The Life of Lee (14 page)

I would sit there unnoticed as the performers scurried all around me. Backstage was pretty crowded, but there was always a terrific buzz. Lots of stagehands would be dashing around because of the enormous number of scenery changes. Dancers were rushing off to get changed and then reappearing as something else. The frantic costume department was always the hub of everything.

Whenever a stand-up comic came on, that was the sign for the orchestra to slide out of the band pit to the nearest pub. They would always know when to come back – in fact, they were so punctual, the comic was able to time his act precisely by the reappearance of the brass section. All the while, the top of the bill would be rehearsing his lines, wandering about in a circle backstage, muttering to himself. Then the stage manager would call for the right lighting and the juggler would go on to whooping and cheering.

I was always transfixed by a certain bandleader, Mr Dubbs, a lively, small man sporting an obvious toupee and a worrying tendency to lose concentration at vital moments.

Syrups were rife amongst acts and crew in the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. It was all the rage to have your
head de-slapped. You couldn’t get away with it these days. Now the whispers are shouts. Upon meeting someone wearing a rug so obviously held on with carpet grips, people will drop to the floor and roll around with hysterical laughter, shrieking, ‘Right, take it off now, you’ve had your fun.’

Anyway, back to Mr Dubbs, a regular conductor of orchestras in many a summer show on the circuit. He chose, very unwisely, to perch what can only be described as a bit of tormented roadkill on top of his head. It was definitely the worst-fitting rug I’d ever seen. It was so bad, it had ‘Welcome’ written on it. Sometimes you wondered if the wig was real and the bloke under it was false because the rug was a completely different colour to the rest of his hair that skirted its edges. It did things independently of him. For example, if he changed direction suddenly, the wig would somehow stay where it was – until he felt there was no one looking and it was safe to manoeuvre it back into place. Mum and Dad ordered us never to mention it, but that only encouraged us to refer it more brazenly.

Mr Dubbs had a strategic collection of four wigs, each one boasting hair of a different length. So he would always arrive at the beginning of the month wearing a closely trimmed wig on his head. Then in the second week, he would be seen wearing a slightly longer and not so tidy wig. By week three, you could see his hair had seemingly grown quite rapidly and was getting out of control. To ensure nobody had any suspicions, Mr Dubbs would be heard tutting a lot and feeling his hair as though frustrated with its unkempt style.

In week four, as soon as he entered the stage door, he always made a big show of informing everyone he met that he needed a trim. ‘Hello, Bernie, have you got me dressing-room key? I’ll tell you, mate, I need a hair cut.’ Just to drive it home, if he met someone in the corridor, Mr Dubbs would sigh: ‘Hello, Pete, I’m off to the hairdresser’s tomorrow to get this lot cut off. Look at it – it’s like a mane!’ Then, to top off this ridiculous facade, he would return the next day wearing the shorter wig, and the whole charade would start all over again.

Anyway, I remember Mr Dubbs completely messed up one evening during the performance of Johnny Curtis, a very skilful juggler. The repetitiveness of doing the same thing every night can afflict anyone during a long run, and so instead of focusing on what was going on, Mr Dubbs’s mind must have wandered that evening. Mr Curtis’s climactic juggle was usually accompanied by a small stab from the drummer, who was in turn waiting for the signal from Mr Dubbs.

But, at that moment, the bandleader resembled nothing so much as a lobotomy patient. He was standing motionless at the front of the band, hands raised at the ready, as if trapped in some sort of time freeze. So, always keen to drum up laughs and break up the monotony, Mr Curtis hurled one of his balls in the direction of the bandleader. The ball bounced off Mr Dubbs’s forehead, sending his wig in one direction and the ball in another. It bounced straight back to Mr Curtis who caught it with a flourish, made a bow and took in the well-deserved applause.

As the juggler lapped up more cheers, the embarrassed
bandleader surreptitiously retrieved his wig and placed it back on his head. Ta-da!

Of course, Mr Dubbs was a figure of fun and the source of many of the company’s most sustained and raucous gags. But he added to the gaiety of nations. He was exactly the sort of extravagant show person who made me think, ‘I want to be one of those!’

As a small, quiet, impressionable boy, I was in raptures about the lights and the music. It was precisely the inner workings of the backstage area that no one sees which interested me the most. Some people might suggest that when you see the secrets of what goes on, the spell is broken. But I just found it fascinating to see jugglers rowing under their breath with their onstage partners about how they’d dropped a club or even narrowly missed their target with a knife, or acrobats flinging themselves about the stage while carrying on a conversation about whom they might have slept with the night before.

I’d listen to the lighting operator take orders from the stage manager to create the right mood for, say, Cilla Black to sing her ‘Liverpool Lullaby’ – a song that would always make me cry. I’d also watch Cannon and Ball, and laugh my head off as Tommy carried Bobby offstage in his arms. Bobby was always a master of pathos. They would walk into the wings and discuss how good the audience were. It was so brilliant.

I loved to see Michael Barrymore disappear off the stage into the audience, accompanied by a huge roar, or to be enthralled by the obvious pain of Dailey and Wayne’s physical routines. You couldn’t see from the front of house, but from the wings it was clear that this
pair, the funniest double act I’ve ever seen, were pushing themselves to the very limit twice nightly.

As a young boy eager to absorb every experience, I also found it entrancing to watch Larry Grayson, a very nervous performer, psyche himself up before his famous intro music started. Then he would walk onstage, dragging his trademark chair and receiving rapturous applause, looking as self-confident as you like, even though I knew moments earlier he had been petrified. It was that feeling of magic which was created when all the elements came together: the lights, the music, the make-up, the costumes.

No one noticed me, but I was taking it all in. I found it captivating. Like a sponge, I’d soak it all up. I’d stand there out of the way and watch Jimmy Tarbuck, Little and Large, the Black Abbots, Tom O’Connor, Jim Davidson, Leslie Crowther, Bert Cook, Dustin Gee and Les Dennis, Roger Whittaker, Val Doonican, Les Dawson, Tommy Steele, Norman Collier, Mike Newman, Shirley Bassey and Roy Castle (whose drummer taught me to play percussion backstage). Imagine what it would cost to reunite that bill today – admittedly, the services of Doris Stokes might be required for some of the acts.

A charity cricket match during Blackpool’s summer season with Dick Hills, Tom O’Connor, Dick Richardson, my dad, Los Zaffiros, me and the dancers from the show.

I also remember as a young boy my chance meeting with Lord Delfont, the famous impresario who ran most of the summer seasons. I’d heard so much about him. I was sitting in my dad’s dressing room when he entered with a large entourage. He asked me if I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

‘Not in a million years, Mr Delfont, it’s too scary,’ I replied. Little did I know!

He turned to my dad and said, ‘I like what you do, Dave. Where have you been all my life?’

‘Er, working for you,’ came the reply.

I watched like a hawk and drank it all in. Every day, for me, it was a case of ‘look and learn’. Years later, all that observation paid off. I never knew it, but by the time I finally came to perform myself, I was already fluent in the language of the stage.

13. The Move to Billericay

Despite finding regular work during the summer season, during the rest of the year Dad was still struggling to earn enough money just to get by. The trouble with show business is that it can consume you, if you let it. It’s an alluring little devil, and, once hooked, some people become self-absorbed and narcissistic. They’re always looking over their shoulder to see what the other guy is doing. They’re constantly growling to themselves, ‘Why aren’t I doing that? Why aren’t the breaks coming my way?’ You can very easily become bitter, even resentful, if you let it get to you.

But to Dad’s immense credit, he simply got his head down and worked hard – and one day he got us out of the Lawrence Weston for good. I’m not saying there’s anything bad about the Lawrence Weston. I’m very proud of coming from there, but life on that estate was perhaps beginning to grind us down. Most of the arguments in our flat revolved around where the next rent money was coming from and the stress would obviously trickle down to Wayne and me.

So Dad took a risk and stepped on the first rung of the property ladder to try and give us all better opportunities in life. He had met a bloke in a club who said he had a house for sale, going cheap. Fed up with hiding from the meter man, Dad thought that if he could just get us into a house, then at least we would have something solid behind us.

But Wayne and I were still bewildered when Dad came home one day and said, ‘We’re off to Billericay.’ We just laughed and thought it was a joke. We’d never heard of such a place – I mean, who moves to a made-up town?

The day we left Lawrence Weston for the last time was the most devastating day of my life. The night before, I’d said my goodbyes to my best friend, Colin, and my then girlfriend, Betty. I was just eleven, but I swore to her that I would remain forever hers until I was old enough to return and ask for her hand in marriage. I told her that, whatever happened, she had to wait because I would be keeping myself for her only. I do hope she’s not still waiting because now I’m married to someone else and the missus would go mad.

The next morning, the car was loaded up with just our clothes. That’s all we took. The furniture in the flat would stay – Dad said it was worthless anyway and we’d wait and try to get better stuff in Billericay. As we pulled away, I waved furiously to Colin through the rear window of the car until he was but a speck on the grimy, smog-covered landscape.

Wayne and I were uncertain of what awaited us. We’d done all that packing up before, when we went away on the long summer seasons with Mum and Dad. But this time it was for good. We were off to live someplace else and never coming back. I don’t know why we were anxious – after all, we’d been on the move ever since we could remember – but I think it was because it was so final. During that entire stomach-churning journey into the unknown, I cried. In fact, I sobbed so much I feel asleep in the back of the car, utterly exhausted.

The slam of the car door woke me with a start. I must have slept for ages. I looked around and saw I was the only one left in the car – either we had reached Billericay or the car was magically driving itself. I looked up from the back seat and through the angled gap in the side window. The sky was a bright blue, with not a cloud to be seen anywhere. I slowly lifted my head and cast a glance outside the car. We were parked on a driveway. It led up to a white, painted, semi-detached, pebbledash house with a front door adorned with a small lion’s-head brass knocker.

The garden was overgrown – no one had lived in the house for some time. I looked around at the other houses. They all looked exactly like ours, side by side, neatly laid out. These identical, clean, bright houses stood there in a seemingly endless row. They all had the same driveways on which sat gleaming cars, the same green lawns separated by small, tightly cut hedges and the same borders packed with colourful bedding plants. A man opposite pushed his mower across the lawn. All the while, he was keeping one eye on us. We must have looked to him like we’d just landed from another planet.

I climbed out of the car and damn near fainted at the amount of clean oxygen in the air. All I could smell was foliage – the wind was wafting through a huge tree that hung over the driveway. As I walked slowly up the tarmac towards the house, through the open front door I could hear the echo of my family’s excited voices and clanking footsteps on the wooden floorboards. It was like stumbling into a dream world.

I stepped into the hall and looked around for everybody. Wallpaper hung off the walls, the floors were bare,
a staircase climbed one wall and, straight ahead, a narrow passage led to a dirty galley kitchen where Mum had already got going. The kettle was steaming away, with cups, milk and sugar on the side. Whenever we wound up anywhere, it didn’t take her long to make it feel like our place. She’s like the SAS of homeliness: give her five minutes and you’d have thought we’d lived there for years.

‘Hello, is your mum or dad there?’

I whipped round to see a tall, beautiful woman. She had a shoulder-length, fresh-from-the-local-salon hairdo, rosy cheeks, big, blue, happy eyes and a knitted white polo neck. She looked down at me kindly and proffered a tray with a teapot on it and what looked like cake. She smiled. ‘I live across the way, I wondered …’