Paul Daniels (28 page)

Dad’s face was a picture that Christmas morning. As he opened the door, he gasped in surprise, for there sat the world’s biggest Meccano set and it was all his. That was when I learnt about his childhood and the cruelty shown to him during Christmases past. It took him a month to put it together.

The following Christmas, I gave them an envelope. ‘That’s a bit of a comedown after last year,’ said Mam.

Dad opened it. ‘I think you’d better sit down, Mam,’ he said when he had finished reading the contents.

It was a certificate of travel to take them to Hollywood. I was thinking of how they had been brought up in the boom years of the cinema and that maybe they would like to see where it all started. I was right; the tears that streamed down Mam’s face were priceless.

It was their first ever aeroplane flight and as we waved them off, I said to Trevor, ‘I bet Dad comes back in a stetson.’

I was wrong. It was Mam who came back in a stetson. They had a fabulous time and seemed very much at home. Whenever I go to Hollywood, I never meet anybody, but my parents came back with stories of having dinner with Liberace and Cary Grant. Meeting Joan Collins’ chauffeur on the plane, they took up an offer to be driven around by him and cancelled the limousine I had booked for them.

Giffard’s Barn has great memories. Sammy Davis Jnr had a
line in his act something like, ‘Hey, look at me. I’m rich. Do you want to know how rich I am? I’ve got a swimming pool and I can’t even swim.’ When I was at Giffard’s, I altered the line. ‘Do you want to know how rich I am? I can’t swim and I’ve just had the pool moved.’ It was true and I know at the time there was a good reason, but I can’t remember it. Maybe it came about because the bull from the farm next door jumped over the wall and landed in it. We had to get a crane to get him out again. I didn’t even know bulls could jump.

I’m not someone who drives ‘on the bonnet’, I always drive at least two cars in front, looking way ahead of the car. I suppose its called defensive driving, then you are ready and alert for any eventuality, and it’s saved me from several accidents. I enjoy driving well and taught my son Martin to drive and he turned out to be a much better and safer driver than I was. I told him that as there was always a long waiting list for tests to say on the application form that he could take any cancellations. They phoned him to say his test was in one week’s time. I made him drive me one morning from Giffard’s to the heart of London, travelling through all the early morning rush hour traffic. When we arrived he was in a sweat but I told him that no matter what happened from now on, it could never be worse. He passed his test first time.

On Christmas Eve, as he was still new to driving, I suggested he followed me back from the Prince of Wales Theatre to Giffard’s Barn, where we were to spend another family Christmas. I warned him to keep his distance in case the roads were icy as the night sky was crystal clear and the stars sparkled in the heavens. Pulling into the driveway Martin got out and displayed the signs of being a great ad-libber:

‘This is going to be the greatest Christmas I’ve ever had.’ ‘Well it hasn’t started yet,’ was my reply.

‘I know, but I’ve just followed a star to a stable.’

A
n illusion is defined as the creation of a magical effect that uses an animal, sometimes a human. There were an abundance of worldwide deceptions in the Eighties, where events were not always what they seemed. Diaries allegedly written by Adolf Hitler were discovered to be fakes and the inventor of modern jogging, James F Fix, died of a heart-attack whilst jogging. The wreck of the Titanic was discovered, Live Aid raised £8 million for the Ethiopian famine and Madonna burst on to the scene as the newest American star.

The 1970s had been very good to me. I was slowly learning more and more about television, thanks to appearances in shows like
The Club Acts of the Year, Ace of Clubs, Opportunity Knocks, Wheeltappers, The David Nixon Show, For My Next Trick, Fall In The Stars, Be My Guest, Parkinson, The Marti Caine Show, Pebble Mill Showcase, Thank You and Goodnight, The Paul Daniels Show, The Magic Show, Jim’ll Fix It, Paul Daniels’ Blackpool Bonanza,
two
Royal Variety Shows, Disney Time, Blankety Blank, The Shirley Bassey Show
and
Larry Grayson’s Generation Game.
I was well prepared, therefore, for the start of
The Paul Daniels
Magic Show,
which ran on BBC TV from September 1979 to March 1994, for a total of 15 series.

I know that, to many people, the world of television itself is magical, so let’s pick a few stories out of the list.

Club Acts of the Year
was another talent competition, but this time the viewers were comparing like with like. It is a bit silly to try to make singers, comedians, dancers and jugglers compete against each other because they all have different talents.
Club Acts
made magicians compete against magicians, comedians against comedians and so on. I didn’t win. All day I had been asking whether it was OK to go on screen with a box of Kleenex tissues and use it in a trick. I had brought some sticky plastic sheeting to cover the box but ‘they’ said to leave it as it was. A couple of minutes before I was due on stage, in fact the act prior to mine had already started, one of ‘them’ walked by and told me that I couldn’t go on with an advertisement like that. I didn’t stop to argue. I ran all the way up to my dressing room on the top floor and I stuck the plastic on as I ran back down the stairs. I got to the back of the stage, which was huge, as I heard my name being announced and I ran flat out to the wings, braked hard and walked on trying to act like Mr Smoothy. The trouble was that I had to speak and I sounded like a cross between an asthmatic and a heavy breather.

I did several shows of
Jim’ll Fix It.
The Producer, Roger Ordish, is now a good friend of mine and he told me that over the years he had more requests to assist Paul Daniels, be sawn up by Paul Daniels, be vanished by Paul Daniels and so on, than for any other requests. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Granada TV’s
Blackpool Bonanza
was a television show recorded in the Norbreck Castle hotel in Blackpool. The auditorium, in which they hold exhibitions, was huge. I was the host of the show, doing magic and introducing the guests. This summer spectacular was my first real series on prime-time and,
again, was produced by Johnny Hamp. It was competing against the BBC’s
Summertime Special
, which toured the seaside resorts and for years I kept a small strip cartoon about the show. There were two characters and one says to the other, ‘Have you seen
Blackpool Bonanza
?’ ‘No, what’s that?’

‘It’s like
Summertime Special,
but one town takes all the blame.’

Lovely.

This show happened during the summer of 1978 when I was appearing on the North Pier with Marti Caine. I did the first half and she did the second. Great singer, very funny comedienne (that’s what they called them in those days, using English that told you instantly whether the comic was male or female. Nowadays you have to guess, sometimes even after you’ve watched them.)

The theatre on the pier was at the far end as usual. This was the way they were built, to avoid paying council rates because the building was beyond the average tide level or whatever. Located at the end of a half-mile walkway, the stage door is approached by what is more akin to a wind tunnel. On one side there was a café and on the other side was the theatre. When the wind was up, I would battle my way to the end, and towards the end of the season it could be hell getting down there. Once, carrying Starsky, my rabbit, in his hutch, I really couldn’t make any headway at all. I had to ‘tack’ like a yacht to reach the stage door. At one stage I looked to my right only to find the people in the warmth of the café rolling about with laughter at my antics, the Norman Wisdom look-a-like.

In a storm, the waves would crash up against and through the bottom boards of the orchestra pit to the extent that the musicians would put their feet up on the chair in front of them in rough weather to keep dry.

There is a story about Robb Wilton, one of the all-time great funny men, who was doing a season on the North Pier. He was
a quiet comic, droll, with a biting sense of wit. One night the storms came and this one was a beauty. Robb tried to keep working although hailstones were banging on the metal roof and waves were banging up at the floor. At one stage in the act, a large pair of emergency exit doors were forced open by the wind and flapped noisily back and forth, the wind now howling into the theatre, ice cream tubs and programmes flying everywhere as the ushers ran and struggled to shut them again. As they won the fight there was a sudden lull in the storm, a moment of tranquillity. Robb, who had kept silent throughout the ructions going on in front of him, took a breath, folded his arms, did his trademark picking of his teeth in the corner of his mouth and slowly said, ‘I think they’re training me to be a police horse!’

Within showbusiness, the staff of the North Pier were legendary. The ushers and the stage door man did not come from showbusiness, but were hired for the season. They tended to be elderly. A stage door man, doing his job properly, protects the whole of the backstage area and the artists, from intruders. Not on the North Pier they don’t.

One night I had just come off stage and, without a knock, the stage door man opened my dressing room door and pushed in an old man. He stood there without saying anything and we smiled at each other as I waited to see what he wanted. He just stood there smiling, so eventually, after what seemed an embarrassing amount of time, I asked if I could help him.

‘Finest thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said.

I though he was talking about my act. ‘Thank you,’ I smiled back.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not you. Twenty years ago, when I stood on the end of the pier and watched it burn down. Finest thing I ever saw.’ He was still saying it when I pushed him back out of the stage door.

On the other hand, it was raining one night when the same stage door keeper came and told me that there was someone waiting outside to see me, who said he knew me, but who, according to this guru of our business, ‘doesn’t look as though he is in showbusiness’.

‘What’s his name?’ I asked, and the doorkeeper looked vague.

‘It’s something to do with those cages you keep birds in.’ I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and then the penny dropped. Aviary. My mind took a sideways leap and I immediately knew who he was talking about. I ran out into the rain and brought into the warmth John Avery. An idiot with dreams of setting fire to the pier could get in, but not John, the manager of the London Palladium.

Towards the end of the season, two serious-looking gentlemen asked to see me in my dressing room. In their wonderfully flat north-western tones, they explained that they were from Southport Borough Council Entertainments Department.

‘Now we’ve see your act, Mr Daniels, and we think you are very funny,’ they began. ‘Now you will have heard of Southport and we would like to know if you would consider coming for a summer season next year?’

‘Look fellas, do you mind if I get shaved, ‘cos I have a show to do in a minute?’

‘Not at all, Mr Daniels. You go right ahead.’

‘I don’t really talk business. You need to talk to my manager, Mervyn O’Horan.’

‘No, we don’t like managers and agents, Mr Daniels, we like dealing direct.’

‘Well, he has to make the decisions but I’ll pass the message on. You can trust him, he’s dead straight. How long is the season?’

‘It will be as long as you’d like it to be.’

‘And what are the dates then?’

‘Oh, you can pick the dates.’ That was very good because then I could pick only the high-paying weeks at the centre of the season.

‘Who else is on the bill then?’

‘Whoever you want, Mr Daniels,’ they smiled.

Thoughts of whether Sammy Davis Jnr was available to do a warm up for me in Southport flashed through my mind.

‘What about dancers?’

‘You book whoever you want, Mr Daniels. It’s your show.’

To anybody in my position, this was an incredible deal. I could pick the best business weeks and get commission off every act that I booked as well. I constantly asked them not to talk money with me. That had to be left to my manager.

I was half-way down my face with a razor when they said, ‘We were thinking about £20,000 a week.’

Stopping short of cutting my throat in surprise, I turned round to look at them. They were deadly serious. This was an unheard of amount for a season.

‘I think you r-r-r-really do need to talk to my manager,’ I stammered. Mervyn telephoned me the next day after hearing about the proposal and asked me what I wanted to do.

Having chatted it through with Richard Mills, Chief Director of the Delfont Organisation, whom I am proud to call a friend, I understood why it wasn’t such a good deal. He put in plain words the fact that I needed to see where my bread was best buttered. Delfonts could offer me several summer seasons in a row as they held a chain of resort venues, whereas Southport had only the one. It was a reasonable argument and taking a deep breath, I turned Southport down.

And so it was that in the middle of this season, I did the
Blackpool Bonanza
shows. I was performing twice-nightly on the pier and on the Sunday morning, early, I started to rehearse
for the show which was recorded that night in front of a very large audience. I was everywhere, learning, watching, sorting out tricks and trying above all to remember the names of the acts. In the whole season I only forgot one name and it wasn’t exactly the hardest name to remember. Roy Walker, the Irish comedian. The trouble was that I had never met him, never seen him rehearse and he was new on the scene. I had no trouble with the next act, Shakin’ Stevens and Bogden Komenovski, but Roy Walker was a blank. I hope he has forgiven me and, by the way, he was brilliant.

On the Monday morning after that first
Bonanza
recording, I learnt something else about television. If you are really working at it, the strain is greater than you think. The alarm went off by my bed and I couldn’t get up.

I couldn’t move a muscle. For whatever reason, and I am sure it had to be the mental strain, I was completely paralysed and I was on my own in the house. It took until about 11.30am before I could move my arms and legs and I was terrified.

The following Sunday, I paced myself into an easy-going attitude and that’s the way I have worked ever since.

This was quite a season. I received a telephone call asking me whether I would act as the MC for a major variety show in Aberdeen. It was to be in the presence of Prince Charles and would be on a Sunday evening. I was already doing two shows a night on the pier and, now
Bonanza
was finished, Sunday was my only night off. Add to that the distance to and from Aberdeen and I told the organiser that it was impossible.

‘No, it’s going to be very easy – the oil companies who are working that area of the North Sea are sponsoring each act. They are paying for aeroplanes, limousines and hotels. You will be well looked after.’

Well, despite the other 12 shows that I would be doing both sides of this one I decided to say ‘yes’ and put it into the diary.
I asked for a list of the acts that I would be introducing and worked out my material accordingly.

Two weeks before the show I got another telephone call. Apparently the oil company that was sponsoring me could use its company jet to get me to Aberdeen but they couldn’t find a plane that would bring me back again. All attempts to charter a small plane on the following Monday morning had failed and they were asking whether I could go by train.

The railway system at that time was notoriously bad. I said ‘no’. They asked if I would drive there and back. I said ‘no’. They asked if they could drive me there and back. I said ‘no’. I wasn’t being awkward. It’s a very long way and I was already working very hard. I find that when someone else is driving me I can’t relax and I watch the road all the time in case of emergency. Quite what I’d do, I’ve never worked out, I just don’t feel safe.

I explained the situation to my office and Howard Huntridge offered to come to the rescue. In the previous few weeks Freddie Starr, Colin Crompton and Howard had all qualified as pilots and suddenly the air seemed a very dangerous place to be. The first two were crazy comedians and Howard was just crazy.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not qualified to fly you myself, but I have an idea how we can fly you back.’

Well, I knew the major oil companies and the organisers of the Prince Charles Trust had failed to find a plane, but Howard moves in mysterious ways. He was a truly lateral thinker. I said OK.

The trip up to Aberdeen was fantastic. The oil company provided one of those company jets that only top golfers could afford. We even had an inflight hostess who served drinks and sandwiches. Reg Parsons, a member of my management team, who was not too keen on flying (and that is the understatement of the century), accompanied me. Even Reg, however, was
impressed by the service and the luxury but even so, seemed much happier when we landed.