Paul Daniels (26 page)

Friday – Great Yarmouth

I drove to Great Yarmouth. Having had a kip in the car, I arrived on Friday morning where the International Round
Table had booked me to appear in the biggest tent I had ever seen. Seating thousands, this was a special annual celebration and I was on the bill with Faith Brown and the New Seekers.

Sadly, Faith, though she is a great act, ‘died’ that night because there were too many foreigners in who didn’t understand her brilliant impressions. I am fortunate that magic is able to cross all the international barriers. We stood in the wings feeling really sorry for her, as you do when a mate is in that situation. Trying to get them back, she actually over-ran which caused me some problems, as I needed to get back across country that night for my early morning flight to Spain.

If Faith reads this she’ll kill me for the line I used. It isn’t mine, it’s very old, but it works and this audience had lost interest in the show. After the compère had announced my name, I breezed on and grabbed their attention with, ‘right. The man got it right. My name is Paul Daniels and if you don’t laugh at this lot, I’ll bring the girl back on.’

I know, it’s cruel, but who said showbusiness was pretty? It more than cracked the ice and the audience, as Ken Dodd would say, ‘gave in’. I did 30 minutes, my allotted time exactly, and bowed at the end of the last trick. As I raised myself from the bow, I was stunned to see that the whole tent had stood up and was giving me a standing ovation. This was my first ever ovation and there’s nothing like it. It was wonderful.

As I made my exit, the compère who was also the agent for the job, Reg Parsons, had tears in his eyes at the emotion of the moment. As I shot past him, I whispered, ‘I know why you’re crying, Reg. We should have asked for more money!’

Throwing my case in the car and not bothering to change out of my show gear, I drove through the night once more and arrived at Gatwick airport in time for a few hours’ car rest. I had been so high after the standing ovation, I hadn’t needed any matchsticks to keep me awake.

Saturday – Spain

I caught the flight to Spain to do a corporate job for Sony. Having arrived, I was then driven for hours across the countryside, to wherever this event was taking place. Another good show. I was having the week of my life. Doing the show, it amused me in that it was the worst sound system I had ever heard and yet it was for Sony! I know it wasn’t their own gear, but it’s always the way. Plumbers’ taps always drip. I’m not knocking Sony. My house is full of their stuff.

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 until 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.