This Is Your Life: Coming Out From Behind The Sofa With Kenneth Williams

This Is Your Life was an institution. Only the crème de la crème of the entertainment business were to be sprung with the 'big red book' (that included, for a while, non-celebrities who had done extraordinary things in their lives) from the long running TV programme’s host, Eamonn Andrews.

Early in his broadcasting career Andrews was famous for coming up with off-the-cuff linkings which did not work – such as 'speaking of cheese sandwiches, have you come far?'  


Over the course of a short thirty-minutes that week’s ‘victim’ would be presented with a mini-biography of their life.

For me, keeping the secret was the biggest deal. During late December 1970 Carry On scriptwriter Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell was up for the honour, and it was my dad’s job to make sure his nearest and dearest friends were aware of the impending recording.

The weekend before the surprise (and believe me, in those days it really was a secret) we were at Tolly’s Fulking home for an unseasonally warm get together. Of course, everyone was on egg shells as Tolly’s wife was constantly taking calls from the This Is Your Life production team.

The biggest scare was Tolly’s sudden insistence that he fancied taking part of the following week away. He couldn’t understand why his wife and daughters were so against a late Mediterranean break. 

But, as usual, the women got their way and Tolly vowed to whisk them away come Spring. So, he would be in London, at the allotted time, on the allotted day, and the 'big red book' would reveal the major achievements and events of his life.

Much to my father’s great disappointment he didn’t receive an invite to the recording. Instead we huddled around our small screened black and white television and watched what was to be Tolly’s proudest moment.

Following the airing of the programme Tolly held a thank you shindig in Fulking. It was a ‘bit of a do’ populated by many of the great and good of British Comedy, as well as the scene of my first face-to-face with the Carry On’s formidable producer, Peter Rogers.

A lovely man, as I was to discover over the years, but, to a socially-awkward youngster like myself, he emanated a presence that had me heading for the back of Tolly’s sofa!

At Tolly’s that winter’s evening, it was Kenneth Williams who was able to chop his producer down to my size. Of all the Carry On regulars who were there to raise a glass to Tolly’s success, it seemed that it was Kenneth alone who had the strength of personality to strip Rogers of his apparent air of superiority.

Kenneth would not back down on any topic raised by his employer. As Rogers spouted forth on all manner of topics, Kenneth would respond with a witty anecdote that would show he knew more about the topic than its instigator.

I gradually uncurled from the back of the sofa and was soon joining in the chorus of hilarity being raised from the battle of two such great minds. Rogers was soon crying with laughter, and Kenneth had his nose raised as he drew in the air of victory.  

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available early summer 2012


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The Great Escape: A Write Carry On At Stalag Luft III (POW Camp)

Carry On scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell had remained particularly close to one fellow prisoner of war (POW). Peter Butterworth shared his humour and outlook, together they used their ability to construct witty camp plays to the advantage of all the POWs.

While plays and sketches were performed, escape was a possibility. The uproar of laughter easily distilled the rhythmic sound of men digging tunnels.

As the day’s routine of work and punishment gave way to an evening’s lock-down, Tolly and Peter would work hard on the next camp show script.

What the men, and some of the guards, loved most were the double entendres. They missed the warmth and intimacy of female companionship, and Tolly’s ability to conjure up magically side-splitting one-liners had them quoting his scripts for weeks on end.

Slowly but surely excess earth was moved and tunnels began to appear. The men would use the opportunity of the weekend camp performances to conceal the earth in their costumes and release it slowly into piles, while the guards were focused on the crossed-dressed dames who took centre stage.

They were then able to smooth it over with their feet and no-one was any the wiser as the men trooped back to their huts.

One cold winter’s night, after many months of planning, two teams of six men were ready to make their break for freedom.

Tolly and Peter were among those to remain, their services to camp moral and future escape projects deemed too important to lose.

All twelve escapees lost their lives. Ten while on the loose, two after being captured and brought back to camp alive. They were unceremoniously tied and gagged and dispatched by firing squad. With that, the camp concerts came to end.

Upon his return to England, Tolly was airlifted to Devon and to the seclusion of a Dartmoor-based military hospital. He was weak, his wounds were infected and his spirit broken.

Within days of his return his family was at his side. A month later he was allowed home, many months on he was still haunted by the atrocities he’d witnessed.

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available early summer 2012

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Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

A Write Cricket Carry On: Afternoon Delights Best Served Off Of A Saucy Wicket!

Cover Designed & Created By Mandy Hills

Every blade of grass that cushioned my purposeful steps on the winding descent from the Devil's Dyke in Brighton to the welcoming bosom of the South Downs village of Fulking is remembered.

Its magic carpet qualities separated the urban bustle of the city from the tranquil timelessness of the all encompassing landscape dominance of the Downs.

The village's high-street ticked to a different time to the one I'd been programmed with since birth. People passed the time of day with either idle gossip or talk of coming local events.

Carry On scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell was often to be found of a weekend attending the Preston Nomads village cricket club, a place where good humour was generous and the winning was a poor second to the good hospitality.

The wives and girlfriends would prepare afternoon tea and post match refreshment, while the men toiled both on the pitch and in their deckchairs. Children ran free and unsupervised. An idyllic memory remembered with fondness.

It was a place where Tolly seemed most at home. Cream teas, cricket and time-ticking slowly. At such places Tolly’s occupation never came up in conversation. No-one’s did. The moment was celebrated, and the toil and trouble that had gotten them there was, for long afternoons, forgotten.

----

I was staying in Fulking as my parents had once again been commandeered to house sit while Tolly and his wife Scotty took to the Mediterranean beaches for a week.

But that very morning Tolly was at home with a deadline looming and a plane due to depart Gatwick mid-afternoon. This was a man in work mode; no small talk and none of his usual poetic musings on nature and life. As dawn broke he slipped into his study and soon his typewriter hit a rhythm that didn't let up till way past the due flight time.

I’d never seen such creative intensity in action. I tiptoed around the house and took breakfast in a surreal hush. How could stilted silence breed such an outpouring of universally loved slapstick humour?

I’d always imagined that the Carry On humour was bred from improvisation. I had visions of Tolly pacing his house, loudly reciting lines and bringing himself to his knees as the double entendres kicked home and he celebrated his own genius. But I didn’t expect this.

Then again, where the Carry Ons were concerned, what you saw on the screen was very different from what was going on behind the scenes!

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available early summer 2012


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Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

She Was A Very Generous Soul Was Hattie Jacques

Hattie Jacques was obsessively conscious of her size. I know this because sat on a wall with her at the front of Tolly Rothwell’s house she told me not to worry that I was overweight.

Hattie said that people always stared at her. Those around her were kind and said she was so well known as an actress that people were just indulging in a second take.

But Hattie knew better. They were alerted by the weight first and familiarity of her face second. Subsequently, her confidence was low. She didn’t want me to suffer the same anxieties. That was sweet. She was a very generous soul was Hattie Jacques.

As a Carry Oner Hattie’s often remembered as a buxom, fire-breathing matron. See, size first and great comedic acting skills second. Maybe she had a point!

In truth everyone rated Hattie except herself. The image I retain of her sat chatting to me on Tolly's wall, was a woman who would rather have been anywhere else than in that house full of people. And not just any old bunch of everyday folk, but the theatrical kind, Carry On stars a plenty; all competing, all playing a game of social musical chairs. Sadly, Hattie seemed to have fallen at the first round.

 
We sat for at least an hour. She told me how she loved the bright lights, the adrenalin that came with the shout of ‘action’. The nervous giggles from the wings, the ‘showtime’ knock on the dressing room door. Hattie loved showbiz, but thought little of herself.

It seemed, from the remembered fragments of our conversation, that she’d been happiest during her ‘hungry years’, those early lean ones, when work was scarce and praise had to be fought for.

Hattie’s formative years, when she became a regular in music hall revues, made her eyes glaze over and her face break into a broad smile. Those long since passed blissfully innocent and carefree times were but a moment in her adult life when she liked herself.

They were also the days where she fine honed her skills as a comedian. She even returned for a second bite of the cherry, when having already tasted success in radio, television and film, Hattie went back to her first company, the Players', but this time in the elevated capacity of performer, writer and director.

Before joining the Carry Ons, Hattie worked with Norman Wisdom on two of his most famous films, The Square Peg and Follow a Star.

But it was in the company of Kenneth Williams, Sid James (and later Eric Sykes) et al that she is best remembered .. not for her size, but for her exceptional talent. That would have brought a broad smile to Hattie Jacques’ face. 

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available 1st May 2012.


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Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

   

The Other Side Of Carry On Scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell

The flow of the typewriter keys had a rhythm I have never forgotten. The writer’s beat, mixed with the aroma of whiskey and leather, and all played out under the hood of the overlooking South Downs set in me a yearning to live the same way.

Carry On scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell was creating fictional lives for others, while all the time his own was close to the ideal for this quietly observing fifteen year-old.

To hear the man speak was another treat. His warm and perfectly formed vowels came from a deep place. His low tone and baritone belly laughs filled any room. And then there was the smile. Always a smile. Whatever the décor, a room was always a rustic and welcoming haven when Tolly was in residence.

One of the passions Tolly tried to press upon me was that of painting. He loved collecting artworks by local painters who captured on canvass the Downs and Sussex’s many rural delights.

As we stood looking back at his home village of Fulking, Tolly gently infused my imagination with the idea of being able to capture that scene, that moment and that singular memory and hang it on the wall forevermore.

I wasn’t won over. As a teen, the past was gone. It was the future that awaited. Scenery was of the moment, not to be captured and remembered. We were generations apart. And looking back I feel I failed him.

The other side of Tolly was the man who loved being among friends at his local pub. The Shepherd and Dog, in Fulking, had began life as a cottage. It’s beams and inglenook fireplace contributes to much of its current charm, and to Tolly it was very much a home from home.

Long before Tolly’s time local farmers had stood in the ever flowing spring that sat on the pub’s land and used the cool water to wash the sheep during the shearing season.

Nathanial Blaker, a Brighton surgeon who lived in Perching Farm wrote in ‘Sussex in Bygone Days’ in 1906: “To stand for hours up to the waist in a stream of cold water was most trying work for the men who washed the sheep and I have seem them, when the works was over, walk to the Shepherd and Dog stiff and scarcely able to move with cold.”

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available 1st May 2012.


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Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

Charles Hawtrey: The Carry On Genius With A Dark Past

Carry On regular Charles Hawtrey was a strange one. Everytime I saw him he was sat quietly in a corner of a room keeping himself very much to himself.

It certainly wasn’t the job of a timid teen to make social interaction with someone as seemingly unapproachable as Mr Hawtrey.

My dad had warned me that it was best to stay well clear. He’d barely got a word out of the man. They were less than a year apart in age, yet my dad seemed decades younger. Hawtrey, to my fourteen year-old eye, had the presence and look of a man well past his lifespan.

But he was, without question, a comedy genius. His timing, movement and mere presence in a Carry On scene were enough to raise the neck hairs. He had come to acting as early in life after appearing on a series of recordings as a boy soprano. 

Carry On scriptwriter Talbot 'Tolly' Rothwell never had a bad word to say about the latter day recluse. He once told me that Hawtrey had suffered the fate of many gay men of the day. He’d kept his sexuallity a secret and remained tied to his mother’s apron strings. He also had a tough time of it when she went on develop senile dementia.

His mother was known to horde toilet rolls, as Hawtrey was reported to have hoarded bed knobs for future profit. It was a difficult time to be gay and little is known of Hawtrey’s private life.

I was in the presence of Hawtrey a handful of times. I remember once staring inquisitively at the small man and wondering how Tolly could believe him to be so full of humour.

Once, Hawtrey caught me looking at him and smiled back. I remember feeling sad because his smile had been so full of gloom. It was almost as though the very soul of Hawtrey was trapped.

I liked him, there was a kinship and I could sense a softness. His movements were gentle and he was polite. But sad, very sad.

Charles Hawtrey passed away in 1988 and the age of 73. A strange, private and talented man. I remember him fondly.

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available 1st May 2012.


For A Free Sample CLICK HERE

Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

Talking Extramarital Affairs: Between The Sheets With Barbara Windsor

Affairs can be so destructive. But what’s a girl to do when a man wears her down? In the case of Barbara Windsor she was never going to hold out for long.

She’d already succumbed to the charms of George Best:

‘There was this vision, this absolute vision. In the Sixties he was so beautiful. Anyway, in the bar afterwards he came over to me and I said, “Look, don’t waste your time with me, darling. You’ve got all these lovely ladies after you. And he said, “Well, when do I ever get to talk to somebody like you?” Well, that did it. That was it. A magic moment. It was great, he was fabulous.’

But that wasn’t the affair we are eluding to here. Nor was Babs’ dalliance with a Bee Gee. She once had a ‘magic moment’ with Maurice Gibb:

‘I said to him, “Where would you like to go? My friend said we could go for coffee? And he said: “Look Bar, let’s get it over and done with, let’s go to bed”. Because he knew that he wasn’t giving it on stage, so we went and had a little moment. It was lovely.’

No, the affair on most people’s lips was the one between Barbara Windsor and her fellow Carry On, Sid James.

He expected they’d ‘just do it’ and that would be that. But things turned out differently.

“I cared deeply for him. I didn't at first, he was just my leading man, who liked me,” recalls Barbara.

But things got a little deep and more that just a little complicated. The pair’s union became common knowledge, not least on the Carry On set.

Kenneth Williams didn’t like it that’s for sure. The woman he adored shacking up with the man he had little time for. Not good.

Babs admits that she had five abortions, the first three before the age of 21 and the last when she was 42. She also believes that physically she’s an acquired taste:

‘I’ll tell you about men. They either really want to give me one – I’ve had them say, “Ooh, I could really give you one” – or [they say]: ‘No, you don’t do anything for me”.’

No, extramarital affairs are good for tittle-tattle but bad for the health:

‘I couldn’t have survived my depression without my current man,' admits Babs. It’s a relationship that’s lasted 26 years.

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

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