Double Bill (Text Only)

Aided by an excellent scriptwriter who made jokes about Dad’s absence and my ineptitude, and bolstered by the good-natured badinage of the band, I made a modest success of the three broadcasts. So much so that Dad’s agent, Leslie Grade, rang me and said that Moss Empires, who had booked the band for the summer, would be happy to stick to the original schedule if I would carry on waving my arms around in time to the music. I agreed because this meant the band would be paid and Dad could enjoy a worry-free break in the south of France.

My first engagement with the band was at the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on a Saturday evening, an easy start because at the weekend the place was sure to be packed. I made a deal with the leading saxophonist that he would beat time discreetly with his instrument while I gave the audience the impression that I was in charge. After a fairly chaotic rehearsal, I left the theatre and walked across the road to a café opposite. As I was tucking into a meal, I happened to look up and saw people queuing to get into the theatre. God Almighty! It suddenly struck me that what I was about to do was sheer lunacy. I’d never even been on the stage before, let alone faced an audience who had the highest expectations of a Billy Cotton Band show. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked myself desperately, barely avoiding the urge to bang my head on the table top.

I remember virtually nothing about the show that followed, so it must have gone well. Indeed, I went home to Boo with a feeling of euphoria which lasted all of twenty-four hours until I drove up to the band’s next engagement in Peterborough. As I was to discover, a rainy Monday night in middle England is an entirely different proposition from Saturday by the sea. The place was only a third full, and in the front were the serried ranks of local landladies who’d been given complimentary tickets in the hope they would recommend the show to their guests. These dragons sat there glowering, arms folded, daring us to entertain them. If you want a really super-critical audience, hand out free tickets. When punters have to pay for their tickets, they are on your side because they have a vested interest in enjoying themselves, otherwise their money’s been wasted. So I waved my arms around like crazy and babbled away, desperate to get some reaction from the audience. The band members, meanwhile, smiled cynically – they’d seen it all before. It certainly made me realise what my father had gone through in the lean years before he became famous.

To discomfort me even more, in a box surrounded by her acolytes there was Cissie Williams, the chief booker for Moss Empires. She was an awesome figure in the entertainment industry, able to make and break the career of performers by giving or withholding work or by placing them either in big London theatres or remote regional flea-pits. At the interval, she appeared in my dressing-room and I preened myself, fully expecting her to utter some words of congratulation or encouragement – after all, I’d taken over the band at short notice and, in all modesty, I thought I was doing rather well. Instead she snapped, ‘You are contracted to do fifty minutes and you only did forty-five’ – which was true, simply because we couldn’t include the number Dad always sang at the end of the show. I thought quickly and said, ‘I’ll ask Alan Breeze to sing “Unchained Melody”,’ a big hit at the time. She nodded, said, ‘Give my regards to your father,’ and swept out.

Alan Breeze, the band’s male vocalist, had been with my Dad for years and was the on-stage butt of his humour. He had a pronounced stutter which became worse in moments of stress. I told him the form and ensured the band had the music of ‘Unchained Melody’ on their stands. The following evening as the act came to its climax, we struck up the opening chords of the song and on came Alan Breeze, who looked at me desperately and muttered something I didn’t quite catch. We waited for him to take his cue and nothing happened; Alan just stared at me like a startled rabbit. We reached the end of the introductory chords. Dead silence. Having learned a thing or two from watching my father exchanging badinage with Alan, I turned to the audience and said jocularly, ‘I think we’ve got a problem here.’ Then with a great melodramatic gesture I picked up Alan by his collar and with a big smile on my face for the benefit of the audience, hissed at him, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Spluttering and stuttering, he whispered, ‘I … I … I’ve f-f-forgotten the w-w-words!’ I could have killed him with my bare hands. Everybody knew the lyrics of ‘Unchained Melody’ – for a time they were more familiar than the words of ‘God Save the Queen’. By enlisting the audience to sing along with Alan, I got us through the show and aged twenty-five years in five minutes.

Then we moved on to Brighton, where to my utter delight our takings for the week were up on the same period in the previous year when Dad was in charge of the band. I couldn’t wait to give him the good news: I thought it would aid his recovery if he knew how well things were going. Fat chance. He hated being upstaged, even by his own son.

One evening during the interval between houses at the Hippodrome Theatre, I went down to the bar and saw there a famous Brighton resident, the comedian Max Miller. Miller had done a memorable season with my Dad at the London Palladium which I attended virtually every evening because I admired his stand-up so much. Whether he was the greatest comedian of his day was a matter of argument, but he was indisputably the meanest. He had never been known to put his hand in his pocket and buy a drink, so I was not surprised to see him sitting staring glumly into an empty glass. We exchanged pleasantries and then I offered to buy him a drink. He was very grateful. We talked some more. ‘Can I refill your glass?’ I asked. He was beside himself with gratitude. Later: ‘Another one?’ I enquired. He overwhelmed me with thanks. Eventually I had to get back to business, but as I left, the barman called me over and he said, ‘Thanks very much for standing Max those rounds. If you hadn’t, I’d have had to do it. Every night he comes in here and just stands silently at the bar until I offer him a drink.’ Mean he might have been, but when he died Max left his entire estate to a home for unmarried mothers.

We ended our run with a week in Dublin. The Thursday happened to be St Patrick’s Day, which meant there were only two bars open in the entire city: one was at the Dog Show and the other at the Theatre Royal, where we were playing. Though the Billy Cotton Band was the star attraction, the theatre also had its own pit orchestra which accompanied the other turns. Since we were the final act on the bill, with an expansive gesture of the kind Billy Cotton Senior was noted for I handed a tenner to the stage manager and told him to send the pit orchestra out for a drink on me. I assured him my band would close the show with the national anthem. He was very grateful, and off went the pit orchestra for a drink while I warned our band how the show would end.

Half way through our act, I was happily waving my arms around when I had a sudden premonition of doom. I left the stage, got hold of the manager and said, ‘Where’s the pit orchestra?’ He told me they were in the pub where I’d sent them.

‘For Christ’s sake, get them back, quick!’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because my band doesn’t know “The Soldier’s Song”,’ I shrieked. ‘They only know one national anthem, “God Save the Queen”!’

‘Oh, my Gawd!’ he said, and dashed off. I spent the rest of the show with one eye glued to the orchestra pit, praying that the players would get back before we finished our act. By the time we reached the final curtain, there were just enough of them to strike up ‘The Soldier’s Song’. The Billy Cotton Band stood respectfully, blissfully unaware of the narrow escape they’d had. ‘God Save the Queen’ in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day in a house packed with drunken Irishmen!

‘You weren’t going to play what I think you were?’ the stage manager asked, scandalised. ‘What are you, a bloody kamikaze pilot?’ Speechless, I headed for the nearest bottle of whisky.

In spite of my success with Dad’s band, the experience did cure me of any idea of going on the stage permanently, though it was invaluable in later years when I had to deal with performers. I understood first hand the pressure they were under.

I had also come to believe that my future in show business lay in television, so I went to see Ronnie Waldman to ask if he would arrange for me to go on a BBC Television production course. I wanted no favours. I’d start at the bottom on a temporary contract, and if I didn’t make the grade he could get rid of me with no hard feelings. I’d got to know Ronnie well enough to work out his thought processes. To take me on as a trainee would only cost him the standard BBC rate of fifteen quid a week for six months, which would earn him the gratitude of his biggest stars and be another silken thread binding my Dad to the BBC. There can’t have been any other reason; I doubt Ronnie thought I was God’s gift to television.

Shortly before I left the music business to join the BBC, I was coming out of the office in Denmark Street when I ran into Dick James, the singer who had recorded the original title song to the TV series Robin Hood. He’d just finished a spell with the BBC Dance Orchestra and told me he was thinking of setting up a music publishing business. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘I’m getting out. It’s a dying industry. The record companies have it all sewn up; there’s nothing left for independent publishers.’ Like an idiot, he ignored my good advice, became the publisher of the Beatles and Elton John and made millions.

THREE

The first day I reported to the new half-built Television Centre at White City in January 1956 is indelibly imprinted on my memory. A young red-haired secretary who worked for Tom Sloan, the Assistant Head of Light Entertainment, greeted me. Her name was Queenie Lipyeat, and thirty years later she retired as my personal assistant because I was by then Managing Director of BBC TV. But on this particular day I was a trainee producer.

I knew Broadcasting House, the home of BBC Radio, very well. It had long, dark corridors and people worked behind closed doors. It had the hushed atmosphere of a museum or a library; John Reith called it (in Latin of course) ‘A Temple of the Arts’. It didn’t exactly buzz with excitement. Most of the actual broadcasting came from the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street and other studios around London. The Television Centre was quite different. It was noisy and bursting with life. Everyone seemed to be in a great hurry; the place echoed with shouting and laughter, and as you walked down a corridor you had to flatten yourself against the wall as technicians pushed past you trundling heavy camera equipment or pieces of scenery.

Since the BBC had begun as a radio service, all the big corporate decisions were made at Broadcasting House by a management who had originally been by and large lukewarm about television because they thought it was too expensive an operation to be paid for by the licence fee. However, against the BBC’s bitter opposition, the government passed the legislation which produced an Independent Television system, and in no time these companies were beating the BBC for audiences in the geographical regions where they operated. This created a certain amount of concern, even panic, at Broadcasting House as those who ran the BBC saw their position as the main purveyors of broadcasting being threatened. Hence, from being viewed somewhat superciliously, television was moved much higher up the governors’ agenda.

So in the very year I joined the BBC, it was decided that someone be appointed Director of Television. Gerald Beadle had no prior television experience and made no secret of the fact that up to the day of his appointment he didn’t even own a television set. He had been controller in charge of the Western Region of BBC Radio, was fifty-five years of age, and was looking for a gentle canter down the finishing straight to retirement.

Shortly after he arrived, Beadle summoned the entire production staff of the television service to a meeting. They all fitted comfortably into the Television Theatre at Shepherd’s Bush – by the time I left, it would have taken a football ground to contain them. I was present when Beadle asked what could be done about the mounting competition from ITV, and saw the legendary Grace Wyndham Goldie rise to her feet. She was a major figure in the Talks Department, then considered the serious side of the business, so her one-line intervention had a tremendous impact. She declared, ‘The trouble with the BBC is that it is considered vulgar to be popular.’ The roar of agreement from all the staff present shook Gerald Beadle and became something of a battle cry. He got the firm impression that the staff of the television service were a feisty lot, frustrated by lack of investment and the lukewarm endorsement of BBC management at Broadcasting House. Slowly the message got through to the powers that be and a new, exciting era dawned. I was fortunate to be there when it began.

I started work on the producers’ course. There were lectures on such things as the theory of camera direction and lighting, the importance of design and the organisation required to run a producer’s office. Clips of film illustrated many of these subjects. The problem was that every time they turned the lights down, I dozed off. But I’d learned a trick or two in the army and when the lights came up again I immediately asked the first question – which disarmed the suspicions of those who hadn’t realised that my eyes were closed in deep contemplation. In spite of this foible I had the privilege of learning from dedicated and talented instructors who, being the first generation in BBC TV, had virtually invented the techniques of television production.

After the course, we were sent back to our departments for the remainder of the six months to learn the practical side of the job under the supervision of senior producers. I was attached to a young lion, Francis Essex, who had built a great reputation as a programme director. He was later to become a major figure in ATV, and when he retired he created musicals, of which Jolson was probably his most successful. His production assistant was Yvonne Littlewood, who forty years later in 1999 earned a richly deserved place in the Royal Television Society’s Hall of Fame for her work in television.

There was also a production secretary, Hermione Doutre, and the four of us shared an office the size of a normal box room. Francis was a busy producer and for much of the time I just sat there and watched, very much a spare part. I sat at a small typist’s desk in the corner of the room, and at lunchtime I often used to pop down to Tin Pan Alley to my other office where I could luxuriate at a big walnut desk in a room with a carpet, armchairs, pictures on the wall and full cocktail cabinet and ponder whether I was doing the right thing by joining television.

But before long I was given some nursery-slope programmes. Going out under the generic title of Starlight, these were fifteen minutes long and used either a pop group or a solo performer. I did one with the Ray Ellington Quartet and Marion Ryan and another with the pianist Semprini. He was very popular with trainee producers, partly because he was so co-operative and partly because his piano was a useful prop – a director could shoot it from every possible angle. If the director was a beginner, he or she invariably got the camera cables crossed and ended up in a complete tangle. But it was all valuable experience.

By 1956 Boo and I had lived at Ham Island for six years. We arrived there as newlyweds and soon became a family – Jane was born on 26 September 1951 and Kate on exactly the same day two years later. I did myself no favours with Boo when in one of my more jocular moods I explained the identical birth-date of two of my children at a dinner-party: ‘If you work it back, it’s Boxing Day,’ I said. ‘After all, Christmas Eve, you drink, Christmas Day, you eat, so what’s left for Boxing Day?’ My wife’s laughter was dutiful but mirthless. I used to remind Dad every year as 26 September approached that it was the children’s birthday. Every year he would ask, ‘Which one?’ and every year I would say, ‘Both.’ And every year he would say accusingly, ‘You never told me that!’

We had thoroughly enjoyed living on the Island but now the children were getting near school age and Boo thought it was time to move nearer to town so that I wouldn’t have as far to drive to work. Our chance came when an old friend of my brother, Bob Snell, told us of a new development called Parkleys his firm had built at Ham Common near Richmond. Bob and Ted had been at school together and served in the RAF as pilots at the same time. Bob’s parents lived abroad, he spent his leaves with us and had become one of the family. He had moved into one of the new flats and there was another one on sale at £3500, which he assured me was a good investment. Boo and I went to see it. It had an open-plan living- and dining-room, two doubles and a small single room. There was, alas, no river at the bottom of the garden, but there were shops within walking distance. Boo was all for buying it, and I agreed, though I feared we might not get our money back if we wanted to sell it. Nevertheless her enthusiasm was irresistible.

The day we moved house, our bulldog, Bessie, had puppies. We’d always had dogs, starting with a Pekinese who was king of all he surveyed till one day he picked a fight with a boxer and a sheepdog and lost. So we decided to get a bigger dog; hence Bessie. Boo had arranged to make the actual house-move with the help of a friend, Patsy, while I was at work – in the morning I would leave from Ham Island and later come home to a new flat in Ham Common. It was a plan that suited a male chauvinist like myself down to the ground – or it would have done if Bessie hadn’t interfered with it. The bungalows on Ham Island were built on stilts against the possibility of flooding and Bessie chose to deliver her litter underneath the bungalow. I had to crawl around in the mud, passing one puppy after another up to Patsy. At last we got all the puppies out, eight of them. We couldn’t keep eight puppies in a flat, so we held on to two and the vet took the others. I left Ham Island for the last time feeling like a mass murderer.

Meanwhile, as part of Dad’s contract while he was waiting to get the Band Show on air, he was asked to present a musical programme produced by Francis Essex called The Tin Pan Alley Show. It was not a happy experience, though we had a few laughs along the way – wherever Dad was there was jollity. The problem in this instance was that he didn’t much like the show’s format and wanted out, and by God, he could be mulish when he wasn’t getting his own way. I swore at the time I’d never work with him again because it would obviously end in tears and I told Ronnie Waldman so.

Eventually I graduated as a full-blown producer and director on Off the Record, a show in which we put television pictures to records of current musical hits. We weren’t allowed to play the actual records because the BBC had an agreement with the Musicians’ Union who, naturally enough, wanted us to use live musicians rather than recordings. The show’s presenter, Jack Payne, was, like my father, a band-leader of pre-war vintage. He could be very awkward and difficult to handle, but coping with temperamental band-leaders was a skill I’d absorbed with my mother’s milk, so after a few preliminary skirmishes we got along fine.

It was on this show I was introduced to the world of special effects. Nowadays, they are an integral part of most shows, though all the fancy technical stuff is usually done after the programme has been recorded. But back in the fifties, when all shows were live, we had to put in the special effects during transmission as we went along. I remember Frankie Vaughan apparently walking through a series of doors while singing ‘Green Door’ – not an easy effect to create when all television was black and white. Frankie just lifted and put down his feet on the spot and the illusion was created that he was moving through space from one door to another. These days it would be laughably simple to get that effect but at that time it seemed like magic.

I recall in my early days in the department producing a show featuring the singer Carole Carr. Basically, we had three types of shot: long, mid-shot and close up. At that time, there was no such thing as a zoom lens – the camera had to be moved physically nearer or further away from the star. I started on a long shot and Carole looked so lovely I decided to track in closer as she sang her heart out. I called for the cameraman to move nearer. Nothing happened. I added what I thought was more authority to my voice and ordered the cameraman to move in. Still nothing happened. I was beside myself with fury until someone in the gallery said in a quiet voice, ‘If he does track in, there’ll be a terrible mess in the stalls. His camera’s at the front of the circle.’ Another lesson learned.

I had my first success as a television talent-spotter when I was working on Off the Record. I had a friend called Hugh Mendl who worked for Decca Records and whom I’d known since my days as a song-plugger. He asked me to go and see a young rock and roll star who was appearing in Soho. We found ourselves in a reclaimed public toilet that posed as a club in the heart of Frith Street. We ordered a drink and settled down to wait for the boy to come on stage. Suddenly at our table appeared a bouncer the size of a house who said the manager was aware we were auditioning in his club and he’d like to see us in his office. I refused his invitation – the reason being that he terrified the life out of me. We found ourselves on the street and called it a day. Hugh, however, was nothing if not tenacious and pestered me until I went along to another club where the boy was appearing. He was a sensation. I asked Hugh what recordings he’d made. ‘None,’ he replied, ‘but if you’ll give him a spot on your show I’ll record him tomorrow.’ We shook hands on it and Tommy Steele had his first recording, ‘Rock with the Caveman’, on the show the following week. I knew this was a big star in the making.

Discovering Tommy Steele presented me with an ethical dilemma. The man who wrote Tommy Steele’s hit was Lionel Bart, who when I came on the scene hadn’t found a publisher for the song. I had not divested myself of my interest in music publisher Michael Reine, but I had promised the Head of TV Entertainment, Ronnie Waldman, that I would not take advantage of my position in the BBC to advance the interests of my private company. I felt it right that I should not tell my partner at Michael Reine, Johnny Johnston, about the existence of Lionel Bart or the brilliant song Tommy Steele was turning into a hit. And that’s why we didn’t sign up Lionel Bart, who of course went on to write ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be’ and Oliver. Johnny was not best pleased.

By now, my dad’s show was nearing its transmission date. The combination of Billy Cotton as presenter and the Silhouettes worked a treat. Jimmy Grafton wrote the comedy script; there were some instrumental numbers and a guest spot. Brian Tesler had got an ideal television format, infinitely flexible, and Dad was smart enough to stick with it for his entire television career. He may not have been the best song and dance man in the business but when the audience saw the sweat on his forehead they knew he was giving everything he had to entertain them, and they loved him for it.

Because office space was at a premium at the unfinished Television Centre, I worked from a caravan behind the scenery block in the carpark. It was a little like a holiday camp, and the occupant of the next caravan along was a brilliant young producer called Jack Good who was busy working on an idea that was to revolutionise pop programmes. He named it Six-Five Special and proposed employing a quite original production technique. The perceived wisdom at the time was that none of the technology which transmitted the programme – cameras, lighting, microphones – should be visible to the viewer, who was supposed to assume the event was taking place in a corner of the living-room. It was a hanging offence to allow the tip of a microphone to appear in shot, and if one of the technicians was inadvertently picked up by the camera, the standard sarcastic quip was ‘I hope he’s a member of Equity’, the actors’ union.