Paul Daniels (3 page)

Huge street parties were quickly organised to celebrate the
homecoming, with long tables stretching down the middle of our street. Balloons tied to chairs bobbed about and the multi-coloured bunting fluttered in the breeze. Jelly was the mainstay of the menu and was probably the only thing there was plenty of at the time. I wondered how those who had lost loved-ones in the war coped with this celebration.

Dad quickly went back to being a cinema projectionist at the Hippodrome in South Bank. This had been erected in 1910 as a temporary building but it lasted until the 1960s. Its exterior consisted of corrugated metal sheets with flat metal panels on the façade. As a young boy, I was never allowed to visit my dad at work because of our strict bedtime regime. Dad would already have left for work when we were washed and dressed in our pyjamas by 6.45pm ready for
Dick Barton, Special Agent
on the radio as we ate our supper. We were ushered into bed as soon as the closing music played at exactly 7.00pm. ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’ Did your mother come out with stuff like that? Stuff like ‘You’ll stay like that’ if you pulled a face; ‘You’ll laugh on the other side of your face when I’m finished with you’; ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say …’ Later in life, you find yourself saying all these things to your own children.

The fact that central heating was not yet available meant that we would automatically rise early in the cold and scratch our names on the frost which had collected on the inside of our windows before brushing our teeth in the freezing tap water. I was always loosing my front teeth. As a small child I fell down some stone stairs in a cinema, teeth first. For most of my early years I had a huge gap in my smile. It seemed like I went to the dentist every other week and that meant that from the age of ten I held no fear of dentists. I would not have any anaesthetic to dull the pain and hated the thought of being knocked out cold with gas. I just gripped the side of the chair as the drill bored deeper. Eventually, my teeth grew back again.

When I was starting to display my new teeth in the playground one morning, ‘Happy’ Bates jumped off an old wartime shelter and leapt on to my shoulders. As my head hit the concrete, I could see pieces of tooth flying off in all directions from under my nose. My mother was devastated that my new teeth were lost once more and the dentist cried.

It was decided that the dentist should ‘carve’ what remained of my front teeth until they looked like tiny fangs, to wait until my teenage years before they could be successfully capped. I was so proud that my new jaws shone like the toothpaste advert. I must have been busier exercising my new smile rather than looking where I was going, because a few days later I jumped over a wall. I made it all the way over, except for my feet. They gave me a great pivot point as I swung down on to the pavement again and smashed the whole top row. Fang the Wonder Boy had done it again. Sorry, Mam!

Over the road from us lived Mrs Grant. Now she was very old, or so we thought. She was also very strange and spooky – a spiritualist. At first I was frightened of her, but she turned out to be a nice old lady. I told her I didn’t believe in ghosts and she said that when she died she was going to come back and pull my ears. Years later, when she did die, I used to sit quietly at night and will her to pull my ears, which was a very risky thing to do because they were already rather big. She never did, of course.

Trevor and I shared the same bedroom and spent all night singing songs. Of course, we got to see more movies than most kids because we didn’t have to pay. Even though we had our differences, we would stick together in an emergency. If, in the middle of a row, anybody stepped in between us, it would be the intruder who would suffer. Because we were brought up in such a loving, disciplined relationship, we enjoyed the stability and safety of each other’s company. No one in our house ever
touched alcohol except on very special occasions and it was extremely unusual for our parents to row.

Leisure times were always arranged according to what was left in the budget, but as Dad worked for a regular wage and Mam kept the family accounts brilliantly in little red exercise books, we could afford a few enjoyable trips into the country. We grew up having wonderful holidays going camping or on the Norfolk Broads, renting boats and sometimes even a converted windmill. It nestled on a bend in the river miles from anywhere and only accessible by boat or on foot through the cornfields. It was so secluded that Trevor, Dad and I would be stark naked on the front lawn, playing shuttlecock, of all things, which is particularly hazardous if you are male!

Every time a boat came round the bend we would all run like hell, only to appear moments later when the danger had passed. The other problem was the massive dragonflies. Those blue monsters must have had a breeding ground close by for they would suddenly appear from nowhere and start to
dive-bomb
us. We would jump from side to side to avoid being bitten, with male parts dangling like worms to a fish.

The family name for the male organ was ‘cuckoo’. I never found out why, but we all had ‘cuckoos’. Apparently, I had already disgraced myself at a church tea party by proudly announcing that my father had ‘feathers’ round his ‘cuckoo’.

It was my dad’s ‘cuckoo’ that was in jeopardy now as three or four dragonflies took a fancy to him and started to plunge and swoop at his genitalia. Trevor and I were in hysterics rolling around the floor as my dad swerved to avoid contact and disappeared into the windmill shrieking. He was a very funny man, my dad.

Visual comedy was what he particularly enjoyed and he could easily have been a performer. A regular visitor to our house was Mrs Gillings, my Granny Lloyd’s friend. One scene
in a Laurel and Hardy film constantly fascinated her – Stan Laurel produces a flame from the end of his thumb. Later, this was to be made even more famous by British Gas, but at the time this was an amazing miracle. Having discussed this phenomenon once more, Dad offered to show Mrs Gillings how the effect was really done, before disappearing into the yard. I don’t think he had any great insight into the world of special effects; he just seemed to have the sort of brain that could work things out in a logical fashion.

Arriving back into our kitchen with a bottle of methylated spirits in his hand he carefully unscrewed it and put his thumb over the opening. With a running commentary, he explained the whole process in great detail as he tipped the bottle up to ensure a good soaking of meths on his thumb. Grabbing a match, he proudly announced, ‘… they stop the film and start it again after you simply set light to it like this!’ With those words, the whole of his arm shot up in flames. He had soaked his thumb so that the meths had run down to his elbow. Mrs Gillings shrieked in alarm as Dad ran around the room on fire. At first I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do, but the laughter in Dad’s eye told me everything was under control.

What I hadn’t realised was that he was in no pain as the meths burned itself off and didn’t affect his skin. My father was now playing the scene for all it was worth. Once in on the ‘gag’, I was in hysterics as the more Mrs Gillings screamed the faster he jumped about the room thrusting his arm between his legs one minute and swinging his burning hand around like an Olympic torch the next. I’m certain Laurel and Hardy would have stolen the idea for their next film had they witnessed it. Do not try this, there is a knack to keeping it moving.

The laughter in our family increased the close-knit nature of our existence and created a sense of equality and respect between the four of us, which was special. ‘Fall-outs’ were few.
It also meant that bad times were shared as much as the good, but it still brings tears to my eyes when I remember one of the saddest times of all.

My brother and I were thrilled when it was announced that we were to have a new arrival in the family. Thinking at first that maybe Father Christmas was coming to stay, I soon discovered that Mam was to have a baby. Her third child, like the previous two, was to be born at home, in the front room and all the preparations were made.

It seemed like ages before this new arrival appeared, but one day when Trevor and I came home from school there was a new, pink little squeaky thing on show for all to see. Mam looked exhausted yet proud and I tried to imagine being able to play with our new family member.

As my thoughts drifted back to reality, I detected something different about the house that day. My little boy’s senses picked up an atmosphere of foreboding, of something being not quite right. Apparently, my new brother was known as a ‘blue baby’. He had been born with some sort of constriction around his heart that couldn’t be rectified in those days and his life was threatened.

After carrying this little fellow for nine months, the joy of birth had been snatched away and replaced by a deep sense of sadness. Mam and Dad put a brave face on it all, but the perception of impending loss was too great to contain and the tears could not be hidden.

The state of sadness in our house subsided over the following weeks as baby Keith seemed to be doing all right. He had some breathing difficulties but our hopes revived as each day the tot became more energetic showing obvious signs of improvement. Mam was soon up and about and six weeks later we began to wonder what all the fuss had been about. We got used to having him in the house and playing with him and I thought his
incredibly miniaturised hands and legs were wonderful. Life became normal.

When baby Daniels reached six weeks, we were sitting at the kitchen table over dinner, when a sudden shriek from my mam made my hair stand on end. She had discovered the smallest of our clan lying in his cot quite peacefully, but not breathing. Dad went rushing in to the front room to find her holding the lifeless bundle. He immediately placed the little one on the table, performing heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the tiny lips. Trevor and I stood with eyes wide in wonderment. We had no understanding of what was going on, only that it was serious.

Mam looked on helplessly as the repeated attempts to revive her baby succeeded, only to fail moments later as the little one’s breathing stopped again and again. There was obviously some type of restriction around the heart. After further struggling, there was no movement, no breath, no life. Eventually, it was Granny Lloyd who stopped Dad continuing the life saving.

‘Let him go, he’s not supposed to be here.’

We were ushered out of the room and I remember hearing Mam and Dad break down. An atmosphere of pain and agony dropped like a cloud and we were all still in tears.

Consequently, I lost a brother who had only just arrived in the world before he was taken again. It was a real shock to us all, but the grief pulled us even closer as a family. Very shortly after our baby’s death, we heard that the medical world had discovered the operation to cure his condition, but it was too late. I don’t think Mam ever got over that.

T
he successful Italian Torino Sportsters went down as their plane crashed on Mount Superga in May 1949 and World Champion Joe Louis retired from boxing. In the autumn of that year, the USSR tested its new atomic bomb and the first disposable nappies went on sale in the UK. The world was transforming rapidly.

Life in Lower Oxford Street continued. The housewives’ custom of sitting concealed behind the net curtains, watching the comings and goings in the front window continued, and as you walked down our street you could just see a faint outline as they watched the world go by. Everybody knew what everybody else was up to. I think that this is why the first really major television soap opera, Coronation Street, became popular. The wives no longer had to look through the net curtains and, indeed, could at last see
inside
other people’s houses. Having never been a voyeur of other people’s lives, I still find ‘soaps’ quite boring. I like films and plays that have an ending.

Granny Lloyd’s Mission leaders came round for tea quite regularly. Granny’s Mission was still in full swing and her
Sunday school grew by the week. Mam and Dad, enjoying the famous northern gift of hospitality and perhaps trying to think of some recompense, liked to invite folk back after the morning service. I was to be on my best behaviour, of course, and was only to speak when spoken to. We had had a lot of respect for elders drummed into us in those days, something which is sadly missing today.

Sitting around the table one Sunday, I managed to disgrace myself when one of the leaders asked how I was getting on at school. I innocently replied that I was doing well and hated only one teacher, Mrs Twates. ‘We call her Twatty Twates,’ I added.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth, than the whole room fell silent. ‘Twat’ was apparently a swear word that referred to a woman’s private parts and I had just dropped the biggest Sunday clanger possible. I got a clip round the earhole from Dad and left the room very red-faced without being told what was wrong. I guess it was difficult to explain.

I would easily get slapped on the backside if I spoke out of turn and certainly if I used bad language. I still don’t like swear words, probably because I was brought up to dislike them and was taught that they were an unnecessary part of the English language. I suppose if you are surrounded by swearing you learn to accept it. I do know some very funny gags that use four-letter words to great effect but I wouldn’t use them in public because someone might be offended, so what’s the point? I don’t think swearing for the sake of it is funny, and hearing four-letter words used in gags just for effect makes me cringe and I certainly don’t consider it clever. I think it is childish. The question is always: ‘Is this a funny gag? Does it need adjectives and adverbs that begin with “f ” and are unrelated to the humour?’ In all the years of doing shows, I have never had a complaint that I have not used bad language.

When we call swearing the use of ‘Anglo-Saxon words’, we
are absolutely right. Historically speaking, the invading Romans banned us from speaking our native language. When the men met privately they didn’t want to say ‘penis’, ‘vagina’ and ‘intercourse’, they wanted their original language back, so words that were totally normal in those days became a secret language which eventually became bad language. It’s on the way back now to being just part of our everyday life and in a hundred years’ time people will probably wonder what all the fuss was about. Bad language is a strange phenomenon, because it is different everywhere you go in the world. One word in one country is not as offensive in another, but I still don’t like it.

The cinema meant a lot to me, because it was where my dad worked. I was allowed into the pictures at a very early age, though only at weekends, but upon reaching nine years old I became a paid assistant projectionist. Mam and Dad probably paid me, not the cinema, but who cared? Our cinema, note that it was now our cinema, had a gently rising slope from the front to the middle stalls and then rose sharply backwards up towards the wall from which the mysterious flickering lights issued, that filled our imaginations. I was always Douglas Fairbanks Jnr or Errol Flynn or rode away from the Hippodrome on my horse with that funny sideways run that we all did, imaginary reins in our left hand as our right hands slapped our right buttocks as if slapping the horse to go faster. Everyone went to the cinema, sixpence to sit in the front on the bum-numbing wooden benches and, if you could afford it, ten pence to sit at the back on the plush seats. Saturday mornings were set aside for kids’ films and cartoons.

I would love to watch Dad at work because he was such a craftsman. Receiving the film from the previous town’s projectionist he read the notes giving instructions on which parts of the film could be removed without affecting the plot. This meant that he could alter the length of the feature to fit in
with his individual time-scale of programming which always included a ‘B’ movie as well as the Pathe News and trailers. Advertising would be performed with hand-drawn glass plates that had been held over a candle and blackened. Carefully using the flattened heads of six-inch nails, Dad would etch his message on to the soot, before sandwiching it delicately against another piece of glass. This work of art was then projected and manually ‘scrolled’ across the screen at the appropriate moment.

Dad’s assistant projectionist, ‘Plonkey’, was not the most intelligent man and would consistently get his scratched messages muddled – DON’T FAIL TO MISS THIS NEXT MOVIE! was not the most literate way of inviting the audience back for more. This nice, quiet young man happened to have one of the world’s largest collections of Charlie Kunz records which he used to play as people came in, so everyone forgave him.

The film itself was highly flammable and the whole of the projection room, including the floor, was made of metal. This enabled Dad to place a sixpenny bit at the end of each reel, so he got an audible warning when the spool was nearing its end and he’d be ready to change over to the other projector. That’s how the system worked. A movie was broken down into several reels and you had to watch very carefully when each reel neared its end so you could switch the next machine on at the right time so that, as scenes changed, the story would continue seamlessly.

As I peered out of the little window that allowed me to see into the auditorium and view the screen, I stood with my hands twisted in a very strange position. My left arm rested on a small lever while my right hand hovered over the start button on the waiting projector. Both projectors would literally ‘burn’ from two carbon rods held half an inch away from each other through which high-voltage electricity was fed. The spark, or arc, that jumped across the rods was incredibly bright and would have
been enough to burn your eyes out had you foolishly looked directly into the lens. This same technique was adapted for use in the theatre as a ‘follow-spot’ and as some of the carbon rods were made of a substance containing lime, it was from here that the theatrical saying ‘being in the limelight’ originated.

As soon as I saw the black blob, which appeared in the top right hand of the screen, I pressed the start button on the idle projector. The film started to run through from the numbered leader, which I had set at the required place.

As soon as the second spot appeared, I switched the lever across, opening the light gate on the new projector as it closed the light gate on the other one. At the same time, you had to switch the sound across. The signal would only appear for 1/24 of a second, so if you blinked, you missed it.

When a film was properly made, the second dot would appear at a scene change on a camera cut. Light and sound would operate together in perfect synchronisation and the audience would be unaware that the film had been switched. It was a skill of which Dad was rightly proud and at which he expected me to succeed.

My first job was to take the film out of its metal storage box and place one reel at a time on the hand-geared rewinding device, transferring hundreds of feet of brittle, highly flammable film on to the correct spare reel ready for showing. As each film was delivered on at least six reels, this was a lengthy task but the faster you hand-spun the device, the quicker it would be rewound. Keeping a consistent speed was essential to eliminate uneven winding, which would cause problems during projection. I always aspired to do it like my father who was somehow able to get the film up to an incredible speed, take his hand off to scratch his face, catch the handle still furiously spinning and not drop one inch of film.

As the acetate sped from one reel to another, I was shown
how to feel the edges of the film as it ran in order to identify instantly any flaws. My father was insistent that any old joins should be re-spliced, as he couldn’t bear the thought of the film ever snapping. We were proud that we never had a broken film in our cinema.

The nightmare scenario was that one reel would accelerate ahead of the other and the film would then be allowed to escape like a tangled snake all over the floor. Not only would it break in several places, but would probably be seriously scratched. I think it was poor old ‘Plonkey’ who had spun the film as fast as he could one day only to discover that the clip holding the spools on the spindles had been left open. Inevitably, the spool shot off the mechanism but fell straight out of the window, trailing what seemed to be a hundred miles of film. As my father and I hung out of the window frantically reeling in the film by hand we noticed ‘Plonkey’ chasing the escaped spool as it disappeared down the street. Amazingly, we recovered the movie without a single scratch, and passers-by probably saw it as quite a comical advertising stunt as the cinema was pretty full that night!

The British Board of Film Censors was pretty active by this time in the early Fifties and although all the films in the cinema were certified, I saw them all. If my father censored me watching anything at the time, I wasn’t aware of it. Of course, when there was a film of dubious content it didn’t give a lot away as pornography was unacceptable in the public arena. You would be lucky to see a bare bum.

On the other hand, horror movies were pretty rife, ever since the release of the first Dracula film
Nosferatu
in 1922, with its spine-chilling scenes that quickly terrified audiences.
Frankenstein
and
Godzilla
never frightened me, because from where I was watching, Boris Karloff was simply a picture on a piece of celluloid. It was the same for violent movies that would simply make me smile when the audience sat in shock. Maybe
it was the effect of this that enabled me to look at life from a different angle. It took many years for a film to affect me and in some ways took away the fun of the movies. I was aware that it was all illusion.

It wasn’t until
Schindler’s List
was released in 1993 that I reacted emotionally to the celluloid offering. I’m not Jewish, but in the cold and hard reality of that film, the Holocaust suddenly came home to me and I left the cinema in tears.

When the religious film
The Miracle of Fatima
arrived at Dad’s Hippodrome, a note from the previous projectionist inserted in the film warned, ‘You won’t do any business with this load of rubbish!’ I could see the twinkle of a challenge brewing in my father’s eye as he read the note again. Sending a note to all the local Roman Catholic churches, he invited all the local priests to a free Friday afternoon screening. The projectionist was right, it was a dreadful film, but with the resulting advertising from all the Sunday morning pulpits, persuading parishioners to attend, we had full houses all week.

Apparently, as a very young man, one of the first ‘Christian’ films Dad screened was a silent version of the life of Christ. The pianist had difficulty in deciding what piece to play during the crucifixion scene and asked Hughie’s advice. Father suggested a slowed-down version of an old Scottish song he knew and the accompanist agreed it suited the mood. Little did the hapless musician know the true derivation of the piece, for on the opening night he misjudged the speed and as the actor playing Christ had his side pierced by a sword, discovered himself playing ‘Stop Your Tickling, Jock’. Both Father and the pianist were sacked on the spot!

The arrival of the ‘talkies’ in October 1927, with Al Jolson in
The Jazz Singer
, encouraged the masses to make cinema-going a regular weekly activity. Forty-seven picture houses sprang up in Leeds alone, as the cinema boomed and movies
produced the first heart-throbs and created new fashions to follow with stars like Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino.

Laurence Olivier was a great actor, but I didn’t like him in films and once we had to remove him from our screen in mid-film. After only a few minutes of
The Highwayman
, the audience was booing loudly. By this time, Dad’s growing audience was more important to him than the film and he quickly replaced it with a cowboy feature that was in reserve for the following night. It earned him a round of applause.

Hellzapoppin
’ was originally a ‘mad’ stage show that far exceeded any alternative comedy we experience today. This was one of the first films that I was entrusted to oversee on my own. Having gleefully started the first reel, I simply waited for the ‘clang’ of the sixpence signalling the need to switch to the next reel at exactly the right time. I had been well trained by my father and knew exactly how to change reels seamlessly.

As the final black blob appeared, I switched cameras and watched in dismay as the film jumped from a tender love scene to cowboys and Indians chasing each other across the prairie. Panicking, my mind flashed ‘my father will kill me!’ and I ran into the rewind room to check the other reels, expecting to find that they had been placed in the wrong order. As I rummaged through the long metal box, I was amazed to find that all the films were correctly stacked. Dashing back into the projection room, I peered out into the darkness and watched in disbelief as the film jumped back from the cowboys to the lovers once more. As the last Indian rode away, behind him appeared the couple still making love. I had been deceived by celluloid.