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Dad may not have achieved his dearest wish and flown in combat, but he and the band were subject to the dangers of travelling around Britain during the war, playing as they did in towns and cities that got a pasting from the German air force. In Plymouth, both the theatre where they were appearing and the hotel where they were staying went up in flames. The band got out just in time and spent the night on the moors overlooking the city. Dad was having supper at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool when it was hit by a bomb. He escaped injury and for the rest of the night travelled backwards and forwards on the Mersey ferry, on the principle that it was harder to hit a moving target.
During the blitz, a bomb dropped in the garden of our Willesden house and blew the front off, so we had to move out. We stayed at Farnham Common for a while with a good friend of my father’s, Jimmy Philips, who was a music publisher. We eventually found a house nearby and we’d frequent the local pub, the Dog and Pot. It was there that my father and Jimmy first heard a German song which was a favourite of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the desert. The Eighth Army lads had adopted and adapted it, adding some pretty ribald words. Both Jimmy and my father were struck by the tune and got a song writer called Tommy Connor to put some lyrics to it. It was called ‘Lili Marlene’ and became immortal.
At about this time Leslie Grade, who had become my father’s agent, went into the RAF. His brother Lew took over the agency and with his other brother, Bernard Delfont, created one of the greatest show-business dynasties of the century. The Grade organisation represented Dad until he died. There were plenty of heated discussions between client and agent over the years. Leslie used to tell the story of my dad pitching up in his office and demanding more work in London. When he was told that there weren’t any more theatres left, that they were either booked up or bombed out, Dad hit the roof and shouted that he’d had enough, their partnership was forthwith dissolved. As Dad stormed out of the door Leslie shouted, ‘You’ll be back!’ – and sure enough, he was. He’d left his hat behind.
In spite of having in Leslie Grade one of the best agents in the business, my father’s career took a dip in the immediate postwar period and he seriously considered giving up the entertainment business and buying a garage. The problem was that the Billy Cotton Band seemed to have been around for ever; there was a dated feel to their music compared with that of orchestras such as the Ted Heath Band and the Squadronaires who had first formed ad hoc as groups of musicians serving together in the forces, then decided to stick together when they were demobbed. To the millions who had served in the forces these were the exciting and evocative sounds of the hectic war years, whereas Dad’s band, having been playing since the twenties, seemed to belong to a sedate era that had vanished for ever.
I remember going with him to the Streatham Empire where he was playing to a half-empty theatre and worrying whether his share of the box-office takings would pay the musicians’ wages. The truth was that live variety was dying – though ironically television was responsible for its resurrection and my father, having suffered through its declining years, was one of the chief beneficiaries when a bright new age dawned.
To add to the family’s problems, my brother while in the RAF had been posted to Burma where he contracted first malaria and then TB. After a long convalescence at the famous Baragwanath Hospital in South Africa, Ted came home, was demobbed and got a job in the film industry. Then TB broke out in his other lung, at which point my father flew him out to Switzerland, which as a result of its crystal-clear and unpolluted mountain air had become a leading centre for the treatment of the disease. Following intensive care, Ted went back to work again, but the family always had some anxiety about his health – as it turned out, with good reason.
In desperate need of work, Dad went to the BBC to see an Australian called Jim Davidson who was at that time Assistant Head of Light Entertainment. Jim proposed some radio work on different days of each week. This was no good to Dad because he played all round the country, often in towns a long distance from the nearest radio studio. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to abandon live variety and keep the band in existence just for one broadcast a week. Jim Davidson thought for a moment and then said, ‘How about a show on Sunday mornings?’ This was a startling proposal. The BBC was still shrouded in Reithian gloom on Sundays, the founder of the BBC having decreed that no programmes should be broadcast which might distract churchgoing listeners from holy things. And the Billy Cotton Band with its raucous leader hardly qualified as a suitable religious offering. But Jim Davidson decided to take the risk and booked the band to do half a dozen shows at ten-thirty on Sunday mornings.
The show was an immediate success, though the strain on Dad and the band was immense. After a hard week on the road, they often had to travel through the night to get to the BBC studio by seven o’clock on Sunday morning for rehearsals. My father was to claim later that his famous catch phrase ‘Wakey! Wakey!’ was born when he arrived at the studio one Sunday morning to find the members of the band nodding with weariness in their chairs. ‘Oi, come on,’ he roared. ‘Wakey! Wakey!’ Noting its tonic effect on everyone in the studio, the producer suggested that that’s how the show should begin. Far from being outraged by The Billy Cotton Band Show, the representatives of the churches on the BBC’s religious advisory committee felt that the programme sent people off to church in an upbeat, cheerful mood. There was, though, the odd Puritan who believed that broadcast dance music on the Sabbath was the work of the devil. One Lancashire vicar was reported in the press as telling his congregation, ‘The choice is yours, Billy Cotton or the Almighty!’ Dad was flattered by the comparison. The Church’s only concern was the programme’s timing, which clashed with most church services which began somewhere between ten and eleven. The BBC then proposed that the programme should be moved to one-thirty, Sunday lunchtime, when families traditionally all gathered round their tables in convivial mood. It was this decision which transformed my father from being a fading band-leader into a national institution. Whole generations grew up and grew old associating the sound of The Billy Cotton Band Show with the smell of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
One unexpected side-effect of the radio show’s success was that Dad’s theatre bookings perked up again. Leslie Grade booked the band for a four-week tour with Two-Ton Tessie O’Shea. The show was called Tess and Bill, and ran for more than two years. Both Dad and Tessie were larger than life personalities – hugely so in Tessie’s case – and they got on well together. They toured all round the country to packed theatres and were at one about everything but money. Tessie had a much shrewder appreciation of Dad’s radio popularity than he had himself, and decided she’d take a percentage of the box office, whereas he preferred a fixed fee. Tessie’s instinct paid off and the tour made her very rich, until she made a fatal miscalculation. They had worked all the London suburban theatres, from Edgware to Hackney and New Cross to Lewisham, then Tessie proposed a final visit to the Victoria Palace – a West End theatre with an enormous coach trade. Dad felt that Londoners who’d paid four and sixpence to see them in the suburbs wouldn’t shell out twelve and sixpence for a repeat performance at the Victoria Palace, and he was right. Tessie lost a lot of money and Tess and Bill eventually split up.
Dad was soon drawing big crowds on the strength of the huge popularity his radio show had given him. Initially he had no interest in television, which began developing into a mass medium once the war was over. With the exception of a couple of Royal galas – celebrating the Coronation, and then the Queen’s return from Australia – he refused invitations to appear. His reasons for doing so were strictly commercial: so long as the BBC had monopoly of television, their fees would remain unrealistically low – too low, Dad decided, to make it worth his while to put together elaborate programmes which could be used on only one occasion. Once the public had seen a show, that was that, he thought. Radio was different: the listeners were curious to see in the flesh the performers they had come to love. It was the arrival of ITV which changed his mind.
Meanwhile I had left school and toured the country with Dad while I waited to be called up for National Service. For Ted’s twenty-first birthday, Dad bought him a brand-new MG Midget, in those days virtually the only mass-produced sports car on the market. A few months later, Dad and I were driving through Coventry and stopped off at a garage for petrol. There in the garage’s showroom was a brand-new fire-engine-red MG. I was gazing at it longingly when Dad came up and said, ‘By the way, that’s your car. Look after it.’
Later he told me that Ted had felt uncomfortable about having a state-of-the-art sports car while I was driving a clapped-out pre-war Fiat Topolino. He lobbied Father to get me one for my eighteenth birthday. What a way to get your first car, and how typical of both Ted and my father’s generosity of spirit! I was a very lucky lad, and knew it.
My father loved cars, every type of car, from Rolls Bentley through Aston Martin to Jaguars and Mercedes and the latest line in runabouts. He had a Morris Minor which we called ‘Leapin Leaner’: it leaned when he got in and it leaped when he got cat! One day I was in his office when he received a phone call from Jack Barclay, the distributor for Rolls Royce and Bentley in Hanover Square. Jack invited him for a sherry. When we arrived at the showroom there was a magnificent Rolls Bentley gleaming in its newness and with the number-plate BC 1. Dad took one look and said, ‘I’ll have it.’ The sherry was swapped for champagne and joy was unconfined – until they produced the invoice. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘It’s the number-plate I want – I’ve got a Bentley and you sold it to me!’ Jack Barclay took it very well and gave the old man the number-plate. BC 1 was on many a car until Dad died.
I was eventually called up, and joined the Royal Sussex Regiment in late 1946 when the world was comparatively peaceful. On the basis that I preferred to ride than walk – especially with full equipment on my back – I was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps as a transport officer.
The only truly terrifying thing that happened to me during my military service was my encounter with the legendary Regimental Sergeant-Major Brittain on the parade ground at Mons Barracks, Aldershot. He was a fearsome sight and had a voice that could shatter glass at half a mile. One exchange with him when I was dozy on parade still lingers in my memory.
RSM: ‘Are you a spiritualist, sir?’
Me: ‘No, sir.’
RSM: ‘Well, you’ve got your head on an ethereal plane, your body in the West End, and your feet are just about in Aldershot. Put him in the guard room.’
Long after I left the army, I met the RSM again. I was producing a record show for television and a girl singer known as Billie Anthony had a new record out called ‘Fall in for Love’, on which Brittain, long since retired from the army, appeared at the beginning of the song bellowing the command, ‘Fall in for love!’ So we booked Billie Anthony and also Mr Brittain to perform the song live in the studio. When Britten arrived I went up to him and said, ‘I have waited a long time to say this, sir. Stand there and don’t move till I tell you.’
The only time I fired a shot and hit a live target was not during my army career but shortly afterwards. We were staying at Sandbanks for Christmas, and there was quite a big house party that included the composer and impresario Noel Gay. We used to go sailing every day, and on this occasion I took with me a four-ten shotgun to shoot shag, the voracious green cormorant. Fifty yards off our port bow, a beautiful swan gave us a disdainful glance and then lazily spread its wings to take off. Jokingly, I said, ‘I’ll ginger him up,’ and fired quite casually into the air in the general direction of the bird. To my horror, this freak shot killed the swan outright. My father said, ‘That’s illegal. All swans belong to the Queen. You could go to gaol for that.’ Someone else suggested that ‘we’d better suppress the evidence’, so we pulled the body into the boat and cruised around until dusk fell. Then we went ashore and marched in single file up to the house, the swan over Dad’s back while the rest of us chanted the Seven Dwarfs’ ‘Heigh-ho’ song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
We found Noel Gay dozing on a settee in the sitting-room. ‘Look, Noel,’ someone shouted, ‘a Christmas goose.’ Noel opened one eye. ‘I never eat goose,’ he confided and went back to sleep. Just so he wouldn’t feel left out of the fun, we decided to stow the swan in the boot of his car, until Christmas night, when we all dressed in dinner jackets and boarded a dinghy to bury the swan at sea. The corpse was tied to a trawler drag and heaved overboard. We underestimated its weight: all that happened was the swan’s neck went under and its bottom bobbed up. I doubt whoever found it with an iron bar round its neck would think it had died a natural death.
Dad was at his most exuberant on holiday at Sandbanks, when laughter, joking and frenzied activity surrounded him. Next door to our house was the Royal Motor Yacht Club whose Commodore was an ex-naval officer called Bersey, a splendid man but a stickler for protocol. Every morning at eight o’clock a saluting gun would be fired and a Blue Ensign run to the masthead. It so happened that in the garage of his Sandbanks house Dad kept a whole load of old stage-props, including the Soviet flag, the Hammer and Sickle, which had been used for a stage song called ‘Comrades’. This was in the early days of the Cold War when the former camaraderie between Russia and the West had evaporated.
One morning the steward came out of the club house, checked his watch, fired the saluting gun, tied the furled Ensign to the halyard and looked up to see the Hammer and Sickle already flying proudly from the masthead. He dashed inside and brought out the apoplectic Commodore in his dressing-gown. The local constabulary was called in just in case the Russians were planning an invasion of the Bournemouth area and had landed an advance raiding party. About a year later, the Commodore came up to my father who was drinking in the Club verandah. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who put that Russian flag up,’ he spluttered.
I was demobbed in the latter part of 1948. I had a place at Clare College, Cambridge but I didn’t fancy taking it up; the world of academia wasn’t for me. So I became slightly unfocused and, having nothing better to do, went on tour with Dad, protesting all the time that I really must set about getting a career. He couldn’t see the problem. He’d say, ‘You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?’ and point out that we enjoyed each other’s company; he was doing very well financially and I was very useful to him. That was debatable. I had two main tasks: one was to act as his chauffeur; the other to reconnoitre every town the band was visiting to find out which cinemas might be showing cowboy Western films in the afternoons.
I went to enormous trouble to locate these local flea pits where Dad would sit down assuring me we were in for a treat. Before the opening titles had finished running, his head would drop onto his chest and he’d snore his way through the entire film. Having woken up, he’d take off in search of a cup of tea, murmuring appreciation of a film he’d never seen. That happened again and again.
During this period, my father took a week off which happened to coincide with the British Grand Prix for Formula One racing cars. He suggested we drive up to Silverstone to watch the practice laps for the great event. Since pre-war days, he had been a member of the prestigious British Racing Drivers’ Club, so he knew most of the personalities in the motor racing game. He also displayed proudly on his radiator the Brooklands 120 mph badge commemorating the occasion he clocked a lap at 123.89 mph in an MG and became one of a very select group.
We waved goodbye to my mother who fondly imagined that Dad was going to the Grand Prix as an interested spectator. When we arrived at Silverstone, Dad sought out Wilkie Wilkinson who used to prepare his racing cars before the war and had joined forces with a couple of wealthy up and coming drivers to form an ERA (English Racing Automobile) team. It soon became clear that Dad had arranged beforehand to drive one of Wilkie’s cars.
I was dumbfounded. Dad was forty-nine years of age and suffered from high blood pressure. I watched in amazement as he got his crash hat and visor out of the boot of our car, put them on, and drove off round the circuit. He clocked up a respectable if not spectacular lap time and on returning to the pits said that since there were still four days of practice before the big race he’d plenty of time to sharpen up. On the drive back home he said nonchalantly, ‘Best not to tell your mother about this, she’ll only worry.’
And so this charade went on throughout the rest of the week. Each morning at breakfast he’d spin some yarn about his plans for the day and Mother would nod, apparently understandingly – until Saturday, the day of the race, when she cut short Dad’s fanciful musings. She said, ‘I don’t mind you not telling me you’re driving in a motor race today, it’s the insinuation that I can’t read that upsets me. The story’s in every newspaper, including the fact that I’m not supposed to know about it. So off you go and if you kill yourself I’ll never talk to you again. And don’t come home stinking of petrol as you’ve done every day this week.’
In the actual race he did remarkably well. He was due to take the car over at the halfway point when it stopped to refuel. Just before the car arrived at the pit, the petrol bowser drew up and through some fault starting spewing fuel under pressure all over the place. Dad was crouched on the pit counter ready to jump into the car as soon as it arrived and so got a face-wash of high-octane petrol. His goggles were soaked and he obviously couldn’t see clearly. I begged him not to get into the car, but he said, ‘If you think I’m missing this, you’re out of your mind,’ and off he went. He started slowly but the wind soon blew away the petrol film on his goggles and he finished the race a creditable fourth. Some of the legendary pre-war drivers, George Easton, John Cobb and Earl Howe, came up to congratulate him and they all agreed that he’d taught the youngsters a thing or two and shown there was still life in old dogs. However, the strain had obviously taken its toll on him and on the way home he confided in me regretfully that he was hanging up his helmet and goggles. His part-time career as a racing driver was over.
TWO (#ulink_bcd0484d-ab2f-52b6-ac15-903e340ac44a)
When I came out of the army, the Cotton family had a house on the Thames, at Old Windsor. There was a whole colony of showbiz people living on Ham Island, and one of them, Reginald Armitage, better known as Noel Gay, was a great friend of my father and mother. He was a successful music publisher who also wrote best-selling songs: ‘The Lambeth Walk’, ‘Round the Marble Arch’, ‘There’s Something about a Soldier’, ‘The Fleet’s in Port Again’, ‘Hey! Little Hen’ and ‘Run Rabbit Run’ – just the kind of music my father’s band played best. One day Noel Gay invited me for a trip up river on his launch. I set out unemployed and I came back with a job as a song-plugger for the Noel Gay Music Company based in Denmark Street, better known as Tin Pan Alley.
In these jargon-ridden days, song-pluggers would be known as exploitation men. This was a time when many people still had pianos in their front-rooms and made their own music. They’d go along to a Littlewoods store and there in the music department would be a song-plugger sitting at a piano inviting them to buy the song he was playing. If you strolled down Denmark Street in the summer when office windows were open, you’d hear a piano in every room bashing out the publisher’s latest song for the benefit of singers, band-leaders and anyone else who might perform or broadcast it. The song-plugger spent his life trying to bribe, cajole and persuade performers to include his songs in their programmes, which in turn created a market for the sheet music.
We paid special attention to bands and artists who had spots on radio. Record programmes were becoming a big thing in the broadcasting schedules – there was Jack Jackson’s Record Round-up on a Saturday night, for example, which played many records and helped to create some hits. The ultimate goal was to get your song played in programmes like his or Two-Way Family Favourites, Housewives’ Choice or The Billy Cotton Band Show. We’d even shell out a fiver, which was a lot of money in those days, to get hold of an advance copy of the Radio Times to find out which stars and bands were scheduled to appear on air a couple of weeks later. Then we could badger them to play our music. The band-leader Geraldo was a very big star at that time; he was always on the air, so if you could get him to add one of your songs to his repertoire you were quids in. Another target of the song-pluggers was a vocal group called the Keynotes who had a weekly spot on a radio show called Take it from Here. And at that time every self-respecting cinema had a resident organist. There was a regular spot on the BBC’s Light Programme at around ten o’clock two or three times a week, which was dedicated to cinema organ music, so organists like Reginald Dixon and Robinson Cleaver were among the song-pluggers’ favourite prey.
The seamy side of the industry was the payment of ‘plug-money’ to bribe artists to sing or play particular songs. A popular singer called Issy Bonn used to start at the top of Denmark Street and call on the music publishers one by one, telling them he had a number of radio engagements coming up and asking if they would they like him to sing one of their songs. He invited them to put their responses in a plain brown envelope. Eventually the BBC, which was still the only domestic broadcaster around, put a stop to plug-money by warning performers they would be banned from the airwaves if they were caught taking bribes. But there was an atmosphere of desperation about the whole business as records became more and more popular and the sales of sheet music plummeted.
When I first joined Noel Gay, I had business cards printed with my name, William F. Cotton, inscribed on them. One day I tried to get to see the band-leader Oscar Rabin to sell him a song. I gave my card to his secretary who returned it to me smartish saying that Mr Rabin was far too busy to see me. Oscar was a good friend of my father’s but I took his refusal philosophically and was just leaving when he came out of his office.
‘Hello, Bill,’ he said, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘I’m a song-plugger for Noel and I popped in on the off chance you might be interested in our latest number, but you were too busy to see me,’ I said.
He looked puzzled and then said, ‘So you’re William F. Cotton! For heaven’s sake, don’t embarrass your dad’s friends by not letting on who you are. You’re not William F. Cotton, you’re Billy Cotton Junior. That’s what your card should say.’
Thus was my identity in show business fixed by my relationship to my father, and though he’s been dead for more than thirty years, I’m still conscious of being the junior member of a wonderful though sometimes stormy partnership.
I didn’t work for Noel Gay for very long. Noel had brought his son Richard Armitage into the firm at the same time as I joined, and although Richard and I got on very well – indeed, he was among my dearest friends to the day he died – there wasn’t really room for two apprentices in the business and I wasn’t learning much, so I moved over to Chappell’s in Bond Street, which was run by two American brothers, Max and Louis Dreyfus. They were probably the biggest music publishers in the world at that time, so song-plugging was a serious part of their operation. A chap called Teddy Holmes was the boss of a whole army of song-pluggers and he kept us on the hop; we must have made three or four visits every night to theatres and broadcasting and television studios.
One of the great things about working for Chappell’s was that they controlled the music for most of the big American musicals around at that time. Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel … name any Broadway show, Chappell’s would probably have the rights to it. I put some of these American songs my father’s way. The very first, I recall, was ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’. Played by a pianist called Bill Snyder, it had gone to the top of the Hit Parade in the States and the Billy Cotton Band was among the first to play it in Britain. At that time Chappell’s had an office in St George’s Street above which there was a flat where a very young and gorgeous Joan Collins lived with her lover at the time. It was a volatile relationship; they clearly didn’t always see eye to eye. We in Chappell’s office could tell this was the case because it wasn’t only sparks that used to fly above our heads – I remember hearing plenty of furniture and crockery being smashed. That’s perhaps how the delectable Joan trained for some of her later roles.
It wasn’t all hard grinding labour – we started a show-business football team. One of our numbers was a big strong Scots lad who was in the chorus of South Pacific. He wasn’t all that good a footballer but he made a super special agent. His name was Sean Connery. Eventually the showbiz football team became famous and had a star-studded line-up: Tommy Steele, Kenny Lynch, Glen Mason and Ronnie Carroll all played for us regularly. Ronnie had been in the Northern Ireland youth team but by the time he joined us his footballing brain was having ideas his body couldn’t cope with.
I was sharing a flat in London with Gerry Kunz, a childhood friend whom I’d met again in the Army. Gerry’s father Charlie was the famous pianist, and he was a great friend of my father’s. We lived in London during the week and spent the weekends at our respective parents’ homes. One day Gerry said to me, ‘Can you lend me a fiver?’ I asked him why he needed it. Solemnly, he replied, ‘Because I want to take out the girl I’d love to marry.’ Until that moment I didn’t know of her existence. I hadn’t a spare fiver but I did offer to get him a couple of free tickets to my father’s show at the Victoria Palace. I was off to play football but I said casually that I’d pop round to the theatre after the game and perhaps we could persuade my father to take us all out to supper. My offer may have sounded offhand but I was consumed with curiosity about this girl. Unfortunately, during the game someone kicked me in the ribs and afterwards I was in too much pain to pay much attention to her.
That Christmas, Gerry spent Christmas with the Cottons and then in my red MG we drove down together to his family in Middleton for New Year. On New Year’s Day we were invited to a party at the home of Gerry’s girlfriend. Her name was Bernadine Maud Sinclair but she was universally known as Boo – a nursery pet name derived from her Norfolk nanny’s insistence she was a ‘booty’. This party was the climax of a highly alcoholic festive season – I vaguely recall at some point drinking gin from a tea pot. I was already fairly merry when I got to the party. I was chatting to the girl I had taken there, looked up and saw Boo standing on the other side of the room in a grey dress with a rope belt round it. It was a moment of revelation; it was as though I was seeing her for the first time, and I was bowled over. I went over to her and said, ‘Excuse me, would you like to marry me?’ She grinned and said, ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink.’ ‘All right,’ I replied, ‘I’ll ask you again when I’m sober.’
As these parties do, we moved on to someone else’s house and eventually staggered home to bed, but at eight-thirty a.m. sharp I was up and in my right mind and presented myself at Boo’s house again. Her mother’s housekeeper opened the door, obviously not amused that I was disturbing the family at such an hour. She closed the door in my face and left me standing on the doorstep while she went to fetch Boo, who said, ‘Hello, what do you want?’ I replied, ‘Well, I’ve just come to say that I’m now stone-cold sober and will you marry me?’ She laughed and said, ‘No, but I’ll give you a cup of tea.’ The family was at breakfast, and her stepfather, who harboured the deepest suspicions about the motives of any young man courting his stepdaughter, was less than cordial. But I’d learned a thing or two as a song-plugger about the art of ingratiating myself with people I needed a favour from, so I behaved towards Boo’s parents in a most deferential manner, calling her stepfather ‘sir’ and charming her mother with my sunny smile.
Boo had a pied-à-terre in London, a flat over the family’s undertaking business in Kentish Town, and every day I contrived somehow to propose to her either by letter or phone or face to face in the romantic setting of stacked coffins and blank tombstones. First I had to establish that my pal Gerry was not a contender for her affections. She quickly reassured me: she’d grown up with Gerry and it was one of those relationships that could never move beyond the stage of close friendship. A year or two older than me, Boo had served in the WRNS during the war and been engaged to an RAF officer, but the relationship didn’t survive the anti-climax of peacetime and they split up. She insisted she wasn’t looking to marry anyone at the moment, but that didn’t put me off my daily proposal ritual, and after my laying siege to her for about six months she finally surrendered.
I was ecstatic but slightly apprehensive about telling my parents. I knew my mother would be a pushover – Boo’s genuine charm was bound to win her over – but my father was a different matter. He had a very curious attitude to his sons’ girlfriends; it was almost as though he resented them for taking our attention away from him. So I summoned up my courage, picked up the phone and told him that I had got engaged and I’d like him to meet the girl. ‘Engaged?’ he growled. ‘What do you want to do that for?’ I’d no intention of getting into a pointless argument with him so I asked him if I could bring her along to the Brixton Empress where he was performing. ‘Fine,’ he said casually. I persisted. ‘Is there any chance you might take us out for a meal afterwards?’ No, he already had an arrangement. ‘Fine,’ I said casually, put the phone down and waited. Sure enough, he phoned back and said, ‘Your mother says I should take you out.’
I introduced Boo to Dad in his dressing-room. He was barely polite, though in mitigation it should be said he was always extremely nervous before a show, pacing the floor, clicking his fingers and wiping the sweat from his brow. Boo was quite unfazed by his cold manner. When we left him and went for a quick drink in the bar, she didn’t ask anxiously, ‘Do you think he liked me, and if not, why not?’ She was one of those poised, self-possessed personalities who are at peace with themselves. If Dad took against her, that was his problem, not hers.
After the show, we waited in a corridor while he changed. Then my mother turned up, obviously anxious things should go well. Dad decided to impress Boo with his importance by taking us to the exclusive Albany Club in Savile Row, which was run by a man called Bill Little who knew everyone who was anyone. As Billy Cotton, Britain’s most famous band-leader, friend of the stars, confidant of royalty, strutted in, Bill Little came hurrying up, but then to Dad’s astonishment and chagrin he swept right past him and greeted Boo like a long-lost friend, kissing her on both cheeks and enquiring how she and the family were. Dad couldn’t believe he was being upstaged by my girlfriend whose name he could barely remember. Later, in a heavy attempt at humour, he surveyed the menu and said gruffly, ‘Make the most of it, it’s the last time we’re coming here.’ Quick as a flash, Boo said sweetly, ‘If you can’t afford it, I’ll pay.’ It took time, but in the end they became close friends because Dad had to admire her independence of spirit and honesty.
To celebrate our engagement, I took Boo to see Frank Sinatra at the Palladium, Dad having fixed a box for us. Frank was then at the peak of his career as a singer before he became better known as a movie star. He was sensational. When we left the theatre, Boo was very quiet, and when I pressed her she said, ‘Do you think we are being a bit hasty, getting married?’ I went cold. In a clumsy attempt at a joke, I protested, ‘But I’ve already bought the ring.’ She laughed it off and I delivered her to her flat and went home to mine, only to spend the whole night staring at the ceiling, convinced that my life was about to disintegrate. Years later, after Sinatra had been performing at the Royal Festival Hall, I had breakfast with him. I said, ‘Do you realise you nearly buggered up my life?’ I told him the story of Boo’s strange turn and he howled with laughter. ‘In the end it came out all right,’ I said, ‘but how many other people are walking around cursing you for breaking up their love affairs by doing nothing more than singing to them?’
We fixed the wedding for 21 October 1950. Predictably, Dad decided to be difficult. He said he couldn’t make it; ‘In October, I’m working in Newcastle.’ I knew he’d plucked the excuse out of thin air; he never knew his dates off the top of his head that far in advance. I rang my mother and told her what Dad had said and added, ‘Tell him, will you, that I recall a time when he changed his performance dates to fit in with a motor race, and if he doesn’t want to do the same for my wedding, ask him to send along a cheque and I’ll let him know how things went next time we meet.’ I saw him a few days later. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I managed to change those dates in October.’ When I recounted the saga to my brother, he said, ‘You’re lucky! When I told him about the date of my wedding, he actually altered his programme to make sure he was so far away he couldn’t possibly get to the ceremony. But when the great day came, he duly appeared in top hat and morning suit, having switched his dates around yet again.’ Neither Ted nor I doubted that the old man loved us dearly; he just had this very strange quirk.
Chappell’s recognised my married state by raising my salary to twelve quid a week and Dad let us have the bungalow at Ham Island as our first home – he bought a more spacious house in Farnham Common. The bungalow may have been too small for him but to us it was a palace and we knew most of the bohemian set who lived on that part of the island. As well as Noel Gay there was Lupino Lane, the star of the original pre-war Victoria Palace production of Me and My Girl, Bill Weston Drury, one of the original casting directors in the British film industry, and his son Budge, who did the same job at Pinewood. Budge’s wife, Jean Capra, had been Poppy Poo Pah, the sexy female character in Tommy Hanley’s ITMA. Then there was Jack Swinburne, the production manager for Alexander Korda, and his wife, Mamie Souter, an old music-hall star who had a habit of going on an alcoholic bender every now and again. There was also Russell Lloyd, a film editor, who had once been married to Rosamund John, a star of the silver screen, but had then married a gorgeous model called Valerie. My brother Ted and his wife Beryl also had a bungalow on the island, and he and Russell Lloyd worked together at the Shepperton Studios. The odd ones out were the Clarkes. He was a typical banker who worked at Hambros and went native every weekend. All in all we were a very happy community.
One day I called into the BBC studios when Dad was recording a programme and I ran into Johnny Johnston who had done well for himself master-minding the singing groups who provided the musical backing to radio comedies – he ran the Keynotes for Take it from Here, the Beaux and the Belles for Ray’s a Laugh and the Soupstains for Ignorance is Bliss. They were more or less the same singers, Johnny just changed the name for each show – he sang in the group, composed some of the music, arranged the rest and acted as manager. He was a multi-talented musician who, like my father, had come up the hard way, so they were soulmates.
Johnny had founded a company with a woman called Micky Michaels. It was called The Michael Reine Music Company, a combination of the surname of Micky Michaels and the maiden name of Nona, Johnny’s wife. Apparently, Micky Michaels wanted out, and Johnny asked me whether I would be interested in buying her share. I talked to my father and he lent me the money, which was fifteen hundred pounds. So I gave in my notice at Chappell’s and went off to make my fortune at Michael Reine’s.
The first project I was involved in was a song based on the old Irish folk ballad called The Bard of Armagh’, whose traditional tune had also been used for a couple of Western songs, ‘Streets of Laredo’ and ‘The Dying Cowboy’. Johnny Johnston adapted the tune, Tommy Connor wrote lyrics for it and they created a hit called ‘The Homing Waltz’. Because the original tune was out of copyright, we were able to register our song and as a bonus got a percentage when any of the other versions were played. Johnny took the song along to Vera Lynn who had just enjoyed a huge success with ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart’. She sang it, Decca recorded it and the very first effort of Michael Reine reached the top of the pops.
Vera also recorded our next big hit, which was called ‘Forget Me Not’. This time, Johnny had written it with Bunny Lewis who was a successful agent. But on the way to the studio they still hadn’t managed to put lyrics to the middle four bars of the song. In a slightly inebriated state I burst out into poetry and suggested the six words: ‘Parting brings sorrow; hope for tomorrow’. ‘That’s it!’ they cried. It didn’t win me an entry in the Oxford Book of Poetry but I ended up securing for myself the royalty on a third of the song, which proved to be a nice little earner.
We published ‘Forget Me Not’ in the run-up to Christmas and put in a lot of graft publicising it. One morning I read in the newspaper that the children in a spina bifida ward at Carshalton Hospital intended to sing it on Christmas Day in a programme presented by Wilfred Pickles who was a big radio star at the time. I showed the article to Johnny Johnston and we agreed that we’ve have to spend a fortune entertaining any singer we were trying to persuade to plug it, hence we ought to offer the same amount in kind to the children in hospital. We set off for Carshalton loaded down with toys, sweets and books.
When we arrived, the ward sister was fulsome in her gratitude. She explained that the children were from very poor homes and would probably be in hospital for a very long time. Johnny noticed a piano near the ward and was soon belting out popular songs, including, of course, ‘Forget Me Not’. All the children joined in except for one little girl who was lying on a kind of board to keep her spine straight. She just looked on wistfully, and the sister told us that she never spoke; she had been virtually abandoned by her parents. After we’d done our round of the wards, we went up to the little girl and told her we’d be back again after Christmas and we’d expect her to join in the singing. We duly went back and she did join in. The presents were piled up round the Christmas tree and I was glad I wasn’t there to see them opened – I’d have cried my eyes out.
At Christmas, the BBC often asked the old man to present a week of Housewives’ Choice, the enormously popular record programme on what in those days was the Light Programme. He passed on to me the job of picking the records and writing his script in return for my being able to keep the fee as a Christmas present.
On one occasion, I included a Sophie Tucker record in the show and with eight million other listeners heard him announce, ‘And now for all Sophie Fucker tans …’ ‘Do you think anyone noticed?’ he asked me anxiously after the transmission. Dad was no mumbler, he spoke always at a near shout. ‘Naw,’ I said, ‘I only just caught it and I was listening very carefully.’ The listeners obviously realised it was a slip of the tongue and didn’t hold it against him.
When he was invited to appear as a guest on Roy Plomley’s Desert Island Discs, Dad asked me to sort out the records he should choose. When I showed him the list he was indignant. He’d assumed all eight would feature the Billy Cotton Band. He obviously had never listened to the programme.
Johnny and I imported a novelty song from America called ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ which brought me for the first time into contact with a lovely girl, Alma Cogan, who was to remain a firm friend of mine for the rest of her tragically short life. She recorded three of our songs – ‘Bell Bottom Blues’, ‘I Can’t Tell a Waltz from a Tango’ and ‘Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo’ – all of which did very well at the sales counter. One day I met Alma in the street and invited her up for a cup of tea with Johnny and myself in our office, which was a pretty tatty back room in Denmark Street. I asked our factotum, Ronnie, to go out and get some tea. Meanwhile, Alma looked round the office and somewhat sniffily commented on the state of our sofa. I pointed out that it was actually very useful and doubled as a put-you-up bed, which I demonstrated by pulling it apart – whereupon a rat the size of a small cat jumped out and vanished into the back room. All three of us fought to be the first to get up on the desk. We were all standing on the desk when Ronnie came back. He looked up at us and said, ‘I didn’t realise you wanted high tea.’ We moved out of the office very soon after that and got better premises on Denmark Street.
Our next stroke of luck had to do with a television series called Friends and Neighbours. Its theme tune was written by an excellent musician called Malcolm Lockyer. He’d been under contract to one of our competitors, David Platt of Southern Music, whose reaction to the song was, ‘Don’t bring me this sort of rubbish. Write me something decent.’ Upset, Malcolm withdrew the song and offered it to us. It was perfect for The Billy Cotton Band Show, and shot into the Top Ten. We hit on a novel idea to plug it. There was a busking group called The Happy Wanderers who used to perform in Oxford Street, so we paid them a fiver to march up and down Denmark Street playing ‘Friends and Neighbours’. It drove the other publishers crazy, though our visiting celebrities thought it a hoot. This wheeze got the Happy Wanderers an appearance on television, and it also got one of their number into plenty of trouble when his wife saw him on the box. When he went back home, she threw his supper at him: she’d never told the neighbours he was a busker; they thought he had a job in the city.
As well as my song-plugging, I had a sideline as a journalist writing a gossip column, ‘The Alley Cat’, for the New Musical Express. I enjoyed being the Nigel Dempster of Denmark Street and it confirmed my opinion that nearly everyone loves to see his or her name in print even if the story isn’t particularly complimentary, just so long as the name isn’t misspelled. My journalism helped our business along because a steady flow of performers came into the office with tidbits of gossip about show business in general and themselves in particular, and this mine of information produced all kinds of good business contacts.
One afternoon I took my weekly copy round to the New Musical Express offices and the editor asked me if I’d like to buy the paper. I thought he was being funny, but apparently the proprietor felt he was getting too old for all the worry of running a newspaper and he wanted to sell up. At the time our business, Michael Reine, was flourishing and quite cash-rich, so the more I thought about the idea of being a newspaper proprietor the better I liked it. At the asking price the NME was undoubtedly a bargain and its circulation was rising to the point where it was becoming a threat to the Melody Maker, the leading paper of the business. There was one catch. Another potential buyer was coming round to see the editor at seven o’clock that evening and he had instructions to do a deal with whoever came up with the asking price first.
When I got back, bursting to tell Johnny we were onto a fortune, he was out of the office and despite all my frantic efforts I couldn’t contact him. At eight o’clock that evening the NME editor phoned me at home to tell me that Maurice Kinn, agent of Joe Loss and Cyril Stapleton, two of the leading band-leaders in the country, had made an offer and he was now the new proprietor of the paper. I was quite sad. What made it worse was that Johnny chewed me off for not assuming he would have gone along with my decision. And to add insult to injury Kinn sacked me and took over my column himself. I would probably have done the same thing if I were him, so we remained friends. He went on to make the paper an extremely valuable property and became a very wealthy man when he eventually sold out.
During this period, political argument had been raging about whether or not there should be a rival television channel funded by advertising to break BBC TV’s monopoly, and eventually the legislation was put in place to set up the commercial companies. This prospect sparked off a frenzy of activity in advertising agencies. They realised they’d need musical jingles to punctuate their commercials, so they began to look closely at the BBC’s radio programmes and were impressed by their catchy theme tunes, the best of which had invariably been composed by Johnny Johnston. Soon a procession of bowler-hatted, grey-suited advertising executives were beating a path to our door. Johnny knew exactly what was required. To order, he could hammer out on the piano a catchy piece, both music and words; then he’d arrange it for one of his groups, sing the lyric himself and record it in his own studio. He made a lot of money, and deservedly so, because he had a genius for this highly specialised form of music and rhyme.
Nona, Johnny’s wife, had a good head for business and was running the office very efficiently, and Johnny himself was on a creative roll as TV commercials took up more and more of his time. It was clear to me that the sheet-music industry was sinking into irreversible decline, and there wasn’t much place for me in the business – though Johnny never even hinted that I was becoming virtually a passenger. I began to look around, and the larger than life figure of my dad again loomed into view. By now, independent television had been established and Lew Grade, who ran ATV, one of the biggest companies, contracted Dad to do half a dozen variety shows. Though popular, they lacked a distinctive format and so presented Dad with a problem. He couldn’t afford to use material people were paying good money to see in the live theatre, and a radio show didn’t usually adapt well to a visual medium. Hence, he wasn’t a very happy man.
Dad shared his worries with me and I suggested to him that though the ITV shows didn’t satisfy his high standards, the independent companies were trouncing the BBC in the ratings, which must be worrying the corporation no end – they might welcome an approach from him. I encouraged him to go and see Ronnie Waldman, who was the BBC’s Head of Entertainment, to talk about a combined radio-television deal. In April 1955, Ronnie took Dad out for a meal and was most enthusiastic about the whole idea until they got down to talking about money. Quite simply, the BBC did not pay realistic fees. Although The Billy Cotton Band Show on radio gave my father priceless publicity, financially he was actually out of pocket because he only got the statutory fee for a half hour’s broadcast, out of which he had to pay the wages of eighteen musicians.
The BBC’s founder, Lord Reith, saw the BBC as a public service corporation for whom it is a privilege to work; vulgar questions of monetary reward ought to be of no consequence. Ronnie asked Dad outright how much he wanted. Without much hope that a deal was possible, Dad wrote down a figure on a paper napkin, folded it in two and handed it to Ronnie, asking him not to open it until he got back to his office in case it spoiled his lunch. Ronnie couldn’t resist opening it on the spot and immediately agreed to meet Dad’s price, though, as he told me afterwards, he had no idea how he could persuade the BBC to pay such a figure for one television act. Most of the BBC’s top managers were still bogged down in the radio era. The show-business mentality, which ITV adopted from the beginning, had not yet permeated the corridors of Broadcasting House.
Somehow Ronnie managed to persuade the BBC to meet Dad’s figure, pointing out to his bosses that quite apart from Billy Cotton’s star quality and drawing power, he would become a reliable fixed point in the schedules. While most big stars tended to get bored, develop itchy feet and move on, the Billy Cotton Band constituted a built-in stabiliser – BBC work paid the band’s wages bill for a significant part of the year, and that guaranteed Dad’s loyalty to the corporation. So Dad signed up and became a BBC man for the rest of his life, simply on the strength of a figure scrawled in ink on a crumpled paper napkin which he and Ronnie accepted as a binding contract. It specified a three-year contract and ran for twelve.
If money was one problem Ronnie had to solve, the other was the creation of a distinctive production style with which Dad would be happy. Here Ronnie knew exactly what he wanted to do. In his department, there was a young producer called Brian Tesler who had a most unusual pedigree, having arrived in the television service by way of a first-class honours degree at Oxford. ‘Trust me,’ Ronnie said. ‘He’s a protégé of mine and I don’t get paid to make mistakes.’ He went on to point out that television was a much more complicated medium than radio, one which used expensive equipment and large production teams. He believed producers should be highly organised and possess brain power as well as creative flair. ‘And Brian’s got it all,’ he added. Well, Dad went through the motions of huffing and puffing at all this highfalutin’ Oxford stuff, but one good professional always recognises another and Brian soon won him over with a combination of genuine charm and great efficiency. Little wonder Brian ended up as Managing Director of London Weekend Television. After working with Dad, the rest of his television career must have been a doddle.
Brian recalls going to introduce himself to the old man who was working in Manchester, and hanging about waiting for the show to end. He and Dad went off for a late meal, during which Brian explained his ideas for the television series. As they parted, Dad patted him on the back and said, ‘Sleep well, son. Don’t worry. I’m much too good for you to be able to bugger up.’ When Dad pitched up in the studio to meet Brian for a first rehearsal, he was confronted by a line of dancing girls called the Silhouettes. He was appalled. The main attraction of every Cotton Show was Dad prancing around on the stage, but professional dancing was different. ‘I’m no Anton Dolin,’ he snarled, referring to one of the leading male ballet dancers of the time. ‘I can’t dance, and I’m much too old to learn now.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Brian cheerfully. ‘You are going to like these girls so much the urge to join in with them will be irresistible.’ And it was, though only after Dad went to the studio week after week and practised with the head girl and the choreographer, who commented that playing football and moving around a boxing ring must have given Dad a natural sense of balance. Eventually, he was to cherish a report in the Dancing Times which said, ‘It takes a band-leader of sixty to show the British dancing public what a pas de deux should be.’
Dad’s career might have been flourishing, but on the domestic front there was pain and strife. I don’t know whether it was because my brother and I had both got married and set up our own homes or that Dad was going through some sort of male menopause, but he drifted into an affair with Doreen Stephens, the female vocalist in his band. He was quite open about it – indeed, he flaunted it, almost as though a relationship with a much younger woman was an affirmation of his virility. At first, my mother ignored what was going on, but it all became so embarrassing that she could stand it no longer. She moved permanently into the Sandbanks house and Dad bought a flat in London. All his friends tried to warn him that he was making a fool of himself, but the more people tried to dissuade him, the more stubborn he became and the whole thing reached the proportions of a public scandal. It was sordid beyond belief – at one point, Dad and a very close friend demeaned themselves by vying for Doreen’s affections. To those of us who cared for him, the spectacle of two middle-aged men trying to out-macho each other in the pursuit of a young woman was utterly gruesome.
My mother behaved with great dignity throughout the whole business, which lasted for about four years. We none of us knew what was going to happen; Dad could be mulish in his single-mindedness. The extraordinary thing was that though he was a national figure, the press did not expose this affair; there was none of that intrusiveness into public personalities’ private lives masquerading as investigative journalism to which we’ve since become accustomed.
All this took its toll on Dad’s health. He was by now a man in his mid-fifties, and having to behave with the ardour of an ageing Lothario as well as working seven days a week put intolerable pressure on his system. He would work all week in some theatre or other, dash down to London for his weekly radio show and then travel to another town for the start of the following week’s engagements. I think that deep down he hated himself for the way he was behaving towards my mother; he loved her deeply but couldn’t resist the flattery implied by the attentions of a younger woman. Eventually, in 1955, he performed one time too many, did a show, took his bow, came off stage and collapsed. He was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack; in fact, he’d had a nervous breakdown. The doctors insisted that he needed three months’ complete rest. We were relieved his condition was not more serious but the problem was what would happen to his band. Dad cared for them and worried about them. In fact, my cousin Laurie, a member of the band, took over as temporary leader so they were able to meet their immediate touring engagements.
The Sunday broadcast was a different matter. I phoned Jim Davidson at the BBC to discuss the crisis. To my astonishment he said, ‘Why don’t you do the broadcast? In fact, do the lot. There are only three left before the summer break.’ When I recovered my equilibrium, I realised his proposal made sense. 1 often went to the broadcasts and indeed contributed to the scripts. I knew the band, they knew me, and I could rely on them absolutely to see me through. And this solution would put my father’s mind at rest. He had been worrying about his radio show and loathed the prospect of the BBC’s own house band taking over the slot. There was also the fact that I would be no threat to him. He behaved towards the band like a benevolent headmaster and he would see me not as a successor but as just the head prefect filling in while the beak was away.
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 (#ulink_65cc70fb-f5b1-5b52-a796-b6182d5e4497)
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.
