollow to produce the tone, I moved my little finger up and down, it altered the pitch. If ever you run into me, ask for a demonstration – it really is quite impressive for somebody who otherwise can barely master a kazoo. What I’d overlooked when deciding on the spot to accompany the kids like this was just how loud a sound it is. As soon as I’d piped up the first couple of blasts I saw the bandleader shoot me a look like I’d thrown up into the saxophones. Suddenly nobody was looking at the dance school toddlers, they were all agog at this deafening Pan figure kicking up his knees for no discernible reason.
Sensing the rising panic in the hall, I carried on with the awful trumpeting but made my way, absurdly skipping sideways, toward the wings where once out of shot I immediately quit the distressing display. The abject horror in my eyes as I pleaded with Paddy to drop me from the segment must have touched him deeply because a new line was added to the show where instead of Fairy Bowbells saying, ‘I’ll show you all where my magic house is. Idle Jack you stay and look after the children!’ she now said, ‘I’ll show you all where my magic house is. The children will be fine. Idle Jack, why don’t you come with us?’
It was music to my ears.
While the panto went from strength to strength each night the first person to suspect we in the cast were all being taken for a ride was Michael Robbins. I had presumed the theatre was like the other entertainment mediums I moved in and that you would get paid weeks, often months, later. That was not how the older professionals in the show saw it.
‘I don’t like it, darlin’,’ said ‘Arthur’, agitatedly pacing his dressing room, his gruff voice softened by the showbizzy use of endearments. ‘We are supposed to get our money at the end of each seven days and I’m getting a shitty feeling about this.’
Ever the sunbeam, I did what I could to offer reasons why Paddy was being evasive. I simply couldn’t imagine a scenario where Michael’s gloomy anxieties would be borne out. On the day of the final performance it became clearer. Alerted that it was tradition in the theatre for the star turn to buy little gifts for everyone when the run ended – at least I think it is, they may have simply decided, ‘Yonder comes a sucker’ – I sank the stiletto of overdraft deeper into Mervyn’s ribs by splashing out wildly along Barking High Street. I knew Paddy Dailey liked a particular brand of whisky and so bought him a rare blend of it in a presentation case. However, between the final matinee and last show he was nowhere to be found. Michael Robbins sat in front of his illuminated make-up table and with a face etched in resigned amusement gave me his ‘I told you so’ speech.
‘He’s a bastard. He’s got debts all over the shop. Even the dancing kids and the little firm who painted the scenery haven’t seen a penny. None of us will. I’m going to march up to the box office myself in a minute and just grab what I can. If you’ve got any sense, son, you’ll beat me to it.’
A meal had been arranged for everyone in a nearby restaurant after the closing bows and I said I would confront him there. ‘Arthur’ gave a derisive snort.
‘He won’t be anywhere near that C
hinese, mate. Once that curtain comes down you will not see his arse for dust. We’re going on now because we’ve got to go on, but during the fight with King Rat at the end tonight I plan to let a few of my punches go astray.’
During that final show the increasing distraction that Paddy had been displaying over the last week came to a head and he refused any attempts at conversation as he stood with various cast member in the wings. Their threats and swearing at him were all delivered in stage whispers and their twisted faces of hatred dissolved into appropriate expressions of joy and wonderment the second they stepped into the lights. It was a very strange evening. Still not fully believing that I would never be paid, I went to the dressing room and grabbed my gift for him during a spell when we would both be offstage for a few minutes. He was facing directly on to the performance and would not turn around to look at me, even though I was repeatedly tapping his shoulder. In the end I had to reach around and put the wooden box in front of his face.
‘Paddy,’ I whispered as loud as I dare. ‘Have that, mate. Thanks for everything.’
He took it, looked at it, and placed it down by the lighting desk to our left. He still didn’t look round.
‘You are coming to the restaurant after, eh?’ I asked.
At last he moved his head to look over his shoulder. With tight thin lips curled into a wretched smile, he nodded. Tears were flooding his sorrowful eyes. Even though the money was pretty vital to me, I genuinely wasn’t angry with him – how could I be? I knew too many people who had been ‘at it’ in various ways and could almost hear the old man’s voice saying, ‘Ne’mend about dinner, he’s holding the pot. Ask him how you can get in the swim too.’