Paul Daniels (27 page)

I have so many happy memories of working with Val, the totally ageless, classless, family entertainer. When he walked on you just knew nothing was going to go wrong and you could feel the audience relax into their seats. His family image almost got tarnished one night at the Opera House. Not his fault and nothing to do with him, but in the interval, Paul Burnett, the Musical Director, came backstage and asked whether we had seen the couple in the box on the stage left side (known as Prompt Side) and at stage level. ‘He’s all over her. It’s getting very passionate.’

I said that during my act I would find a way to calm them
down by making some gags about them and on I sailed. During the gags and the card tricks, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that Paul had not been exaggerating at all. They were ‘snogging’ like crazy and his hands were everywhere. Most of the audience in the circles were not watching me and I thought that as soon as I had lost the cards, I would have a go.

On a chord of music, I dropped all the cards into my box and turned to take them on. They had gone. Good, I thought and headed, thankfully, stage right to borrow some money to do the egg, lemon and walnut trick. Then I heard a strange noise. They were on the floor of the box and it became more and more obvious what was going on. As I continued with my trick, the stalls were craning their necks, the circle was boggle-eyed and the upper circle were just about giving them a standing ovation.

Suddenly, the girl let out a sort of strangled shriek and I immediately came out with ‘Oh, listen everybody, it’s a Punch and Judy show.’ The audience roared and the spot-light operator swung the lamp around to illuminate the box. The man’s head came up over the front of the box. ‘There’s Mr Punch,’ I said and, as her head appeared, ‘and there’s JUDY!’ Cheers and loud applause. By the time I had finished the act, the front-of-house staff had sent someone around to sort them out, but they had fled.

It was a great season and I really learnt a lot from Val, one of our finest and often underrated entertainers. Watching the likes of Shirley Bassey and Ella Fitzgerald, I asked myself what it was that made them so different from the rest? What makes them bigger and better? It doesn’t matter whether the star is American or British or French or whatever. Why is it that when Max Bygraves or Val Doonican walk out on stage, the whole theatre relaxes? You can feel it. I realised it was because these big, big stars are never frightened to cry in public. They don’t hold back any emotion at all. They will give everything they have to encourage their audience to come along for the ride. It
was important that I learnt to do the same. Audiences work very hard for their money and if they are going to part with some of that in order to have a night out, then I should give them the very best I can.

You should never make a decision about whether you like or dislike an entertainer by what you see on television. The show that comes into your living room is nothing like the live show at all. The entertainer’s performance is diminished in size (and I can’t risk too much of that at my height) not only by the size of the screen, but also by the angles chosen by the cameramen and director. The editors change his or her timing. The sound, especially of laughter and applause, is unreal. So many times I have had people at the stage door who have said they didn’t want to come but friends or the wife or the kids made them come along. They are always surprised at how funny or colourful the show is when it is live.

That’s why I don’t think politicians should be allowed on television. We had some acts who came into the studio and were brilliant, but they didn’t come across on the screen. We have had brilliant politicians who have been out-voted for the same reason. It’s bad for the country to pick a ‘media person’. I will now climb off this soapbox and get back to the story. The following summer
The Val Doonican Show
went to the Futurist Theatre, Scarborough, and I went with it. Did you know that all acts have a nightmare? Actually, they have about two or three and they are all to do with this weird business that we work in. There’s the one where you are in a play, or a musical, or a pantomime and you are the only one that hasn’t been given the script and you don’t know your lines. There’s another where you can’t get to the theatre. All the transport systems that you try, even running, can’t get you there and you know you are going to be ‘off ’ when your cue comes. A variation on that is where you are in the theatre, you can hear the show you are in
through the backstage tannoy, but you can’t find your way to the stage. Believe me, these nightmares recur and you wake up sweating. Being ‘off ’ is the worst thing you can do.

During that first week in Scarborough, I was in my dressing room on the top floor, dawdling around. What I was thinking about I don’t know but way off in the distance something was happening, something was coming through the tannoy. Suddenly the penny dropped. I realised that I had heard Val give me my introduction for the third time. Grabbing the props, I even stuck a metal table into my mouth and ran down the stairs that way, I was shoving stuff into my pockets and arrived on the side of the stage where Val was stuck because I wasn’t there. We did the business.

For the whole of the show I was dying inside. When it had finished, I went to apologise to Mr Doonican. ‘Don’t let it happen again,’ was all he said. I never did.

In that show, I met and fell in love with Nikki. She was different to any other girl who I’d been out with, being what I called a child of nature. Speeding down the motorway at 100 mph, she’d suddenly say, ‘Oh look! The daisies are coming out.’ She didn’t care what kind of animal it was, Nikki would just walk up and stroke it. Over the years, I have even seen her get too close to a tiger. A truly nice person and both she and her husband Joe are still good friends.

She came from a nice family, too. At the time I went out with her, they had a really good idea, especially if you want to drive shopkeepers crazy. Have you ever noticed how commercial Christmas is? No? Which planet are you from? Nikki’s family had a rule that Christmas presents had to be made, or built, or painted, or anything other than bought. Brilliant. I think it was her dad who photographed the family all year long and then gave them all annual family ‘diaries’.

Nikki created the greatest photographic albums I’ve ever
seen. Whereas you and I normally just stick our photos straight inside, she cut them all into shapes and somehow made them look as though they were moving on the page. If her name had been Hockney, she’d have made a lot of money, for she was doing it well before him.

The Scarborough season was a happy one. My sons came for their summer holidays and the town itself is a great seaside resort. I can’t remember which one of us ‘lads’ was the Ace on the shooting stall next to the theatre, but I know it used to close for about 15 minutes every time we were due to go past on the way to the Stage Door, just so we wouldn’t win the prizes. Val packed them in twice nightly. All was right with the world.

A winter mixture of after-dinner cabarets, cabaret clubs, television shows and the usual one-night stands led once again to another Val Doonican season. 1977 and this was in Bournemouth. I consider myself very lucky to have caught the end of the era that had these wonderfully huge summer shows, with twice-nightly shows and lots of acts and girls. Any artist who worked in Bournemouth during those years will tell you that one of the strangest events in the season, and yet one of the most endearing, was an invitation to tea. This went to absolutely everyone appearing in Bournemouth and came from a Mrs York-Batley. There was tea, of course, with sandwiches, cakes and scones but the highlight was the game of croquet. This kind, elderly lady did this purely out of the kindness of her heart. She is long gone now, but remembered fondly by a whole generation of ‘turns’ and dancers.

During my summer season in Bournemouth, I suddenly realised that I had been living on the road, in digs and with various girls for more than ten years. Surely it must be time to settle down?

One newspaper had already published an article claiming that I was using a helicopter to travel and was living in Chelsea with
six women. My sons, naturally, had fun poked at them at school and it was no good trying to point out that I wasn’t. Don’t journalists work out how many people they are going to hurt before they write their fiction? Among the family and close friends I told them that I
wished
I was living with six girls and a helicopter in Chelsea! OK, I wasn’t too bothered about the helicopter.

We drove up from Bournemouth one Sunday morning to view a large house in a village called Water Stratford, just south of Silverstone and just north of Tingewick. We were a bit early so we went to a huge Sunday market on an airfield nearby.

One of the stallholders was selling the popular ‘slinky’ toy, a magical toy that apparently walked across your fingers. In his salesman’s voice we heard, ‘Come on, Ladies and Gents, get yaw Slinkies ’ere. Ya friends’ll say “they like this, not a lot, but they like it”.’

‘No, they won’t,’ I said.

He looked up, stunned, and the Slinky dangled half-off his suddenly motionless hand.

‘My Gawd! What you doin ’ere?’

‘You mention my name,’ I said, ‘and as if by magic …’

I knew then that the catchphrase was really getting around.

When we got to the converted barn and cowshed, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. Having been built originally in the early 1400s, it had been beautifully modernised, complete with enclosed courtyard and swimming pool. The house and the village were quite ‘Old England’. Its positioning in the south Midlands was of no great concern, as I was already aware that wherever an artiste buys a house, the bookings will immediately come in at the other end of the country. Walking around it, I worked out that I could have the main barn and Mam and Dad could have the ‘cowshed’ end. Negotiations were started and I returned to Bournemouth.

Three nights before the end of the season, I walked down the bank towards the theatre only to be met by Roy Murray and a couple of the management. Val was sick and would be off. They were bringing in a comic to top the bill and we revamped the show to fit. The next night I think it was Roger de Courcey with Nookie Bear who topped. They were really stuck for the last night and I said that I would do it. I wasn’t being big-time. It never occurred to them that I was topping the bills around the resorts every Sunday night. I went on and the show went fine and ever after Robert Luff, the producer of
The Black and White Minstrel Show
and who was involved in the Val Doonican production, claimed to have discovered me.

I bought Giffard’s Barn for £47,000, a small fortune in those days and, having started negotiations in the summer, I got the keys two weeks before Christmas 1977. It was the first house I had really owned. I went inside this lovely, warm, stone-built house by myself on the first day, lay on my back in the huge empty drawing room and laughed like hell.

It had cost me a lot of money, but I was making a lot of money. It’s an extraordinary fact that however much you earn, your costs will rise to match. I think that only the multi-millionaire Bill Gates is ahead of his expenses. When it comes to earning money, you really can’t win in the UK. If you spend it on big houses and flash cars you are a show-off. If you don’t, you are a cheapskate.

In my experience it is good for kids, particularly in deprived areas, to see someone ‘make it’. For them there is a dream. When I lived in South Bank we all wanted to be in the movies. We all had the Hollywood Dream. Now it’s
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
It’s the lottery millions. Some people say it’s greed, but I don’t think they have known what it is like to be truly hard up.

Having picked myself up off the floor, I telephoned Mam
and Dad. They were the ones I really wanted to share my new home with, more than anybody else.

‘Let’s go mad!’ I suggested.

By the following week, we had all moved in. By Christmas Eve, we had the tree up and the log fire roaring. That afternoon, a Harrods van came up the drive and delivered a case of champagne. It was a thank you gift from a charity event I had performed at Buckingham Palace the previous day. Nikki had given me some superb, cut-glass champagne flutes and they lent the final touches to a real, old-fashioned English Christmas.

On Christmas Day, Mam had performed the usual annual miracle of the Christmas Dinner and we sat sipping champagne from Buckingham Palace, out of crystal glasses, in front of a roaring fire and feeling simply glorious. My brother Trevor told us that he had been in Rome the week before and in a restaurant where the background music was all Vivaldi. I started to laugh uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop myself at all. The whole family looked at me in amazement.

Eventually, I got it out. ‘Just look at us,’ I said. ‘It’s a bloody long way from South Bank!’

Christmases were special at Giffard’s Barn, particularly as I had Mam and Dad to spoil. At last, I felt I could give them back a little of the love they had shown me over the years. With Dad now living ‘on site’ to make my props and illusions, I felt it only right that I purchase the gear to make his job as easy as possible. So, just before Christmas, I went to a large hardware shop and in the middle of the store was an incredible workbench, which looked perfect. It had a central motor, which drove every woodworking tool known to man and even had its own vacuum system for sucking the muck away. A company called ‘Kity’ made it and I didn’t bother to ask how much it was, I just wanted it for Dad.

It was delivered the next day and I got a shock. It arrived in
a million different pieces and boxes ready to be built. I asked the deliveryman to put it in the downstairs toilet. The poor man gave me a very strange look, but obediently started to stack one box upon another. It filled the toilet up to the ceiling, at which point I got some Christmas wrapping paper and covered the door to seal the present inside. The deliveryman stood and stared in disbelief. It wasn’t until he left that I realised why he’d looked so puzzled – I should have told him we had other toilets.