A Write Carry On: The Untold Story Of A Man In The Shadows - Author: Mike Cobley - Publisher: Wholepoint Publications (wholepoint.co.uk) - 18th June 2012 - The story of Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell, one of the great unsung heroes of British comedy writing (Carry On films, Up Pompeii! and The Crazy Gang).
I remember him well. Those whisky tones and with a smile to illuminate even the darkest room.
Rolling summer green. Shades of the boy and a glimpse into the soul of a loving man.
Where I can escape to. Slip into his stream and journey beyond everyday demands.
Where I can hear his laughter. Of his presence so engaging so omnipresent and serene.
There he is still out walking. Over the hills and on through valleys. A spirit born to guide. A feature carved into chalk and a memory to survive.
Rolling summer green. Colours of the joy and a soul enlightened by a man in the shadows who left an indelible mark.
A place I can escape too. Slip into his stream and journey beyond everyday demands. Where I can hear his laughter. Of his presence so engaging so omnipresent and serene.
Supertramp may not be the name that trips off of the tongue
when discussing the Carry Ons, but back in 1975 I was forced to flee a somewhat
numbers depleted cast and crew get together to celebrate my fourteenth birthday
at Brighton Dome in the company of that very band.
As a present from my brother Martyn, I had been invited to
join his very own 'crew’, and head in to the centre of Brighton
to catch the band Supertramp, who had just released their fourth album,
'Crisis? What Crisis?'
Among my fellow group of gig-goers there was much talk of
poppers (alkyl nitrites), of which I happily concluded would mean end of
evening balloons. I was to be both confused and disappointed by naivety!
Rewind back to lunchtime and I was sat in the kitchen of
ex-Carry On scriptwriter Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell's house, quietly observing the
coming, goings and conversations of the few Carry Oners who had accepted the
invitation to Tolly's farewell shindig in honour of his uprooting from his
beloved secluded bolt hole in the picturesque village of Fulking, to the rather
more urban soundtrack of the bustling coastal town of Worthing.
The move had been necessitated after Tolly's breakdown
following scripting twenty-two of the highly successful and lucrative Carry On
films.
Sadly, it was glaringly obvious from the turn out of cast
and crew that the famous Carry On brotherhood counted for little once talent
had flown the nest.
But Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, Jim Dale and producer
Peter Rogers were the 'a-listers' who mingled at Tolly’s along with a
sprinkling of those who worked behind the Carry On scenes.
Conversation was unusually muted, and the expected ribbing
and backbiting was absent. All-in-all, and not surprisingly due to the
circumstances, it was a party that had the air of a wake.
Meanwhile, I was clock watching. I still had to get out of
Fulking and back to Brighton by 7pm to meet my
brother and his cast of merry misfits.
My attendance at my first ever gig was imminent, and I was
almost breathless with anticipation. Supertramp meant nothing to me. I hadn't
heard their music and didn't even know they were American and at the peak of
their prog/pop powers.
Upon entering the Dome I tried to act in a nonplussed and
laid-back manner. Most of the longhairs milling around the venue were sporting
the band's current album title, 'Crisis? What Crisis?' on their t-shirts.
The memory of the gig itself is a
bit of a blur. I remember being highly impressed by both the personality and
musicianship of John Helliwell (woodwinds, keyboards, backing vocals), as well
as the swearing heavily featured on the band's closing number, 'Bloody Well
Right'.
Once back outside and engulfed by the town's ice cold air, I
discovered poppers had nothing to do with balloons! But I went home happy and a
few years wiser to the world.
The next morning my brother presented me with a second
present, a copy of Supertramp's break through third album 'Crime of the
Century'.
For me, much like for those involved in the ongoing Carry On
franchise, the times they were a changin'.
It was a scene blessed. The rolling South Downs covered
in crisp late autumnal early morning dew, while - from my vantage point in the
front room of the then Carry On scriptwriter, Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell’s house -
I was being willingly given a poetic crash course in all things Mother Nature.
Tolly’s two Golden Retrievers were getting restless. All the
talk of the great outdoors was sending them over the edge.
The four of us were
soon stepping out and crossing the few feet from Tolly’s gravel driveway and on
to the damp green blades of the Downs.
Talk on that half-term Wednesday morning soon turned to the
somewhat surreal happenings of the previous Sunday. An afternoon dominated by
grand arrivals and off-centre lessons in the complexities of adult gatherings.
The occasion had been one of the sporadic social get
togethers of Carry On cast and crew. A time when the post midday hours were
orchestrated by Kenneth Williams, and played out to a soundtrack of laughter
and one-upmanship.
Tolly had been intrigued to what I had made of the event.
He’d noted that Hattie Jacques had spent a good hour with me .. the two of us
engaged in deep conversation.
I explained that she had raised the somewhat
thorny topic of weight gain .. a ‘condition’ that had hung heavy on both our
lives.
Hattie was sweet and understanding. I was barely in my teens
and she geared the conversation towards my adolescent body image concerns.
Initially I was embarrassed that the topic had been raised. But Hattie’s almost
sisterly approach instilled in me a new found confidence.
Then there was Sid, the old rascal. Sid James, bless him. A
man very much of his time. Flirty-yet-a-gentleman. Trustworthy, though would
bet your granny if he thought the old nag would come home first.
At the party I’d also been accosted by Kenneth Williams.
Don’t think he liked the fact I’d been happily sitting quietly with his fellow
Carry On team.
Kenneth very much saw himself as the numero uno. So I was
subjected to his full repertoire of peacock-like strutting. Much laughter was
had!
Barbara Windsor had arrived well after the party had peaked. Kenneth made sure he was next to her, or there abouts, for the remainder of the afternoon.
I noted that while he was talking to Barbara his eyes were actually locked into an intense gaze with Sid's. It would be a few years before I knew what that was all about!
Tolly loved to hear these tales. He found the inner workings of the Carry On cast a great inspiration for his writing.
As lunchtime approached we dropped down from the hills and took lunch at his local, The Shepherd and Dog. Tolly's attention was soon lost to the throng. I think they loved him just about as much as I did!
Feedback during the four months since the publication of
A Write Carry On has been both enlightening and informative.
Sally Majors, from
'up Gloucestershire way', emailed to say as a teenager in the early 1970s whilst
visiting her grandparents in East Sussex, they had all been excited to come
across a 'somewhat jovial Sid James and Barbara Windsor' sat in the quiet
alcove of an Alfriston pub.
Sally and her grandfather
approached the couple when they were at the bar ordering more ‘liveners’. Both
were friendly, and Sally remembers Barbara taking a keen interest in her
somewhat ‘off-the-wall teenage attire’.
Considering, at the time, that the Carry On couple were having an unpublicised affair, Sally is, in hindsight,
amazed at how open and forthcoming the duo were.
Another interesting insight, from a
fellowA Write Carry On reader, arrived via a private message on my Facebook
page.
Dan Carter, a self-styled ‘British
comedy film buff’ clearly remembers tracking down Carry On scriptwriter, Talbot‘Tolly’ Rothwell, to the Shepherd and Dog, his local pub in Fulking.
A few whiskeys later and talk
turned to the ins and outs of writing to deadline and the process that saw the scriptwriting
project brought to completion.
Tolly told Dan that Carry On
producer Peter Rogers, once a scriptwriter himself, was both meticulous and
demanding when it came to perusing the various script drafts.
They would return to Tolly with
red crossings and markings as well as being heavily annotated.
There would be a
number of these exchanges, and Tolly felt it was his willingness to take on
board criticism (justified or not) and his quick turn around in ideas
and drafts that kept him onboard the Carry On team for twenty-two of the series thirty-one
films.
Lastly, in this blog entry, the last
hurrah goes to Annie Crocket, now based in Northern France, but during the
early 1960s and late 1970s she was a resident of Eastbourne, in East Sussex.
Annie worked as an extra on many
projects shot at Pinewood Studios. She had muted background scenes in a number
of Carry On films, and got to know a few of the personalities behind their on
screen characters.
Having read A Write Carry On Annie
dropped me a long email. Firstly she congratulated me on bringing out the true
essence of the likes of Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques
and Charles Hawtrey.
It was the latter she chatted to
the most. Annie said she found Hawtrey a loner who, when sober, was friendly
and always welcoming of a quiet chat. She said he kept himself pretty much to
himself, and that initially once he began drinking heavily he found it easier
to be a part of such a close nit group of actors.
She also bonded with Kenneth Williams. Always 'on' and never predictable. A true Carry On trait if ever there was one!
One of the chapters in A Write Carry On details the severe writer’s block suffered by Carry On
scriptwriter, Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell.The blight of many-a-writer, the
condition is primarily the inability to produce new work. Though, in Tolly’s
case, it became the inability to recognise the keyboard layout on his
typewriter.
When asked about the most
frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingwaysaid,
"A blank sheet of paper."
And none other than the
Master of Terror himself, Stephen King, said that the "scariest moment is
always just before you start writing. After that, things can only get
better."
An oft practised ‘cure’ to
‘the block’ is to try and take oneself out of the normal working routine.
In the case of Bats For
Lashes singer, Natasha Khan, she ‘hit the wall’ when it came time to write what
would become her forthcoming release, The Haunted Man.
"Stress! Stress! Oh God,
oh God, oh God!" she said, "I was getting very stuck and having
writer's block and getting panicked and really upset.
“I was honestly ready not to
do music any more because I thought, 'That's it, I'm just going to go off and
have a baby. I don't want to do this any more.' I'd lost my way."
Khan recently reported that as
her block worsened, she decided to step away from music.
It was suggested by a friend
that she could do unpaid work at Charleston (Vanessa Bell's artist studio, the
idyllic country bolthole for the Bloomsbury Group in East Sussex.), helping out
the gardener, Mark, and his infirm whippet.
"I was quite sad at the
time and quite lonely," she recalls. "I was stuck in my flat in Brighton and I was desperate for a garden.
“It felt like going back to
my mum's for a cup of tea. My parents don't live in the UK any more, so
it felt a bit like a little family."
When Khan went back to her
notebook, The Haunted Man started to take shape. It would be an album about England, a love letter to Hertfordshire where
she grew up and Sussex
where she now lived.
JK Rowling reported at the
time of writing Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets that “I really did have writer's block. Briefly, I think. It
wasn't a very serious case, it was only about five weeks. And compared to some
people, what's five weeks?
“Goblet of Fire, I was very
unhappy towards the end of writing Goblet, and at the point where I realised I
was fantasising that I would break an arm and therefore not be able to... I
really mean this.
“I mean I was just a little
way away from actually thinking "How can I break my arm so I can tell my
publishers that I can't physically do it?" and then that would give me
more time.
“Because I committed to a
totally unrealistic deadline. And I made the deadline. But I really did make it
by working round the clock really. I was so unhappy.” Supposed cures vary, but author
Julia Cameron advocates the practice of morning pages as a remedy to writer's
block. Morning pages are three handwritten pages of free writing where the
purpose is to write without the intention of using the writing for anything. It
is a practice that can bring your thoughts to the surface and allow you to
enter a more creative zone. All the above was written during my current bout of writer's block. At least I'm in good company!
A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications) is not the
whole story, it just marks the halfway point in my collection of reminisces
about growing up with the Carry Ons.
The final part of the tale, Intimate Insights, is currently
at the first draft stage and will be available for download (via Amazon/Kob/iTunes)
before the year's end.
Intimate Insights will focus on my meetings with many
of the regular Carry On cast. The majority of those off screen stumble-upons
took place in Fulking (Sussex),
at the home of 'Tolly' Rothwell.
A few of them, like my chance meeting with Julian Clary (Carry On Columbus), are worthy of their inclusion in Intimate Insights.
Julian was fine company; a thoughtful, engaging and open interviewee – despite
being caught somewhat off guard.
As for the featured Carry On regulars (Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims and Jim Dale), separately they were great
company. Together, in certain combinations, they could be a nightmare. I had
the (mis)-fortune to witness both! Intimate Insights will also
feature the illustrations of Mandy Hills. Mandy drew the cover for A Write
Carry On, and has teamed-up with me in the past where she has supplied illustrations for
poetry anthologies and magazines .. as well as drawing a mean Virginia Woolf!
The forthcoming
free mini-ebook 'Intimate Insights' will bring to a close the final chapter on
my unique tale of growing up with the Carry Ons. In A Write Carry On
(Wholepoint Publications) I offered a glimpse into the life and times of the longtime
series scriptwriter, Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell.
'Intimate
Insights' delves a little deeper into the household names who were so universally
loved and respected; those icons of British comedy who included Sid James,
Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor, Frankie
Howerd and Jim Dale.
Some of
the mini-ebook’s insights have featured on this blog, others will be unique and
previously unpublished.
‘Intimate
Insights’ will be free to download from Scribd and this blog from 20th
October. Check back regularly for updates.
A little bit of politics in a mainstream comedy film can stem the flow of cash at the Box Office. Take ‘Carry On At Your Convenience’; the twenty-second film in the series.
With ‘Convenience’ a lot of audience goodwill went out the window. In a time of bitter industrial disputes, scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell explored the political themes of the trade union movement.
The script had a noticeable right-wing slant; both mocking and sending-up the unions of the day. In doing so, Tolly alienated the traditional working-class audience of the series.
It was originally conceived with the overtly communist title of 'Carry On Comrade' in reflection of the negative treatment of the union and union bosses.
The film was re-titled 'Carry On Working'. That title was ultimately retained in the film’s closing sequence, a dialogue scene that didn’t appear in Tolly's final draft of the script.
To add even further confusion, the word ‘convenience’ wasn’t used for lavatories in America or Australia, so the film was re-labelled 'Carry On Round The Bend' for release in those countries.
The plot centred on a bolshie union representative Vic Spanner, played by Kenneth Cope, who continually stirs up trouble in the works, to the irritation of his co-workers and management.
He calls a strike for almost any minor incident – or because he wants time off to attend a local football match.
Sid Plummer (Sid James) is the factory foreman bridging the gap between workers and management, shrewdly keeping the place going amid the unrest.
'Carry On At Your Convenience' took a full five-years to cover its full production costs.
Sidney ‘Sid’ James sat in his trailer sipping on a wisky and glancing absent mindedly at the new script he’d found awaiting him in a sealed brown envelope.
Sid had arrived mid-afternoon, having stopped off on the way for quick livener and a flutter on the Gee-Gees.
To do a full read through was too much like hard work, he decided. So he gave the script the quick once over before doing much the same to a passing Barbara Windsor. He watched her run to catch Kenneth Williams and wondered to himself what a nice girl like her was doing with a prat like him?
Sid was cold and wrapped himself in a blanket just as a light knock at the door sounded. He ignored it, but soon there came another, and then another. ‘Come in, why don’t you.’
The door opened and hesitantly a young blonde eased her way in, dusted herself down and turned to face Sid. ‘Kathy, Evening Standard, Mr Williams said it would be ok to talk to you.’
‘Did he now? The little fucker,’ smiled Sid. He patted the space next to him and Kathy nervously approached and brushed her skirt flat as she sat down.
‘Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Really, what I’m after is a few words on how you think the Carry On films have changed since Mr Hudis left and Mr Rothwell took over?’
‘Well, that’s different at least,’ cackled Sid. ‘Fancy a drink?’
You could say Sid was more than an average red blooded male. He worshipped the female form, and along with that came a deep respect for the love and support they could give him.
His much publicised affair with Barbara Windsor went beyond the simple attraction of an older man for a younger female. As Windsor has said on many occasions, what for her was a bit of a fling, was for him much more.
To find out what transpired when ‘Kathy, from the Evening Standard’, entered Sid James’ life .. read the bestselling ebook ..
Barbara ‘Babs’ Windsor adored a bit of Motown and was more
than a little partial to the sounds that emanated from the Stax label.
But thanks to fellow Carry Oners Sid James and Peter Butterworth, Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell’s turntable spun to the antiquated dreariness
of the crooners (Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Bing Crosby).
As the Carry On scriptwriter, Tolly wasn’t high on the
pecking order when it came to selecting the aural ambience of his abode, especially
on those rare weekends when the stars came out and illuminated the sleepy
little Sussex village of Fulking.
But Babs was no shrinking violet, and often once the whisky
and wine was in full flow, Tolly’s wall mounted speakers would throb to the wah-wah
guitars and hard driving beat of The Temptations ‘Cloud Nine’. That’s when
things got interesting .. especially if Kenneth Williams was in residence!
At first Kenneth would moan and bemoan the sudden
competition for the room’s attention. He may have told his anecdotes many times
over, but there was always an audience hanging on his every word.
It wouldn’t be long before young Ken would note Sid James’
disdain at the ongoing racket, and that’s when, without a second thought,
Kenneth would jump raft and come down on the side of the good ship, Windsor.
‘Turn it up, Barb’, he would scream. ‘Come on everyone, are
we the only ones ‘ere with a pulse?’ Babs would love it, I loved it .. and
Tolly would just give that ‘wink’ of his and retire graciously to the rear
garden.
The battle had been won. Soon, the likes of Marvin Gaye, The
Isley Brothers, Martha and the Vandellas, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Eddie
Floyd and Wilson Pickett would drive Sid and his compatriots out of both the
house and the party spirit. Kenneth may have been left with a much diminished audience, but it was an audience all the same!
Of course the Carry On film franchise didn't come to an end
when its long-term scriptwriter Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell’s contract came to an
end with ‘Dick’, in 1974.
After stuttering on for another four films, there would be a
break of some fourteen years until what, so far, has become the series finale,
‘Columbus’.
The ‘big four’ from the past to join the project were Jim
Dale, Bernard Cribbins, Leslie Phillips and June Whitfield.
The reviews were as disappointing as the film itself, but
what of the thoughts of the cast? The closest I came to an answer was having the
opportunity to quiz Julian Clary.
The unplanned meeting was a few years back at the Sussex
Arts Club, a private members establishment in Brighton.
At the time Julian was looking to retire to the country and
write books. He'd had enough of the endless touring and showbiz glitz.
It was a sedentary lifestyle he was to soon to tire of, and
it wasn't long - five years to be precise - before his next tour.
At the time of 'Columbus,'
Julian told me, he would delight in 'shocking people'. That some people
'deserved to be shocked.' And ‘wasn't upsetting the apple cart what the Carry
Ons were all about anyway?'
Julian believed, quite rightly, that his suggestive and
middle-England bothering style of humour was very much of the Tolly Rothwell
genre. Julian adored the double entendres packed Tolly scripts.
He also loved Tolly’s many great comedy moments that brought
the very best out of Frankie Howerd, inUp Pompeii.
And it was with Frankie that he seemingly identified the
most. Julian admitted to the same self-doubts and anxieties, as well as the
promiscuous early years as a blossoming gay man.
So when the call came with an offer of a part of in
‘Columbus’ the fact that Frankie was to be on board was a big plus point. Sadly
the great man passed away just two days before filming got underway.
Julian wouldn’t be drawn on the negative sides of the
experience, just that it had been an honour to be asked and subsequently
involved.
If he’d been born twenty years earlier, no-doubt Julian
would have stood side-by-side with Frankie, Sid James, Kenneth Williams et al.
As it was, the true Carry On spirit was pensioned off at the same time Tolly
called it a day.
The South Downs has a
life all of its own. Running from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to
Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east; and I have walked its
hundred-plus miles on more than one occasion.
Whatever time of the year you set off along its mainly
chalk encrusted paths it’s best to remember that the seasons are never to be trusted.
Sometimes it's as though they conspire to lay-in-wait
for the passing traveler, before unleashing their armory upon their unsuspecting
gargoyle-wearing prey as they innocently wander the nooks and crannies of the supposed
sleeping giant.
Twice the elements have forced me from the hills and
down into the sparsely populated and welcoming valleys.
On both occasions I found myself in Fulking, the home
of Carry On scriptwriter, Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell. And on the second occasion
it was he who gave me refuge.
I turned up at his door wet, tired, hungry and
unannounced. He cured me on all of the first three accounts. At the time Tolly was working on his
final Carry On script, ‘Dick’, and he wasn’t in the best of physical or mental
health.
His study door was open and screwed up pieces of paper
were littered across its floor. I was, for that night, to be his sounding
board.
Tolly felt that it wasn’t just him who was feeling his
age. The Carry On series itself was, with ‘Dick’, about to ring in some
unwanted changes.
For a start it was to be the last appearances of Sid James (after 19 entries in the series) and Hattie Jacques (after 14 entries).
Then, of course, the film also brought down the
curtain on Tolly’s eleven year reign as scriptwriter for the Carry Ons.
Plus, it was also to be Barbara Windsor's final acting
role in a Carry On film. The times they were a changing!
Tolly could read the changes of the South Downs weather much better than I could, and early the next morning
I was on my way.
I left a troubled, but much loved, man alone with his demons
and failing health. The Carry Ons were in terminal decline also.
To read more on Sid James, Barbara Windsor and the rest of the Carry On cast and crew .. buy a copy of A Write Carry On .. JustCLICK HERE
