Paul Daniels (36 page)

As we drove back to the hotel, I told Joseph about the meat. Next morning he explained, ‘I went back to the restaurant because you were not happy, Mr Daniels, and they
told me that they were very embarrassed because you ordered lamb but they did not have any lamb. They served you dog but the real problem was that it was not a young dog.’ Somehow this explanation did not make me feel any better about the night before.

Thanks to the Variety Club Award news being sent around the world, everywhere we went on this trip either the local news stations or even the television companies themselves were always there trying to get me to work. I didn’t want to work but it is very hard to say ‘no’ when people are being so complimentary. I agreed to do a television programme for children and went out and bought some packs of cards, tissue paper, string and the like to make up some small magic tricks for them to see.

I was taken to a small television studio where the facilities, to say the least, were primitive. The lights were the small, portable lamps normally used in domestic video making, hanging on Dexion framing. The television cameras themselves were rectangular boxes that only recorded in black and white so they decided to shoot my part on film, not tape. They found a table for me to work on and it was an ex-British Army metal desk that made a strange blump-blump noise every time you touched it and the middle went up and down. They brought in a group of small children and sat them on metal and plastic chairs that squeaked every time a child moved.

The camera was a collectable. An old German film camera with an enormous magazine mounted on the top. When it was eventually started it made a sound like a tinny machine gun.

In came a beautiful young Indian girl who was the regular presenter of the show. She sat down and the director gave the order to roll the camera. Then, and I am sorry to say, I laughed out loud, when, in the midst of the blump-blumps, squeak-squeaks and the machine-gun, he shouted, ‘QUIET, ACTION.’

He hadn’t a hope in hell of getting quiet in that racket, but he didn’t seem to care. Then I got one of the biggest surprises of my life. The girl smiled at the camera, paused, and very slowly said, ‘super … cala … fragilistic … expiali … docious. Super … cala … fragilistic … expiali … docious.’ Delivered in that lovely, lilting Indian accent, these were the last words I expected. My jaw dropped and she went on, ‘that is right, children … Magic,’ and she turned to look at me. It took a couple of seconds to realise that it was my cue to work. I’d love to see that film because I must have looked a right wally for the first few minutes.

We flew from Bombay to Hong Kong and the reception there was the opposite of Bombay. We were met at the door of the plane and practically jogged through the airport. Our luggage was first off the carousel and loaded into a car before we could blink. We were across the other side of the harbour before we knew it and into the hotel in about seven minutes.

As we were signing in, Barry Norman, the television film critic, said ‘Hello’. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.

From a lot of reminiscing in Hong Kong, and a trip to a monastery that painted Jesus, with Chinese eyes, on a donkey on dinner plates, we went to Japan. Tokyo was just like every other major city in the world. The hotel had the biggest foyer of any hotel I had ever stayed in and I liked the fact that none of the staff expect a tip. I got the impression that they thought it an insult. Perhaps by now, the Americans, notorious for their over-the-top tipping, have changed them and, if so, that’s sad. We also experienced the efficiency of the Japan Travel Bureau. One evening, I decided that if we were really to experience Japan, we had to get out of Tokyo and at about 5.45pm went into the JTB office. They found a man who spoke a little English (in those days it was very difficult to find any written English on any of the signs) and I told him that I had looked at
his brochures but did not want to go on any of his organised trips around Japan. I explained that I wanted to go to various bits and pieces of each trip and gave him my list. He was gone for half-an-hour and returned with two books of tickets, one for Debbie, one for me. All these tickets were printed with our names and properly bound in a book.

As per his instructions, very early the next morning Debbie and I went down to the foyer and the porters piled up our, by then, considerable amount of luggage. We looked around for a yellow flag and spotted a girl standing by the doors holding one up on a stick. As we approached her she asked, ‘
Daniels-san
?’ and I said their word for ‘yes’, which sounds like ‘Hi’. She pointed out to a line of buses where another girl was standing with a yellow flag. We walked to the bus and she tore out the first of our tickets. We got on to the bus and, as we seemed to be the last, she got on and in the international language of English started to ask where everyone was from. We were sitting in the middle of a band of Argentinians, which probably doesn’t mean much to you, but you have to remember that we were at war with Argentina at the time. Debbie tried to stop me but I couldn’t resist announcing that we were from England. Strange how the bus went silent, but even stranger was how we got along so well with them on the trip. Ordinary people never want to go to war.

The bus set off and I flipped. I could see that all our luggage was still standing in the hotel foyer. The guide calmed me down and told me not to worry. I worried. We were driven straight to the station without hold-ups and we looked at our next ticket. It had on it the platform number, the carriage letter and the seat number. We walked to our platform to find that it was lettered and painted so that people could form orderly queues to await their train. It was also the first time that I’d seen raised bumps on tiles to give blind people information and warnings. We
stood on our letter and waited. At five to seven I thought the train was going to be late. Silly me. At three minutes to seven the train pulled in, our carriage stopped in front of our noses and we found our names on our seats. Remembering how late we had booked our seats and how early in the morning it was, this was the first of the JTB miracles. The interior was immaculate and there were flowers in little wall vases between the windows. As the second hand ticked towards the hour, the doors closed and the train moved off exactly on time. It rocketed through the countryside at an incredible speed and all I could think about was the luggage.

During the journey, our ticket was collected, revealing the slogan ‘Red Flag’ on the next one. As we pulled into a small country station there was a girl standing with a red flag so we got off and were pointed to a bus which took us to a small Japanese hotel, I think they are called
riokhan
, and there on the counter were two envelopes containing our room keys with our names on the outside. We had never stopped moving since we left our luggage but when we got into the room, there it was. Magic.

That was the way it was for the whole Japanese trip, incredibly efficient. Every room we went to had shaving gear and toothbrushes and kimonos. They thought we were crazy to be carrying all the luggage and I agreed with them. The televisions were bi-lingual and stereo. The first night we slept in a Japanese inn and they pulled the bed out of a cupboard and unrolled it on to the tatami matting all I could think of was that I had just paid £3,000 for a four-poster bed and this was more comfortable.

Japan … Singapore … Bahrain – and it was on the trip to Bahrain that I lost my fear of death. It was an overnight trip and I went to sleep on the floor. I have never been able to sleep while in the seat on a plane. What I didn’t know is that you are
not allowed to sleep on the floor but nobody saw me down there. There is a lack of oxygen or something and I woke up dizzy. Thinking that I must get into the toilets, I started to head through the kitchen area of the plane.

I woke up on the floor. Panicking stewards and stewardesses surrounded me. It wasn’t their fault but this was one passenger they didn’t want to lose. An oxygen mask was stuck on my face but at the exact moment I awoke I can clearly remember feeling fine. Some water seemed to trickling down my face and then I knew why they were in a panic. I had cut my face badly on the way down but I had felt no pain. I can remember thinking, ‘I don’t feel very …’ and waking up thinking only a few seconds had passed. I’d been out for a while, apparently.

The next day, by the pool in Bahrain, a man asked if I’d been mugged. I explained what had happened and how strange it had all felt. ‘I think death is like that, ‘ he said and instantly I just knew he was right. One day, not for a while yet, I hope, I will think, ‘I don’t feel very …’ and then I will feel nothing ever again. There will be no pain because that is a physical impossibility. All pain and feelings will stop, so there will be nothing. You can’t be frightened of ‘nothing’, can you? I have never been afraid of death since.

From Bahrain we went to Cairo, where we had a quick look round before going on one of the most interesting and photogenic trips of my life. We flew to join a Sheraton cruiser and cruised down the Nile. Most things haven’t changed there in thousands of years. What made it even better was that there were only two English people, travel agents, on the boat and they didn’t split on me. Debbie and I were anonymous, surrounded, in Egypt, mostly by Jewish ladies from Florida.

It was a truly fascinating trip and I started to call the tour guide by the name that I had heard one of the crew use. It sounded like ‘Affaff ’. She laughed, strangely, but kept friendly.
Apparently I was calling her ‘very fat’. How to make friends, by Paul Daniels.

On one outing, I asked her about someone called King Tut. She had been talking about him and I wanted to know if he was a relative of Tutankhamun.

‘It’s the same man,’ she said. ‘At that time in history, all kings, pharaohs, and leaders were given virgin birth and called Son of God. In this case, Tut was called the Son of the Sun God. It’s the same with your Jesus Christ.’

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather. In that moment, just as some people claim to have seen the light and found Christianity, or Buddhism or any of the world’s religions, I became a Born-Again Atheist. Suddenly I could understand why we needed religion in the past, to keep law and order and discipline among primitive peoples, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why the ancient superstitions and fears were being perpetuated today. Surely by now we could teach a better way of understanding why it is not only wrong, but fairly stupid, to be a bad person, even a criminal.

As the cruise down the Nile came to an end, they held a talent show on board. Everybody had to come to the party in Egyptian-style dress and Affaff went around trying to get people to join in the show. Some said they would belly dance but only for a minute, some Belgians said they would do a sketch, which would last six minutes, and eventually she got to me. ‘Put me down for an hour-and-a-half,’ I said and she laughed out loud.

‘Oh, Mr Daniels, you are so funny.’

Eventually, I persuaded her to put everyone else on first and I would fill in whatever time that was left at the end. I hadn’t worked in months and I got lucky. In the first few minutes I got heckled by one of the guides and was able to ‘attack’ back. At the end, the captain looked at his table of prizes and announced that he felt I should have the lot. I explained that wasn’t fair
because I did this for a living, so I just took a bone letter opener as a souvenir.

Back in Cairo, on the last day of our holiday, I inadvertently polished off a drink containing ice whilst trying to design a T-shirt for the Sheraton hotel manager. For three months I had travelled the world avoiding such a mistake. The next morning at the airport, I had Tutankhamun’s revenge and two elderly English nurses literally dragged me into the ladies’ toilet in order to clean me up. I was grateful for these elderly ladies, who cared enough to put their concern into action. Thanks to them, I was able to make it to the plane and home.

In the last couple of weeks of that memorable trip, I had lost my fear of death and also lost my fear of eternal damnation. I felt so much better about the so-called mysteries of life and death. I was happier than ever before. To make sure, I came home and did a lot of reading. It’s all there, in the books, so the guys who run the business of the churches and the religions must know it, too. I wonder why they don’t tell us? Even the Roman Catholic Church, the ‘founders’ of the spread of Christianity, was the result of a decision in the Roman Senate so they could still rule the world when they were losing their military control. Don’t believe me? Run the Time Line in Microsoft’s
Encarta
and look at when military power ended and religious power began. It’s the same date.

So I returned to England a changed, happier man.

I had more than a shock when I got home. My eldest son, Paul, has a lot of charm and is liked by many people. Sadly, he has never matured and taken responsibility for himself and by no means appeared to want to. He has an excellent brain for solving problems but he has never accepted the task of living and improving his lot in life.

Paul Jnr’s first job at 16 was down at Smith’s Docks near Middlesbrough, but the ports were closing as the industry went
into decline. I offered him a job looking after a novelty exhibition and shop that I owned in Blackpool. He took the post of manager and began to oversee the company, but never put his heart into it. He would spend all day playing on the slot machines rather than run the business. When the shop closed at the end of the season, I took him on as part of my stage management team and he looked after my props.

Unfortunately, he was never honest, which I thought was odd, because he was brought up to believe in the value of truthfulness. When he started drinking heavily, this was also in strong contrast to the rest of our family history. None of this behaviour seemed to fit in.

I still kept him on as part of my team at the Prince of Wales Theatre, but money and jewellery would consistently go missing from my dressing room. You never want to think ill of your own child. With no evidence that it was Paul, I started to watch him very closely and on one occasion I saw him remove a bundle of cash. I discovered at this time that Paul lied and, in fact, lied very well. He had become a master of deception but it wasn’t magical.