“I’m Welsh to my core and I thank the Lord that I am Welsh. I don’t care if I was born in England, I’m a Welsh woman through and through”.
Ruth Madoc
Introduction
Ruth Maddoc was best known for playing Gladys Pugh in the BBC hit comedy Hi-di-Hi which ran for nine series between 1980 and 1988 on BBC1. A sultry femme who could be stern with the Maplins holiday camp staff but was prone to flirt with the camp entertainment manager. A role that quickly made her a household name and a national treasure. A brilliant comedy set in the 1950s that was written by David Croft and Jimmy Perry, the creators of Dad’s Army. Ruth was a natural who had a fantastic talent for being able to articulate her words through a mesmerising Welsh accent. Her jet-black hair and rock-pool eyes were enchanting and she was so good at making her character seem believable. A Welsh siren who turned many a man’s head and could make any outfit seem like her own.
Background
Ruth Maddoc, the xylophone-wielding yellow coat was born to Welsh parents in Norwich in 1943. Ruth was a distant cousin of the Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George. She would later play a lover of the politician, Lizzie Davies in the 1981 TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. A drama in which her first husband Philip played the former Prime Minister. A famous connection that only found out about in 2010 in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home. The daughter of George Baker and Iris who both worked in healthcare, Margaret Ruth Llewellyn Baker as she was known, was brought up largely by her grandparents Etta Wiliams and her English grandfather in Llansamlet in Swansea as her parents spent a lot of time travelling.
Ruth would go on to train at RADA and in 1971 got the part of Fruma Sarah in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. She would go on to appear in the 1972 film version of the Dylan Thomas novel Under Milk Wood as Mrs Dai Bread and also regularly appeared in the BBC programme Poems and Pints, providing voices for the iconic Cadbury’s Smash adverts in the 1970s and had a small part in the film The Prince and the Pauper.
On stage, Ruth would appear in Under Milk Wood, Steel Magnolias, Annie, the Agatha Christie thriller And Then There Were None, Pickwick and Calendar Girls The Musical and was a regular in pantomimes. A regular on television and radio, she would also appear in the BBC Radio 2 programme Buy Me Up TV and on television on the second series of the comedy Little Britain, Benidorm, Stella, Casualty, Doctors and The Tuckers.
Gladys
Ruth Madoc is best known for playing Gladys Pugh in Hi-de-Hi. A part that took on her stride and played so well. Wearing a yellow coat and adopting a 50s look, Madoc added a touch of sexiness to the part. Her voice was husky and when she flustered her eyelashes, a man was putty in her hands. She ruled the Maplins’ radio and could bring the campers and staff together via the tannoy for the latest camp entertainment. The cold chalets and basic bar were lit up with her presence and the camp entertainment manager was often in her arms having a cheeky canoodle during working hours. This leggy Welsh woman customised her outfit and had sex appeal running through her veins. She mastered the phrase “Hello Campers” and her basic tunes on a xylophone were hysterical.
The Welsh Legend
Ruth was married twice, first to Philip Madoc in 1961 and secondly to John Jackson in 1982. Spending her final years in Torquay, Devon, the BAFTA nominee was due to appear in the pantomime Alladin at the Princess Theatre, Torquay in December 2022 but suffered a fall earlier in the week and had to undergo surgery. Surgery that she sadly didn’t recover from and died on 9 December 2022 at the age of 79.
Peter Sellers was one of the funniest comedians that this country has ever produced. Yet beyond the manic comedy, multiple characters and comedic genius was a man who spent his life trying to find the meaning of happiness. Apart from his film and television catalogue, very little remains of Sellers apart from some faded photographs and a mountain of cine home movies of family and private moments. An only child who was a replacement for his mother’s grief of losing an earlier stillborn child. A dominant force throughout his life who didn’t want Peter to be a failure like his father. It was the start of an obsessive streak in this future comedian who believed Sophia Loren was in love with him and had three failed marriages to Anne Howe, Britt Ekland and Miranda Quarry. A man who was never happy inside and had a highly complicated character. No one actually knew the real Peter Sellers. He was an enigma who lived his life in his characters. Few directors could harness his brilliance, an actor who couldn’t perform the same way in each take.
A Troubled Soul
Peter described his time in The Goons as his happiest times but the irony of this manic humour that was funny because it made no sense, was that it revealed Sellers’ own mental fragility. Sellers couldn’t live comfortably as himself. As a result, he was impossible to live with. A man who relied on poppers, cocaine and alcohol to get him through the day. Yet he was a big studio property. His name sold films and made money for the movie moguls. As a result, his health suffered, leading to one near-fatal heart attack and his ultimate death in 1980 after a second.
The Britt Years
The true turmoil of Peter Sellers can be seen in his relationship and marriage to Britt. Ekland was staying at the Dorchester, paid for by Twentieth Century Fox, promoted by the company as a new starlet. Whilst in the bath, there was a knock at the door. It was Peter’s valet Bert. He asked her to come to Sellers’ room so he could meet her. Peter had seen that she was staying at the same hotel after reading a newspaper article. Two days after this 21-year-old Swedish actress came to the door clad in nothing but a towel, Peter had contacted the press telling them the two were getting married. They had only had one date. Ekland didn’t even know and was informed in a frenzied transatlantic phone call from Peter. The couple were married three weeks later and then went on honeymoon.
On returning Sellers bought Ekland a fur coat and made her wear it during a photoshoot of the two. He also got her fired from the 1964 film Guns at Batasai when he demanded she take a day off from filming. She was flown to California and picked up in a car. She had no clothes with her but was only supposed to spend the weekend there and fly back. When she arrived at the house, a doctor was waiting. He examined her and concluded that was suffering from strain and stress and couldn’t possibly go back to the film set.
Sellers led her to the bedroom and showed her a wardrobe. Inside was a whole rail of clothes he had bought her including a bikini made from mink. Brit must have had blind love in those early years because she had a daughter Victoria with Peter. Brit hasn’t revealed all the details of their time together but she did reveal that she thought Peter had bipolar disorder. A conclusion that she made after spending four years with him. However, they did fight and Sellers was known to throw things in a fit of rage. An example is in Rome when he threw a clock at her. It was the last straw and Britt knew she couldn’t go back to him.
The Dark Side
“I could never be myself you see. There is no “Me”. I do not exist. There used to be me but I had it surgically removed”.
Peter Sellers
The star of the Pink Panther films was obsessed with his mother Peg. When she died, he started to visit a psychic as he wanted to stay in touch with her. He loved the paranormal and was very superstitious. He wouldn’t walk under a ladder and became reliant on horoscopes, fortune telling and psychic readings. From early as 1958, Peter would visit a clairvoyant, Maurice Woodruff. He predicted that Sellers would be offered a film role and he rapidly signed up for the 1959 film The Mouse That Roared. Although a risk as it was the first attempt by an independent producer, Walter Shenson, it turned out to be a cinema hit. An actor who claimed he was being haunted by malevolent spirits.
The Last Years
Sellers looked tired and ill in his final years. Noticeably thinner, his last two films Being There in 1979 and The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu completed a few months before his death didn’t get the notoriety of his earlier films. On July 22 1980, whilst staying in the Dorchester Hotel, Sellers had a massive heart attack and fell into a coma. He later died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980. He was only 54 years old. His fourth wife Lynne Frederick inherited his £4.5 million estate as their divorce hadn’t been finalised before his death.
“Everything you have ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear”.
Robin Williams
Introduction
Robin Williams made it his life’s mission to make people laugh. His manic brand of comedy often had no filters, a prized chat show guest who was unpredictable but whose result always left the audience having the biggest laugh. He was the golden ticket that Willy Wonka concealed in a chocolate bar. A light relief to a world that conjures up so many daily challenges. A comedian who looked like he just got out of bed and dressed in the dark. A child who had never quite grown up, the Peter Pan of his field. Yet his brilliant style was unique. It touched the core of comedy. Whether he was playing Mork or Mrs Doubtfire, his frenzied humour shone through. A natural for the camera lens but as they say the camera never lies. You could always sense that there was something not quite right and Williams was trying to mask his inner demons.
Owning the Stage
Born on July 21, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois. Robin Williams was the son of a Ford Motor Company executive and a former fashion model. As a child, he was naturally funny and loved to entertain his family and classmates making them howl with laughter. A life and career choice that took a nanosecond to decide. As a teenager, the family moved to California and Williams attended Claremont Men’s College and College of Marin before briefly moving to New York to attend Julliard School. Yet his heart was in California and it wasn’t long before he gave the comedy circuit a shot, becoming a highly popular act in the sprawling comedy clubs that existed in the 1970s. His act was loud, funny and brash, gaining the attention of US television executives. It wasn’t long before he was cast as the loveable alien in Mork and Mindy and numerous appearances in other television shows of the time.
However, Robin’s big break came in 1980 when he was offered the lead role in the film Popeye. A part that he took to like a duck to water. The spinach-chewing, pipe-smoking sailor, branded with an anchor tattoo on his rippling arm. A sailor who ruled the land and sea with his brawn and somehow squeezed a sentence out the side of his mouth. A childhood cartoon character whom Robin loved and had perfected in voice, facial expressions and stance. Now through a muscular latex costume. It was a break that would lead to a catalogue of film roles including epics like Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets Society.
The Personal Demons
Robin Williams’ acting career would run for decades but behind the laughter and the smile, was a troubled man. Someone who struggled with his inner demons. During the height of his success in the 1980s, he fell into the trap of drug addiction and got hooked on cocaine. It would be a habit that ruled his life for several years and it wasn’t until his good friend John Belushi. the Blues Brothers’ star died from the habit, aged only 33 in 1982 when Robin finally decided to wave goodbye to the drug. A friend with whom he had only been partying with the night before.
This and the death of his close friend Christopher Reeve in 2004, led him to drink heavily in the early 2000s. An addiction that was fuelled by depression. His public life was at an all-time high but his private life was full of ups and downs. Yet just when he seemed to be seeing the light and his darkest days were behind him, he received a shocking bolt from the blue. Called to see his doctor, Williams was given a heartbreaking diagnosis. He was told he had the onset of Parkinson’s Disease. A diagnosis that he shared with his wife Susan Schneider Williams and his three children but kept a secret from the media and his fans.
Yet all this while, Robin struggled to understand why he was still feeling anxious, paranoid and depressed. He could fathom how Parkinson’s Disease would cause this. So he decided to attend a neurocognitive testing facility to see if there was something else healthwise going on. Yet tragically he would never attend. On what seemed an ordinary night on 11 August 2014, his wife left her husband on his iPad in the living room and went to bed. Robin gave a parting comment “Goodnight, my love… goodnight, goodnight.” That was the last time she saw him alive.
Robin had gone to another bedroom and locked the door. It wasn’t until the next morning when Susan couldn’t get a response that the lock was picked. Williams was discovered in a seated position on the floor with a belt around his neck. He had hung himself, using one end of the belt around his neck and the other secured between a closet door and door frame in the bedroom. He also had a cut to his wrist. On a chair close by was his iPad, two types of antidepressants and a pocket knife with blood on it. The later coronary enquiry concluded with a suicide caused by asphyxia due to hanging. The post-mortem showed that there was nothing in his bloodstream apart from caffeine and antidepressants. Yet it also showed that Robin was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and we still don’t know what he had. Although it is reported that he had some form of dementia.
Written by James Saunders, the 1979 BBC comedy Bloomers will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. With a cast consisting of Richard Beckinsale, Anna Calder-Marshall, June Ritchie, David Swift, Paul Curran and Pat Gorman, the script centres around Stan played by Beckinsale, a jobbing actor, more out of work than in. Stan rattles around in a cramped studio flat with his girlfriend Lena. A man who is clueless about how to make a pot of tea, throws half a box of tea bags into boiling water and then realising the strength, lines up the soggy tea bags on a tray to dry for a second use. Someone who is baffled as to why his digestive biscuit won’t fit to dunk in his mug of tea. A man who forever calls his agent for work, only to receive a disappointing response.
Stan has a fractious relationship with his girlfriend Lena. One where many of the household items are thrown at each other in the heat of an argument and only cooled by making love. Yet little did they know that the demise of Stan’s rubber plant would lead to them both visiting a flower business to purchase a new plant. A visit that would not only lead to the purchase of new greenery but also in-depth conversations with Dingley the shop owner played by David Swift of Drop the Dead Donkey fame.
The Menagerie
This shop is no ordinary one. It has a hidden backyard bursting, a hunched father-in-law, George, who often ends up running the show, a floral life and a sneaky bottle of whisky stashed under the counter which ends up in a job offer for Stan. A man who has an eye for the ladies even though he is going steady. So perhaps a career change working for a bearded pipe smoker will be a wise move? A job offer that allows Stan to be a joint partner in the business. A shop that Dingley admits doesn’t make any profit. A business that they decide to call Bloomers after a drunken conversation with George, sealed with another glass of whisky.
So ensues a colourful journey for this small London floral firm. One that carries out odd jobs in gardens in and around London and the scrapes they get into as a result. With Stan’s roving eye that was alluded to in episode one, this might as well have been a tamed version of a Confessions film with the bedhopping Stan lighting up the lives of lonely housewives, musing with them additionally on philosophy and the woes of life.
A Sudden End
“O’Shaughnessy asks Stan if he and his fiance could stay at Stan’s flat for a few hours, but Lena’s mother is visiting. Meanwhile, Stan attempts to do a good deed for an elderly woman.”
Episode six storyline.
Having seen this comedy in its entirety, I would say it did have the potential to be recommissioned for a second series. However, the tragedy of this series was that the first series was never completed. Shortly before episode six was due to be filmed, Richard Beckinsale died from a heart attack at the age of 31. An unfinished work from an actor who was magical in Porridge and Rising Damp. Bloomers was a more mature comedy but it retained the cheekiness that Richard was so well known for.
Bloomers were only ever repeated once when four of the episodes were shown again on BBC1 in August 1980 after originally being shown on BBC2 in October 1979. It was also shown on ABC in Australia in 1983. However, it has never been aired again to date by the BBC. The only available episodes are on YouTube and like so many unfinished BBC programmes, lies deep in the BBC archives. A sad end to Richard’s brilliant career and a comedy that not many will remember. A series given a sprinkle of remembrance in my piece.
When you think of some of the most iconic British sitcoms, Steptoe and Son has to be right up there amongst the best. Written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, this BBC show transcended the era of black-and-white television to colour, running from 1962 to 1974, attracting audience viewing figures of over 20 million. Not too shabby for a premise set around a cantankerous father and a son who was trapped in a paternal stranglehold, trying to make ends meet in a rag-and-bone business in the fictions Oil Drum Land on the Goldhawk Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Yet beyond the hilarity of these scripts lies a much darker story. A fractious relationship between Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Bramble and a part that despite all its popularity, would leave a type-casting millstone around Corbett’s neck for the rest of his acting career.
The Odd Couple
Comedy is an odd phenomenon. It often conceals the true bitterness in its craft. In the case of Steptoe and Son, it fused an ageing Irish homosexual with a Burma-born womaniser. A classic example of Never the Twain Shall Meet off-screen. Wilfred used to tell autograph hunters in the street to “fuck off” and was paranoid his sexuality would get out into the public domain. So much so that would sneak away for trips to Hong Kong and brought a Malayan man back to be his valet.
Brambell got worse as the series progressed. Turning up drunk for filming, Wilfred often forgot his lines and his drunken escapades spilled over into the outside world. He once exposed himself to a woman at a party and on a flight back at the end of a tour, he urinated in the captain’s cabin thinking it was the toilet. He had to be restrained and was thrown off when the plane reached Singapore. These episodes were highly likely to be due to how his ‘dirty old man’ image was perceived off-screen and his own paranoia about being gay. It could also be due to his former wife Molly Josephine having an affair with their lodger and subsequently got her pregnant. A revelation that made him howl in his sleep for years afterwards.
Albert and Harold may have been in close proximity on-screen but in rehearsal, the two sat at different tables and in his dressing room, one would be pouring over their lines while the other poured from a bottle at the bar into a constantly half-filled glass. On a tour of Australia in 1976, the two travelled separately by car and never shared a dressing room. The two were chalk and cheese, a character actor known for playing old men in French farces and a method actor who had rave reviews playing Richard II. Harry bought a house in St John’s Wood, holidayed in the South of France and was a regular guest of Harold Wilson. A womaniser who often had several women on the go and attributed this as the only trait that was the same as Harold Steptoe. A percentage that he calculated at twenty percent.
Wilfred on the other hand loved to booze and parade around Surfer’s Paradise, cruising with a feather boa around his neck. He said that Harry was pompous and stuck up. It was a simmering hate that came out in their acting together. An actor who was coming to the end of his career versus one who was enjoying the trappings of success. A world far removed from his childhood of the 1930s when only laughter smothered the desperate poverty of Harry’s youth. The irony was that both the characters and the actors playing them were trapped with each other for six weeks a year, two films and numerous stage tours across the globe. Corbett was shackled, frustrated that his other parts were all based on Harold. He came from a hopeless society that was saved by the munitions of World War II and went on to live in a society in the 1970s where people were trapped by hyperinflation. He joked in an interview that he wanted to play Moses and have one line. That being “it will never float”. It would take two years to film and they would have to drag him out of an Acapulco swimming pool to say the line. A line that caused the interviewer to be reduced to a fit of giggles and his glasses to mist up.
The Final Nail
Some would say that Corbett died of a broken heart. His last appearance was in an episode of Anglia Television’s Tales of the Unexpected in 1982 entitled “The Moles”. He died shortly after filming had finished from a heart attack on 21 May 1982 in Hastings, East Sussex. He was 57 years old. His partnership with Wilfred Brambell had ended several years earlier on their stage tour in Australia in 1976. Apart from appearances in the films The Barged (1964), Carry On Screaming (1966) and Jabberwocky (1977), Harry’s career had little to write home about apart from the massive success of Steptoe and Son. A serious car accident and a life of heavy smoking sixty cigarettes a day paid its toll. Wilfred Brambell outlived his comedy partner, dying from cancer, aged 72 on 18 January 1985. Only six people attended his funeral.
“The death of my friend Richard Beckinsale has robbed me of the joy of this award but the pride of winning it still remains”.
Ronnie Barker’s BAFTA tribute.
Introduction
Richard Beckinsale will be remembered as being a television heartthrob and a national treasure. An actor who gelled so perfectly with Ronnie Barker’s Norman Stanley Fletcher in Porridge as Lennie Godber and as the naive medical student, Alan Moore in Rising Damp. A tenant in the dilapidating lodgings of the miser landlord Rigsby played so brilliantly by Leonard Rossiter. Beckinsale had a unique acting style, providing a calming influence to chaotic comedy. An actor with a Nottinghamshire twang, and hair to die for. A goofy smile and eyes that were drowning in laughter. An actor who could turn his hand to anything played a hapless character so well that all whom he worked with, fell in love with. A man with a rainbow-like aura who drew you into his carefully crafted comedy.
A Life in Comedy
Richard Arthur Beckinsale was born to act. Born in Carlton, Nottinghamshire in 1947, Richard first trod the boards at the age of eight in a school production of Snow White. Playing the part of Dopey, he was bumbling from the off, colliding with the stage props. His teacher couldn’t work out whether he was just brilliant or short-sighted. Leaving school at the age of 16 but already bitten by the acting bug, Beckinsale took a job as an upholsterer at a local bus company. However, it was short-lived when he fell asleep on the job and was found at a bus depot five miles away. He then worked as a clerk at the gas board as a pipe inspector at an ironworks. He also worked as an assistant in a grocery business. He went on to study at Nottingham College, doing the drama teacher’s training programme. During this work stint, he took a day off to go for an audition on a drama course. Two years later he won a place at RADA on a second attempt, one of only 31 applicants out of more than 12,500. Although his father Arthur was wary of his son’s career path, saying he needed a trade in something like hairdressing. He topped his salary during this time by working in a bottle factory. Richard found love at an early age and when he was 18 he married Margaret Bradley in 1965. They would go on to have a baby, his first daughter Samantha. The couple divorced in 1971.
Acting Roles
Beckinsale got his first television break in 1969 when he played a policeman in Coronation Street who arrested Ena Sharples. He also had a small part as a young soldier in a 1970 episode of A Family At War. Roles that would draw attention to his acting worth and he would go on to land a leading part in the Granada sitcom The Lovers alongside Paula Wilcox. They would later reprise their roles in a film version in 1973. A part that would earn him a Best Newcomer award in 1971. Yet 1974 was the golden year for Beckinsale landing parts in the hit comedies Porridge and Rising Damp. Roles that both Ronnie Barker and Leonard Rossiter would praise him for. Porridge would rule the television screen from 1974-1977 and Rising Damp from 1974-1977. He would also star in the Porridge spin-off Going Straight Straight in 1977. There would also be a film version of Porridge in 1979.
With appearances on children’s television in Elephants Eggs in a Rhubarb Tree, several films and television series, Richard also had a hit 19-month run in the West End play Funny Peculiar for which he was nominated for a Lawrence Olivier Award. He also starred in the musical Love My Wife. His last role was in the BBC sitcom Bloomers, uncompleted with only five of the six episodes recorded. At the time of filming, Richard had already been lined up for a film version of Rising Damp and was in the middle of filming a television film Bloody Kids.
The End of an Era
During this time, Richard started to feel unwell, suffering from blackouts and dizzy spells. So worried was his about his health that he once dreamt that he had died from a heart attack. However, after visiting his doctor, all they could find was that he had an over-active stomach lining and a high cholesterol level. He started to feel tired and after attending a party for The Two Ronnies, he returned to his home in Sunningdale, Berkshire.
In a final phone call to a friend, he complained of having pains in his arms and chest. However, he made light of it and fell asleep. He died in his sleep after suffering a massive heart attack at the tender age of 31 on 19 March 1979. A death that a later post-mortem revealed was caused by a congenital defect. At the time of his death, he was married to his second wife Judy Loe whom he had married in 1977 and had a second daughter, Kate, now a Hollywood actress. Richard was laid to rest at Mortlake Crematorium.
Coronation Street has graced our television screens since 1960. The tales of those in a Mancunian cobbled street where there is never a day without personal drama and the pumps at the Rovers Return rarely run dry. One character who dominated this soap for 23 years was Annie Walker. A woman who ran her pub with her long-suffering husband Jack in the early years until his death after suffering a heart attack while visiting Joan in Derby in 1970. A landlady who never minced her words and only a few got to sit in her backroom, her tantalus of sherry only brought out for special occasions.
Doris Speed who played Annie Walker was hand-picked for the part, one that she based on her Aunt Bessie who used to lead the Speed family in Christmas charades and had a withering look. A disdainful look that kept his clientele in check. A genteel social climber who loved to do lunch with Nellie Harvey played by Mollie Sugden or a Newton and Ridley party. A sassy and powerful character who fills her performances with dignity and affectionate satire. A landlady who surrounded herself with strong women, Bet Lynch and Betty Turpin, forever chiding her cellar man Fred Gee and her undying love for her son Billy whose many misdemeanours she had to defend.
The Queen of the Street
In her element as the lady chairman of the local Licensed Victuallers’ Association and as the Lady Mayoress to Alf Roberts. Roles that she complemented by a chauffeur-driven second-hand Rover, meticulously prepared and cleaned by Fred Gee. Annie Walker stood for everything that Doris Speed was not. In real life, Speed was disdainful of pubs and lost patience with Annie’s posturing. Doris was described by her acting colleagues as an intellectual, very politically minded and a keen socialist. An actress who was easily distracted during filming. She hated handling props as Jean Alexander who played Hilda Ogden alluded to. If she had to say lines and pour a cup of tea at the same time, Doris would often dry and use her trademark stare as a way of not being put off by the others in the scene.
When Doris Speed joined the Coronation Street cast in 1960, she told the producers that she was in her early forties but was actually an old-age pensioner. A white lie that would come back to haunt her in 1983 when the press got hold of the story. Speed didn’t take the breaking news well and still claimed she was in her sixties when she was actually in her eighties at the time. Now struggling to remember the lines and increasingly becoming deaf, she slumped into depression and her spirit was broken. She collapsed on the set in 1983 suffering from stomach pains and was not seen on the cobbles for several years. She became increasingly frail and reclusive, especially after her house in Charlton-cum-Hardy was burgled in 1985 as she slept. The thieves ransacked her living room and forced her into hospital. She never returned to her home. Although she retired from the show in 1983 but made a guest appearance in 1988 to pull a pint for charity. Doris spent her last years in a nursing home and passed away in Bury in 1994.
A Legend
Born in 1899, Doris Speed came from acting stock. Her parents George and Ada Speed were music hall artists and she spent her early childhood touring with her parents. After completing a typing course, Doris joined Guinness in Manchester and worked there for 40-plus years. In her spare time, Speed was heavily involved in amateur dramatics and through this work, received offers of work on Manchester radio. It was through a part in a play called Shadow Squad written by Tony Warren that Warren would later remember her for the part of Annie Walker in Coronation Street. Speed who was performing in Bristol at the time, turned down an audition twice, saying it was too far to travel. Eventually, a friend persuaded her to take the milk train to Manchester. By this time Tony Warren had already auditioned 24 actresses for the part but none were suitable. Yet when Doris read the part, she knew it was her’s. A natural feeling that Warren shared. A role that she offered £50 per week.
Doris Speed described Annie Walker as a “dreadful snob”. A character who complained when the corner shop didn’t stock game soup. When not rehearsing and filming, Doris loved nothing more than playing with her cast members or doing the Guardian crossword. Jean Alexander described her as “playing bridge like a professional and went through crosswords like a knife through butter”. At home, Doris loved nothing more than reading theatrical biographies or scrutiny of her part when she appeared as Annie on the show. A lady who was awarded an MBE in 1977.
“I said to the chemist, ‘Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘She keeps waking up”.
Les Dawson joke.
Introduction
Possessing funny bones is a gift, the art of captivating an audience and reducing them to fits of laughter. Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill and Dick Emery had it but one comedian who could bring on the giggles with one crease of his face was Les Dawson. One of the few men who could mock the wife or mother-in-law and live to survive the joke. Someone who could play the piano badly and brilliantly could pass for a woman and was a talented author and poet. Dawson’s comedy put a sheen on the struggles and strains of industrial Manchester, beautifully crafted, and woven together with mastery. However long the joke ended with a powerful punchline with words juggled and adjusted to fit perfectly into the jigsaw of the gag.
Finding Funnydom
Like so many who tasted fame, Les had to dream of it before it materialised. Born into a working-class background in Collyhurst in 1931, Dawson was the son of Julie and Leslie. His father was a building labourer and wanted his son to become a prized boxer but the youthful Les wasn’t keen on the idea. Leaving school at 14, Dawson wanted to become a journalist or writer. A human sponge who loved to soak up English language and prose. Yet to get there, you have to start at the bottom of the pile and Les wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. His first job was working with the Co-Op in the drapery department and then he moved on to becoming an apprentice electrician. Careers that were interrupted by his call-up for National Service in 1949, training at Catterick before moving to Germany to serve with the Queen’s Bay 2nd Dragoon Guards.
The Parisian Touch
Shortly after being demobbed, Les moved to Paris to pursue a writing career. However, despite the rich sense of culture that Paris has, Dawson struggled to get his beloved project off the ground and so had to find a way to make ends meet. Instead, he worked as a pianist in what he initially thought was a bar but it turned out it was a French brothel. Although a den of iniquity and vice, it was somewhere where Les fitted in. He recalls in his diaries from this time when he was in his twenties in the 1950s how he used to swoon when he saw the beautiful barmaid, Emerald and how the Madam, Madam Gaudin who worked there, wore beautiful dresses and would come over to the piano and hum along to the music he was playing. A woman who spent years plying her trade but was now too old, becoming instead the ringleader and money taker.
This period of Les’s life is steeped in mystery. Apart from a few diary entries and black-and-white photographs of Dawson at the piano, it is not clear whether he was happy or how long he spent in Paris, although it was thought to be quite a while. Perhaps when the Francs dried up and turned to Centimes, Les decided that enough was enough and it was time to return to Blighty. It was time to roll up his sleeves again and graft. He became an insurance salesman and later was a door-to-door salesman for Hoover, selling hoovers and washing machines.
Finding your Footing
At 23, Les Dawson was passing a billboard that was advertising for acts to audition for Max Wall at the Manchester Hippodrome. He applied and passed the audition. He then moved to London where he was promoted by Wall but it was a path that would again end in disappointment, failing to get a big enough foot through the door to make his big break. He decided to return to Manchester and try his hand at the club circuit. A gig where you either got the laugh or were showered in beer and pelted with anything the audience could lay their hands on. Fortunately, his crowd warmed to his deadpan humour, a mix of woe and glee. A type of humour that was straight out of the Manchester terrace house where the front step was swept every day with pride, a fridge was a thing of the future and you had to brave the elements to use the outside toilet at the bottom of the garden.
Yet in any hardship, humour is an escape to forget the woes. So too did Dawson have to learn life the hard way. Despite appearances on radio shows such as “Worker’s Playtime”, and “Midday Music Hall”, and television appearances with Bernie Winters for ABC television and Comedy Bandbox, he wasn’t an overnight success. Les was 36 and struggling to feed his family. On the brink of giving up, an opportunity came out of the blue.
The Break
His first wife Meg persuaded him to audition for Opportunity Knocks, presented by Hughie Green. It was an appearance that went down a storm and the clapometer went off the scale. Straight off this hit, Dawson asked to appear on the ITV show, “Blackpool Night Out” and what a success that was. The applause reverberated around the studio. This would lead to numerous television and radio appearances and a call to appear in pantomime where he mastered the pantomime dame. His first appearance was a Christmas run in Doncaster.
He then had a run of his shows, Sez Lez 1969-1976, Dawson and Friends 1977 and the Les Dawson Show 1978-1989. He took over as the host of Blankety Blank from Terry Wogan in 1984 to 1990 and had his radio show on Radio 2, Listen to Les in the 1970s and 1980s. He also appeared on The Good Old Days, The Grand Knockout in 1987 and turned down the part of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave that was taken up by Richard Wilson. A subject of This Is Your Life in 1971, he also appeared as Nona in the BBC drama about a 100-year-old compulsive eater based on the play La Nona by Roberto Cossa. His final appearance came on an episode of Surprise Surprise where he sang “ I Got You Babe” with a member of the audience. The programme was aired shortly after he died in 1993.
Typically Les
Les Dawson found his trademark gurn after breaking his jaw in a boxing match. A heavy smoker who typically could easily smoke 50 cigarettes a day accompanied by a bottle of whisky, was a master of the whispered joke to the camera through pursed lips and didn’t look out of place wearing rollers, a head scarf and crinkly stockings when performing as Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham with Roy Barraclough. A skit based on the comedy of Norman Evans. Mannerisms and personalities that Les based on women that he had grown up with. Women who communicated through whispers and gestures to overcome the loud din of the Lancashire cotton looms. Hoisting and adjusting their breasts as they went.
Knowing Les
I have a connection with Les Dawson as my Great Uncle Tommy Scott was his friend and after retiring from his variety act, Jo, Jac and Joni managed The Roly Polys, the plus-sized ladies who perform Ed with Les on television and stage. A devoted father who had the last of his four children Charlotte with his second wife Tracy, loved nothing more than to play his part as a devoted father. Tracy was born in 1992 and was only a baby when her father died after suffering a second heart attack in 1993, aged 62. A talented author who wrote a number of books including an unpublished story of love and mystery, entitled An Echo of Shadows that was written under the pseudonym Maria Brett-Cooper. A 100-page novel that was discovered by his daughter Charlotte in 2014.
Books written by Les Dawson
Fiction:
Card for the Clubs (1974)
The Spy Who Came… (1976)
Cosmo Smallpiece Guide to Male Liberation (1979)
The Amy Pluckett Letters (1982) / Hitler Was My Mother-in-Law (1984)*
“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. Let me expand a bit. I sense that you may feel that I am free of problems. Let me assure you that I have the same anxieties and insecurities as anyone in this auditorium – maybe more.”
Cary Grant
Cary Grant pictured in Paris in 1956.
Introduction
The sense of family and belonging is important to every human being but when it is missing, it can have damaging and lasting effects on the individual. So can be said of a certain Archie Leach or as we knew him, the Hollywood film star, Cary Grant. Debonair and oozing with sex appeal on the celluloid screen, Grant’s background was so much further from the truth of it. Born in Edwardian Bristol in 1904, Archie was a child who should be seen and not heard. A silent observer who cowered on the stairs, listening to his parents in the front room and was punished for dropping any food on the floor by not only making him eat what he had dropped but also being banished from the table, forced to eat the rest of his plate, cross-legged on the wooden floor. His mother Elsie would follow up her punishment by throwing words of warning at her son, saying that food was precious and should never be wasted. A stickler for manners and a trait that Cary would later turn into a compulsive disorder.
Archie felt trapped in a terrace house where money wore thin and poverty enveloped his existence. His father Elias, a tailor’s presser, brought little capital to the table and what he did, he preferred to spend on pouring alcohol down his throat. It was a fractious environment where his mother had to make do, working her fingers to the bone as a seamstress and forever worrying about where their meal would come from. An atmosphere fuelled by the death of his brother who had contracted gangrene and died after trapping his finger in a door. Archie’s only escape was school but in the end, he would always have to return to that uninviting front door that would remain in his thoughts and dreams for the rest of his life.
Abandonment
“A sadness of spirit that affected everything I did. I always felt that my mother rejected me.”
Cary Grant
The arguments became more frequent and the voices raised, Elias became weary of his wife’s constant gripes. Unknown to Archie, his mother suddenly disappeared when he was at school, committed to a local Bristol asylum for hallucinations and voices in her head. His father signed the committal papers and left her in a room full of screaming people, alone and confused. Dragging his son down the street, Archie was rejected by his family and friends before his grandmother finally took him in after being persuaded with monetary gain. Spun with a lie that his mother Elsie had gone away to a seaside resort and later died, Archie was left with the cold and glaring eyes of his grandmother who saw him as a hindrance. A child with puppy dog eyes that unnerved her. His mother was gone and so was his trust in women.
The Thrill of the Theatre
A young Archie would sneak away to the theatre, visiting the Bristol Hippodrome. The bright lights and the roar of applause fascinated him, drawing him, an escape from the here and now. Coming across the Pender Troupe one day, he asked the troupe leader if he could join at the age of 14. He was told to come with a letter of authority from his father because of his age. His father had by this time vanished, unknown to Archie that he had another woman in Southampton.Leach forged a letter from his father and returned to the troupe. Turning up for one rehearsal, his father was waiting for him, ready to drag him away but was persuaded with the sniff of money to let his son stay.
This would be the green light that Archie needed in his life, the promise to tour the country, do a colourful circus act and even the possibility of going to America. His dream would be fulfilled when they boarded a ship bound for New York in 1920. A tour would ensue and when it ended, Archie decided to stay, given his return trip money home if he decided otherwise. Setting up in digs that he hid from the landlady as he was behind with the rent, Leach scoured the stage advertisements to try and find work. Rejected for his accent and an appearance that didn’t fit the part.
A chance meeting with George Burns while trying to earn a crust by using his looks to charm ladies who did lunch, would lead to an offer of an audition and rave reviews as he perfected a new suave accent. Screen tests would follow and it was then that Archie became Cary Grant, taking his stage name from a combination of a theatre role and a surname randomly selected from a Hollywood phone book. Spotted by Mae West, he would go on to star with her as her leading man in the 1933 film ‘She Done Wrong’ after a more minor role in the 1932 film, ‘Blonde Venus’ with Marlene Dietrich. He would go on to star in numerous films including collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock. A director who saw the darker side of Cary and the Archie behind the Grant mask. The film ‘Notorious’ being an example and the sheer paranoia in ‘North by North West’. A film about a man running away from himself, blighted by mistaken identity. An actor who was offered the role of James Bond and a contract for four Bond movies. He turned it down, refusing to have to play the same character four times.
Being Cary Grant
Finding his mother again after his father confessed she was still alive, was supposed to be a new chapter in his life. However, moving her from the asylum to a new home didn’t change the strained relationship they had. Elsie was controlling and wanted Cary to herself, constantly trying to get him to ditch his search for love and live with her instead. This ultimately affected Cary’s relationships. He punished the women in his life for his mother’s absence. Four failed marriages would ensue with Grant only able to embrace the concept of marriage but unable to love his wives. He felt stifled and prone to outbursts. One may have thought that by marrying his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon, things may have changed. However, he too became possessive and was unable to embrace the success of her film career and even got rid of her dog when their daughter Jennifer was born. A marriage that would only last from 1965-68.
The Changing Moment
“My life changed the day Jennifer was born. I’ve come to think that the reason we’re put on this earth is to procreate. To leave something behind. Not films, because you know that I don’t think my films will last very long once I’m gone. But another human being. That’s what’s important”.
Cary Grant
Up until the birth of his daughter, Cary hid in his character, refusing to release his inner pain. Using LSD and therapy to regress and attempt to heal, it was ultimately his divorce from Dyan that caused him to be released. His mother had died at the age of 96 in 1973, his father, earlier from liver disease in 1935 and Cary could now be the person that he hadn’t been all his life, a man and a father, escaping the shackles of what he called a “wasted life” and close to happiness. A rebirth. He realised that he caused pain to his mother too. What followed is truly emotional. Having retired from acting in 1966, Cary poured his love into bringing up his daughter Jennifer through her regular visits and telling the truth through his one-man stage show, ‘A Conversation with Cary Grant’. Cary and Archie became one, he was no longer haunted by that scared child that he was and ultimately had inner peace. He also found love with Barbara Harris who became his life soulmate and whom he married in 1981. Cary passed away in 1986 after suffering a second stroke whilst preparing for one of his stage shows. He later slipped into a coma at St Luke’s Hospital in Davenport, Iowa. He was 82. A man who had a simple funeral with his ashes scattered from a helicopter by his loved ones across the ocean. A true Hollywood great who suffered far too long with his ghosts and demons.
“People had no idea this bumbling man had this incredible war story”.
Tyler Butterworth
Introduction
Peter Butterworth is best remembered for his appearances in 17 of the 31 Carry On films, a radio, television and film career that spanned from 1948-1979. Yet his multitude of parts as a highly entertaining, jittery and funny, loveable bafoon, shroud his heroic story during World War II. A prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III, Lieutenant Peter William Shorrocks Butterworth, was part of the mastermind plan to escape the camp on March 24, 1944. This story of bravery was recently revealed when researchers unearthed it in the National Archives, collecting information to commemorate the 80th anniversary of The Great Escape made famous by the 1963 film starring Richard Attenborough and Steve McQueen.
The Great Escape
Built with razor-sharp barbed wire, drafty wooden huts and run by a Nazi regime that ruled with an iron fist, concentration camps such as this one in Poland, were meant to be inescapable. Watched with piercing lights, barking German Shepherd dogs and ever-alert soldiers, few would have ever dared to breathe freedom. Yet there are always a brave few who are prepared to tackle adversity and Peter was one of this stellar band of soldiers.
Peter Butterworth served in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm but his plane was shot down in 1940. Captured by the Germans and sent to a Prisoner of War camp near Frankfurt, Peter and 17 other prisoners escaped by digging a tunnel using soup spoons. They managed to stay free for three days but were then recaptured and sent to Stalag Luft III in Poland. Here Butterworth became involved with the theatrical society as a set designer. Unknown to the Germans, Butterworth was using this privilege as a means to an end. Peter and another officer, Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell persuaded the camp command to let them build a theatre on the grounds. Unknown to the Germans, a team including Butterworth were digging a tunnel and storing the dug earth under the stage.
The escape team came up with an ingenious plan, based on the Trojan Horse where they a gymnastic wooden vaulting horse with a team of vaulters. This horse acted as a decoy to conceal a tunnel entrance. A film version was later made in 1949 and ironically Butterworth was turned down for a part. Although he was highly involved in this brilliant escape, Peter didn’t leave the camp when the time came as the last man. All but three of the escapees were recaptured and 50 were executed on Hitler’s orders.
The Vital Link
Peter was not only a master forger, providing the vital documents needed to cross Nazi-occupied Europe but was also brilliant at code letter writing. Using the allowed form of letter writing to loved ones, Butterworth managed to fox the German scrutiny and conceal intelligence in some of them, using a secret sign that the contents were for M19. These codes provided vital locations of ammunition dumps etc. So complicated were these codes that they were unravelled for 70 years until a team from Plymouth University managed to figure them out.
An Unsung Hero
Peter Butterworth would go on to grace our screens for over thirty years. Married to the impressionist Janet Brown, Butterworth sadly died in 1979, aged 63 after completing the film, The First Great Train Robbery. Whilst appearing as Widow Twankey in the pantomime Alladin, he returned to his hotel after the evening performance but failed to show up for the matinee the next day. He was found deceased in his hotel room after suffering a heart attack.
