Читать книгу Spike: An Intimate Memoir - Norma Farnes - Страница 9

Well, I thought, as I walked into Number Nine on 22 August 1966, it may be for no more than a few months but it will be very convenient. Only fifteen minutes from the flat, famous writers and performers working in the building and television producers and directors coming to see them all the time. It would not harm my c.v. when I applied for the television job. And I had a whole week to get to know my way round the office before Spike returned.

David Conyers introduced me to the head agent Beryl Vertue, and showed me to my office. It was in the basement, which had originally housed the kitchens and butler’s sitting room and was now occupied by me and three delightful, friendly girls, Pam Gillis, Tessa Batson and Barbara Alloway. Pam and Tessa would go on to become successful agents, but that was some years distant. That first day I went out for lunch with Pam, beginning a tradition we maintain to this day, and she gave me a rundown of who occupied Number Nine and what they did.

The office buzzed with talent. Spike had founded a writers’ co-operative, Associated London Scripts or ALS, and looking back now, it seems most of the best British comedy of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies emerged from this small group of people. I knew all about the famous Eric Sykes, Spike’s closest friend and co-founder, who was on television every week with Hattie Jacques in Sykes and A …, which for many years held the record for longest-running series. Then there were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who wrote Tony Hancock’s best material, then moved on with Steptoe & Son; Johnny Speight, a prolific comic writer and creator of Till Death Us Do Part, and Terry Nation, who had battled endlessly to get the BBC to screen his invention, the daleks, in the Dr Who series he had written. Spike was unusual among the writers, in that he wrote solely for himself and starred in his own programmes. That was not the only characteristic which set him apart. There was always a host of limousines parked outside Number Nine, with one exception. While the others purred to a halt in their Rolls and Bentleys Spike would squeeze impudently and incongruously into a space between them in his Mini, which he drove so furiously and with such a complete disregard for speed limits that nobody would travel with him. David and Beryl also represented other writers and artists who worked from home but frequently called in at Number Nine. Pam reeled off a list of names so starry I nearly choked on my lunch. It seemed a dream place to be.

Unlike the stuffy ITCA the building was never quiet. It hummed with an incessant babble of voices; ringing phones; voices raised in frustration or enthusiasm; gags being tried out; people running up and down stairs, and a non-stop trail of show business personalities popping in to see their friends. As the days passed I got to know David and Beryl a lot better. He was easygoing but quietly efficient and she was an absolute star, giving me so much help and advice. At the end of the week she told me, ‘Remember, when you have a bad time with Spike I’m here with a shoulder to lean on.’

I arrived early on Monday, 29 August to make sure I was there before Spike. I need not have bothered. He did not show up. Not that day, not the next, not Wednesday, in fact not any day that week. I went to see David.

‘What’s happening? Where is he?’

David’s smile was benign, the sort you get from a kindly and sympathetic grandparent, perhaps with a hint of relief in his expression. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.’ A sigh. ‘He always does.’ That was it. Nobody had heard from him, knew where he was or seemed all that concerned about his absence.

By the middle of the second week there was still no Spike. I had had enough and went back to David.

‘I can’t wait any longer, doing nothing except twiddle my thumbs. It’s not on, so I’m off.’

David seemed at first amazed, then amused and finally his face creased into a careworn smile. ‘He’ll be here soon enough, I assure you.’ He peered at me, as if weighing me up. ‘Somehow I have an idea you’re just what he’s looking for. You might hit it off.’ He smiled again. ‘Give it another week. Please.’

Much later I discovered he had decided I had the mettle to cope with Spike, and he had also kept to himself the fact that Spike had got through five typing pool secretaries in the previous eighteen months. He was not to know that I had served my apprenticeship with another volatile character.

At the close of the second week a private line telephone arrived on my desk. ‘You’ll need it,’ David explained. ‘He’s never off the phone. It’s better this way. He won’t be able to block the switchboard.’

I used the time to get to know everyone in the office and was feeling quite settled, but when I went to Number Nine at the beginning of the third week I had resolved to call it a day on the Friday unless things changed. On the Tuesday they did. My phone rang and the receptionist, Ann Thomas, announced, ‘It’s him. On the line.’ Click. There was a pause, then came a voice in a low, flat monotone.

‘Are you the girl I chose?’

‘Yes,’ I said, nothing else; I sensed there was more to come.

‘Are you sure you’re the girl I chose? I can’t trust that lot in the office. It would be just like those buggers to take on someone else while I was away. Someone suitable for them and not for me. Bastards.’ All this was said in a voice empty of drama or emotion. He had not finished. ‘When you first came to see me you were wearing a hat, a sort of black and white fake fur, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’ I found it strange he should remember that.

The voice continued in its detached way.

‘Well, I’m ill. I’m in a mental home in Friern Barnet. I was on holiday with the family at the Skanes Palace Hotel in Tunisia. I had a terrible row with my wife. It all got too much for me. So I left them, came home and put myself in here. The only thing to do.’ A pause. ‘Will you wait at the office for me?’

Before I could reply he had replaced the receiver.

Another two weeks passed without a word from him. Then one morning losie Mills, Beryl’s assistant and Frankie Howerd’s manager, skipped down the steps to the cellar.

‘Spike’s just walked in.’

Simultaneously the phone rang. It was Ann. ‘He’s arrived.’

David clattered downstairs.

‘He’s back,’ he said, in a voice that was both relieved and tinged with the unspoken suggestion that a peaceful interlude was about to be shattered.

Pam and I looked at one another and giggled.

Seconds later the phone rang. It was Ann again. ‘He wants you to go up.’

Up the stairs I went to room six on the first floor, my notebook in my hand ready to take dictation. Now I would get an explanation. I opened the door and he glanced at me quickly. No niceties, no formalities, just the glance.

‘Yes. You’re the one I chose.’ He paused and opened his diary. ‘It’s Norma Farnes, isn’t it?’

‘I hope so.’

He looked at me quickly. I sat down on the chair opposite him.

‘Okay. Let’s get down to it.’ He slid several pieces of paper across the table. ‘This is what I’m working on. A children’s poetry book. All the poems are about animals. What do you think?’

I read quickly.

Said a tiny Ant

To the Elephant

‘Mind how you tread in this clearing.’

But alas! Cruel fate!

She was crushed by the weight

Of an Elephant, hard of hearing.

Then another.

A very rash young lady pig

(They say she was a smasher)

Suddenly ran

Under a van –

Now she’s a gammon rasher.

And another.

A baby Sardine

Saw her first submarine:

She was scared and watched through a peephole.

‘Oh come, come, come,’

Said the Sardine’s mum,

‘It’s only a tin full of people.’

There were several more. I had never read any of his work before and wondered why on earth he wanted my opinion.

‘Well?’ he prompted.

‘They’re enchanting,’ I said, meaning it.

He smiled. ‘Good.’

As I was to find out, disagreement could have led to ‘What do you know about comedy?’ or ‘Since when did you become a judge of what’s funny and what isn’t?’ But we were in our honeymoon period.

He took the pieces of paper from me.

‘Enough! The poems can wait. There are more important matters to deal with. The Amazonian rain-forest for one.’

‘What about the poems?’

He looked at me, incredulous. ‘Get a sense of proportion. Forget the rain-forests and we’re all in trouble.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Get me Ted Allbeury.’ Then an aside to me. ‘He has lots of radio contacts.’ Ted had run a pirate radio station and was now a successful author. Spike waited on the line then looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. ‘Come to think of it, as you’re here you can help.’

So much for my passport to the entertainment industry. Instead I found myself plunged into a campaign to save the Amazonian rain-forest and got given a nature lesson.

‘Always remember, the earth’s resources are finite. The stupid bastards who run the world need a lesson in that. But they don’t bloody care.’

Welcome to Spike. Long before the importance of the world’s rain-forests became accepted wisdom he had been alerted, how I do not know, to the need to preserve them. Later others joined in but it took Spike, with his wide following, to start the crusade in the U.K., as he would also do with campaigns to save the seal, the whale, the elephant, the rhinoceros and the lion.

That first day initiated me to the foibles of that exhilarating man. Okay, I reflected, when it was time to leave, I have given myself three months, but if it turns out to be as interesting and challenging as it promises then that could stretch to six. Because this was more of a commitment than I’d anticipated the next day I took my bits and pieces to the office, including my pin-up photograph. By then poor Kenneth had been given the old heave-ho. Anthony Hopkins had taken Kenneth’s place after I had seen him in A Lion in Winter, and once he was pinned to the wall I was ready to face the world. But could I be as confident about coping with Spike?

Day Two was an introduction to the single-minded dedication Spike was always prepared to devote to what he considered to be an injustice, an affront or a con. On this occasion Lord Fraser, owner of Harrods, was the enemy, as apparently he had been for more than a year. The reason for this was that Spike had bought a ladder from the store (it had to be Harrods, not a hardware store or builders’ merchant where most people would buy a ladder). Spike was adamant that the bolts were insecure and therefore the ladder unsafe. The department head was dubious, however, and would not exchange it. So Spike, as was his way, aimed for the top man. Nothing else mattered on the second day I worked for him: Harrods and Lord Fraser were in the wrong and justice had to be done, honour salvaged and punishment meted out.

Victory did not come immediately but later Lord Fraser wilted under the torrent of letters, raised the white flag and sent a new ladder. Spike was relentless and won almost every battle of this nature. ‘Don’t let the bastards get away with it,’ he often said, and he never did. Over the years he had many run-ins with Harrods, over chairs, lace tablecloths, white envelopes he did not consider sufficiently white. Despite it all he would never shop anywhere else. Indeed, the following day, when we ran out of toilet paper, I said we could get some from the shop round the corner. Not a bit of it: Harrods was his corner shop. He rang and had them delivered by taxi, the fare being three or four times their cost. That was typical.

In my early days at Number Nine I had the feeling that the girls in my flat thought life there was one long cabaret but it was anything but that. Popularly it may have been known as ‘The Fun Factory’, where incredibly talented people were a laugh a minute, yet although I had a lot of laughs, the reality was very different. Eric Sykes summed it up. ‘Every business has its products. Show business is no exception. One of them is humour. And that is a very serious business.’ They certainly set about it seriously, which is not to say that they were not funny as well. Whereas work for Spike could start at two or three in the afternoon if he had been working on a script until the early hours, the rest of them started any time between ten and eleven. They all had their own idiosyncratic way of writing their material. But one thing they had in common was that all of them, bar Johnny, were six feet or more tall. When Eric introduced me to his old RAF mate, Denis Norden, and his writing partner Frank Muir, both six feet four, I wondered whether it was height that made them all able to see the funny side of life.

In the office opposite Spike were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson – the lads, or the boys as far as he was concerned. I walked in one day and did a double take. Both their long frames were stretched out on the floor, facing each other like bookends and throwing out lines and suggestions. This was how they got their inspiration and flat out on the floor was how they liked to work. It sounds relaxed but actually they were intensely disciplined and set a target each day of how much they needed to write between the hours of ten and six. Then office hours were over. Immaculate, charming Ray, with his handmade silk shirts by Turnbull and Asser, was an inveterate clubber, and smart, football-loving Alan more of a gourmet and an expert on vintage wines, which they could both, and still do, consume in amazing quantities without any apparent effect.

Eric worked on the next floor up. He was and still is the consummate professional, and according to Spike the greatest droll comic and writer of the last fifty years. I soon found out that he could spend days, sometimes weeks, mulling over an idea, and then when it was clear in his mind write it up at great speed. He was terribly busy writing and performing in Sykes and A …, but liked a round of golf whenever he had the chance. He dressed the most conservatively, generally coming to work in an immaculately tailored suit or blazer. Eric has survived them all and now, clinically blind and deaf, he is still writing and busy as an actor on stage, television and film, always giving the same thought and preparation to his performances as he does to his writing. Having known Spike longer than anyone, Eric and he had a remarkable bond.

By the time I arrived at Number Nine Terry Nation had already left. Johnny Speight still arrived there most days. The first series of Till Death Us Do Part had been broadcast earlier that year, and he was basking in the success. He was very busy, a stewpot of ideas, writing Till Death and mulling over plots for plays, but also happy to indulge his taste for the finer things in life. Dressed casually in the latest fashion by Blades or Mr Fish, he would appear in the late morning, chat to Eric and then pop in to see Spike. This amazing self-educated East Ender was a truly original thinker, unfettered by received opinions on any subject, and so wise. And a great observational writer. He thought Spike was at his best when his humour was at its blackest and, no matter what trouble he was in, Johnny always excused him. ‘What do you expect?’ he would ask. ‘He’s not like the rest of us. He’s a true genius.’

The co-operative lived up to its ideal, and everybody was on first-name terms, always popping out together for lunch or supper at the end of the day. Johnny in particular was generous to a fault. Very early on he took me to lunch at a famous restaurant, the White Elephant at 28 Curzon Street. I’ve forgotten what my first course was but he was drinking whisky with his.

‘You need a white wine with yours,’ he said, and ordered it, the most expensive half-bottle on the menu. Johnny then explained to the waiter what he wanted for his main course. A baked potato filled with caviar.

‘Go on,’ he told me. ‘Try one.’

‘Not caviar on a baked potato! It’s outrageous.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s a Soviet peasant’s lunch.’

Just as Pam had promised, I was soon brushing shoulders with many household names, who always had a joke for the girl from Thornaby. Tommy Cooper, a naturally funny man who was unsure of his talent and could never understand why people laughed at him, often called to see Eric and they would have a whisky or three while they discussed ‘the business’.

The Goon Show was no longer running but the Goons were still friendly. Peter Sellers often called from Hollywood to chat things over with Spike. Pete and Spike had an extraordinary and lasting relationship, even though Pete was often disloyal. Over the years similar acts of treachery – and with Pete, it really was treachery – from others meant they were damned to oblivion but Spike always forgave Pete with a shrug, saying ‘That’s how he is.’ Anyone else would have ‘died yesterday’, as Spike put it.

The most cheerful and refreshingly normal of the three was Harry Secombe, who popped in now and again. Fame had not gone to his head and his diminutive Welsh wife Myra made sure it never did. He once told me that after a rapturous reception at a Royal Command Variety Show at the London Palladium he returned to his wife on a high. Then he described in great detail, several times in fact, his performance as the star of the show and the applause he won, reinforcing the tale with a bit of business. ‘Right, Harry,’ said Myra drily, ‘now you’re finished go and bring the coal in.’ He loved her for bringing him back to earth.

Harry was a caring man and always placatory when there was trouble between Spike and Pete. While the other two were not made of the stuff of faithful husbands, Harry always went home to Myra as quickly as possible after a performance. In his day he could drink whisky with the best of them, Eric, Tommy and the incorrigible toper Jimmy Edwards, but later swore off it for the sake of his health and Myra. As a result he was blessed with the sort of happy family life denied to Spike and Pete; on the other hand, without being unkind, he did not carry the burden of their unique gifts.

Frankie Howerd often dropped in to see Eric. I can still see his hunched figure, in suits that never seemed to fit. He was a man in doubt of his talent, insecure and lonely, always wondering how long it would be before the phone stopped ringing once more. It had happened before in the early Sixties when comics like him were thought to be as outdated as the old eight-reel films, but he was born again when he appeared with Peter Cook at The Establishment Club and demonstrated that, as an old trouper, he was a master of satire; next to Frankie the Footlights crowd could look like amateurs.

Sometimes Frankie seemed desperate to be reassured of his popularity. One evening, long after we first met, I was dining with a friend at Spike’s favourite restaurant, the Trattoo, off High Street Kensington, and noticed Frankie shuffle in. He looked around to see if he could recognize anyone, then spotted me and, with that wonderful wide-mouthed smile, sidled over. Leaning forwards so nobody else could hear, he whispered, ‘Can I join you?’

If Spike had been with me Frank would have darted out of sight as quickly as possible because he was always on tenterhooks about what Spike might say and in awe of his inspirational wit. Frankie’s humour was crafted, rehearsed, and his apparent spontaneity honed to perfection. That evening – and there was nothing unusual about this – he thought he was once again washed-up. In that hoarse whisper of his, with genuine bafflement, he said, ‘The worrying thing is, you see, I don’t know why people find me funny. I have nightmares about it.’

My companion, a fan, was quite astonished and his enthusiasm reassured Frank, who became expansive and happy. By the time we were about to part he was a different man. ‘Do you know,’ he said quietly, looking over his shoulder like the music-hall comic he was, ‘you’ve made me feel so much better.’ He felt in his inside pocket. For a moment I thought he was going to offer to settle the bill but I did not hold my breath. I knew his reputation. ‘Next time,’ he beamed, ‘you must let me pay.’

This was, of course, years later, but quite early on I would find myself leaving the office only to rejoin the gang at the Trattoo of an evening, chatting and listening to Spike’s friend Alan Clare, the talented jazz player, on the piano. Though I did not know it at the time, these days marked the beginning of some of the most important friendships of my life. After Jack Clarke I had sworn never to get romantically involved with anyone I worked with and perhaps this is what made things last.

Meanwhile, Diana and I had become close friends and carried on living together while other girls came and went. One of them was New Yorker Camille Marchetta, who was a lot of laughs, tough and hugely ambitious. She worked for an agent whose clients included film stars and famous writers. She also had an idea she could write, ‘Better than some of the clients.’ We all have our dreams, I thought. Well, she was brave enough to pack in a good job and return to New York to do it. And write she did. Her television series ran and ran and made her famous. Dallas was its name.

As the months passed the Number Nine blend of business and play came to seem more and more natural to me. Spike had recently been a sensation on the stage in his improvised play, Son of Oblomov, and was now being courted by impresarios to take it to Broadway; Barbra Streisand was just one of the people who pleaded with him. I believe he would have been a huge success and become a worldwide star if he had agreed, but he did not like Americans so that was the end of that.

In the autumn he presented me with a list of five hundred names for his Christmas cards. ‘I’m going to draw my own for about two hundred of them,’ he said. Ridiculous, I thought. He cannot possibly mean it.

‘Get on to the Times Drawing Office in Maddox Street and tell them to put two hundred sheets of their best quality white cardboard paper in a taxi. I need it in the next hour. Then ring Sandfords and tell them to send me a dozen black calligraphy pens in another taxi.’

‘How are we going to pay for them?’ Silly me. I did not realize that the Times Drawing Office knew him of old.

‘Just do it. Pay the taxi when they are delivered and get David to send me the bill. I’ve got to get on with them before somebody interrupts me. Some bastard is bound to spoil it.’

The cardboard was delivered later that morning. By the time I left the office he had drawn two hundred cards.

Spike could also be mean and nasty, particularly to the people he loved most. Spike’s wife Paddy was nearly twenty years younger than him, and scatty and undisciplined in contrast to his fanatical sense of organization about everyday things. While we had already spoken many times on the phone my first clear memory of meeting her brought about perhaps the worst moment I had yet experienced with Spike.

Paddy was doing her Christmas shopping in the West End and ran out of money, so she came to the office to get some from Spike. She was tall, nearly six foot in high heels, and very elegant. Spike was at the Mermaid Theatre. I told her not to worry, she could have whatever was in the petty cash box. Forty-five pounds would do, she said. When Spike returned a few hours later I said Paddy had called in and mentioned the money I had given her. He went berserk.

‘What on earth possessed you to give away my money?’

‘She’s your wife and needed it to get home.’

He went into a tirade. ‘That’s no reason to give away my money. Would you give my money to a tramp in the street?’

‘No. I leave that to you.’

That infuriated him because it was true. We had a resident tramp in Bayswater and when Spike went out for doughnuts and cakes (another Milligan obsession) he would always give him a few quid.

‘You gave away my money,’ he raged. ‘I can do what I like with my money. You can’t. And that includes giving it to Paddy. It was my money so you must pay it back.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s how you feel I’ll pay it back at three pounds a week.’

‘Right. Done. Accepted.’

Fuck him, I thought.

Half an hour later, on his way out, he appeared in my office. I waited for him to speak.

‘You’ve learned your lesson about not giving my money away,’ he said. ‘Forget the forty-five pounds. I don’t want it.’ He went out before I could say anything. In less than an hour he was back, with a magnificent pot plant. He placed it on my desk.

‘You have a dress this colour. I thought you’d like it.’ Before I could thank him he had gone. Later that afternoon he gave me a copy of the 1955 Picturegoer. On the front cover it said ‘Goons are Inside.’ It also contained a write-up of his split-screen film, The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn. ‘It’s in Schizophrenoscope,’ he quipped. ‘I want you to have it.’

And so I learned the lengths he would go to avoid saying ‘sorry’. It was soon after this that he fell out with his manager and I was given the job and started taking care of his business affairs. Not long afterwards I received the Christmas card he had drawn for me. Clipped to the card was a tiny envelope addressed in the smallest of writing, which I discovered was the style he used when sending his children messages from the fairies. Screwed up inside was a twenty pound note and the message, ‘To save you counting it’s twenty pounds.’

The year was coming to an end and it was decision time. Did I want to stay at Number Nine? Eric, who remained Spike’s greatest friend, warned me that his every mood permeated the building: when Spike was buoyant so was everyone, when he was down voices were hushed and people moved warily. Should I give it another few months? I consulted Anthony Hopkins. He seemed very much at home at Number Nine. He agreed we should give it a whirl.