Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (25 page)

There were, of course, failures. Private Dick Scratcher, down-graded with flat feet, was billed as The Great Zoll, the Voltage King. He was given a try-out at the now recovering Officers’ Club. His act consisted of a ‘Death Throne’ made out of wood, cardboard and silver paper, with a surround of light bulbs. On a sign above was a warning: DANGER 1,000,000 VOLTS. The Great Zoll entered as a ‘Sultan’, with a turban that looked more like a badly bandaged head, and struck a ‘gong’ which was a dustbin lid painted with cheap silver paint: with its edge cut off it gave a flat ‘CLANK’. He was assisted by the driver/opera singer clad in a loin cloth, his body stained brown with boot polish. The ‘Sultan’ would be strapped into the chair with silver straps, telling us all the while in Chinese with a north-country accent: “Chop, chop, my assistant, Tong Bing, now strap me in Death t’chair, and throw switch, and send million volts through my t’body.” Tong Bing then chants some mindless tune which has nothing to do with the tune we are playing. Various bulbs go on and off as the great switch is thrown, the voltage meter goes up and down, the Great Zoll speaks: “By power of t’mind I will resist the power of t’electricity.” He stares into space, then magnesium flashes go off and fill the club with choking smoke. The final magnesium flash has been placed too near The Great Zoll, it sets fire to his trousers. Tong Bing is trying to beat it out and the room is filled with watery-eyed coughing officers trying to escape.

Dick Scratcher’s name went down next to Secombe’s in the ‘never again’ list. After the war, Harry was appearing at the Palladium and was visited by the Great Zoll and his wife. Harry noticed that the woman’s legs and arms were bandaged. “I’ve changed the act,” says the Great Zoll. “I’m into knife throwing.”

The best pianist in the CPA was Johnny Bornheim. Late nights we would play in the rehearsal room with a bottle of wine as company. Bornheim was a furrier in civvy street, but should have been a concert pianist. Self-taught, he could literally play anything.

He was fascinated with Bill Hall. He once pointed out, “No one has ever seen Bill Hall’s body alive!” True, he only showered after dark and likewise never took his clothes off with the light on. Was he hiding something? We decided to raid Bill Hall’s body.

In darkness we wait by his bed. Comes 0200 hours, Bill shuffles in, he is undressing, he is down to his shirt and socks. Before he can enter his pit, we signal the lights on, and six of us seize him, remove his remaining garments, and hold him down, naked, struggling and swearing. I hold a clipboard with an anatomical list. Bornheim goes to work with a stick. He starts at the top.

“Head, one, with stray hairs attached plus dandruff.”

“Check.”

“Earoles and wax, two.”

“Check.”

“Neck, scrawny with Adam’s apple, one.”

“Check.”

“Chest, sunken with stray hairs, one.”

“Check.”

“You bastards,” he is yelling and struggling.

“Legs, thin with lumps on knees, two.”

“Check.”

Bornheim elevates Hall’s scrotum on the stick. “Cobblers, red with purple tinges, two.”

“Check.”

“Chopper with foreskin attached, one.”

“Check.”

We released him and he chased us, hurling his and other people’s boots. A drunken Secombe enters, sees the naked wraith, embraces him. “My, you’re looking lovely in the moonlight, Amanda.” Amanda says Piss Off. Hall has to fight off the insane raspberrying Welshman. If only his Queen could have seen him that night.

As to Trooper Johnny Mulgrew of Glasgow, he had a wicked sense of humour; his idea of a joke was a huge beaming woman in a wheelchair being pushed through Hyde Park by a dying cripple. Always good for a laugh.

’Over the Page’

T
his was the show that launched the Bill Hall Trio. It was the brainchild of Captain Hector Ross, whose play
Men in Shadow
I had destroyed at Maddaloni. It was sheer luck: one of the acts for
Over (he Page
had withdrawn at the last moment, a sort of theatrical Coitus Interruptus. Could the Trio fill in? Yes. I knew that just playing jazz never was a winner, so I persuaded the wardrobe to give us the worst ragged costumes we could find. I worked out some patter and introductions. I never dreamed we would be anything more than just ‘another act’. The set for
Over the Page
was a huge book.

Over the Page
stage set

The artistes were a mixture of Italian professionals and soldier amateurs. Monday December 6
th
1945 the show opened at the Bellini Theatre to a packed house. The write-up says it all:

Over the Page
orchestra

The male and female chorus from
Over the Page

’
Over the page’ is brught, funny
’

Something new in stage entertainment is the Ensa-A.W.S. production
Over the Page
, showing this week at the Bellini. Presented as musical magazine, it is bright and colourful with no lack of comic relief.

Hit of the show in Naples so far has been Bill Hall’s Trio, consisting of Bill himself on the violin,
Spike Milligan
(guitar) and Jock Mullgrew (bass). On Monday night they were called back for two encores, and exihibited an amazing ability for playing first-rate hot music in grand comedy style. They also accompany Donna Tella, a popular young singing discovery from Rome.

What the paper said: excerpt from the
Union Jack, December 12 1945 (
transcribed newspaper cutting)

We were one incredible hit. When we came off, we were stunned. I couldn’t believe that of all that talent out there, we had topped the lot. After the show, a Lieutenant Reg O’List of CPA came backstage. He had been a singer at the Windmill in London, which was rather like being a blood donor in a mortuary. He thinks we’re great. Can he take us to dinner? God, we were in the big time already. Off the Via Roma is a wonderful pasta restaurant, we’ll love it. Great! Lieutenant O’List does it in style, we go in a horse-drawn carriage. Bill Hall plays his violin as we drift down the Via Roma. Wow! Life is good. The restaurant is all one can dream of: the waiters wear white aprons, the tables have red and white check cloths, there’s an oil lamp on every table, a mandolin band playing. As soon as we enter the waiters sweep us up in a cushion of hospitality. “Si accomodo, accomodo,” a bottle of wine with the manager’s compliments, thank you very much with our compliments. Giddy with success and a free dinner we eat a mountain of spaghetti. Reg O’List can’t stop telling us how good we are and we can’t stop agreeing with him. He can’t believe we are just the result of a chance meeting in a barrack room. Can we play some jazz after dinner? Yes. “Hey! I know! why don’t we put on a show?” etc! The customers stop eating, they cheer and clap, encore, encore. Free wine is slopping out of us. Enough is enough. Reg O’List is now very pissed; he will do
his
Windmill Act; he starts to sing ‘Begin the Beguine’; he has a powerful shivery square voice.

“If he’s from the Windmill,” says Gunner Hall, “why doesn’t he take his clothes off?” The night ends with Bill Hall splitting away from us — the last sight we had of him was on a tram playing opera to adoring passengers. What a night. It would lead us slowly down the road to oblivion.

The show-stopping Bill Hall Trio: J. Mulgrew on bass, Bill Hall on violin and Spike Milligan on guitar

Capt. Reg O’List, Pioneer Corps, playing and singing ‘ When they Begin the Beguine’, Italy 1945

ROME AGAIN

Rome Again

I
’m going to Rome
again
! This time with a difference. No more three-ton trucks, but a charabanc! Our touring officer is Lieutenant Ronnie Priest, a misnomer if ever there was one. Ronnie looked like someone whose cab was off the road for repairs. His cockney accent clashes with the officer’s uniform, but he does the job. The charabanc! stops at the hotel in Vuomero to pick up our Italian artistes. As the girls enter there’s the usual ‘Hello little darlin’’ from the lads. Mitzi, the violin-accordion player, is Hungarian and forty-three; she’s i/c the girl musicians and getting it from Franco Lati, our Charles Boyerish conductor (
see photo
). The route you all know by now. We arrive in Rome, Sunday evening, at the Albergo Universo. Spring beds! Sheets! En suite bathrooms! Secombe and I share a room. Disaster. I am neat and tidy. Secombe is not. He hits the room like an exploding shell. One drawer a vest and a comb, a shoe wrapped up in an Army shirt, a broken bottle of Brylcreem wrapped in newspaper, a shaving brush with three hairs in a box, a towel shot with holes, mess tins stuck with toothpaste. If a Red Cross official had been present he would have been declared a disaster area. Secombe was a mass of nervous energy, he went in all directions at once — you needed a man-size flyswat to catch him. Whichever part of the room you went, he was there first; if you looked in a mirror, he was looking back at you. He gave off long bursts of garbled conversation, interspersed with raspberries and bits of songs. His record for staying in one place was three seconds. Having spread his kit like a plague around the room he was massaging his head with Brylcreem, and singing, raspberrying, insane laughter, and babbling: “Rome, Rome ha ha ha, lovely Rome, ha ha ha raspberry…Pretty girls pretty girls…ha ha ha, scream, raspberry” and was gone. I dined alone in the hotel. The manageress: “Was everything alright, signor?” No, could she kill Secombe? She is a strapping thirty-year-old with black Eton-cropped hair; she joins me for coffee. She had been an Olympic athlete, a javelin thrower.