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.
The first day I reported to the new half-built Television Centre at White City in January 1956 is indelibly imprinted on my memory. A young red-haired secretary who worked for Tom Sloan, the Assistant Head of Light Entertainment, greeted me. Her name was Queenie Lipyeat, and thirty years later she retired as my personal assistant because I was by then Managing Director of BBC TV. But on this particular day I was a trainee producer.
I knew Broadcasting House, the home of BBC Radio, very well. It had long, dark corridors and people worked behind closed doors. It had the hushed atmosphere of a museum or a library; John Reith called it (in Latin of course) ‘A Temple of the Arts’. It didn’t exactly buzz with excitement. Most of the actual broadcasting came from the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street and other studios around London. The Television Centre was quite different. It was noisy and bursting with life. Everyone seemed to be in a great hurry; the place echoed with shouting and laughter, and as you walked down a corridor you had to flatten yourself against the wall as technicians pushed past you trundling heavy camera equipment or pieces of scenery.
Since the BBC had begun as a radio service, all the big corporate decisions were made at Broadcasting House by a management who had originally been by and large lukewarm about television because they thought it was too expensive an operation to be paid for by the licence fee. However, against the BBC’s bitter opposition, the government passed the legislation which produced an Independent Television system, and in no time these companies were beating the BBC for audiences in the geographical regions where they operated. This created a certain amount of concern, even panic, at Broadcasting House as those who ran the BBC saw their position as the main purveyors of broadcasting being threatened. Hence, from being viewed somewhat superciliously, television was moved much higher up the governors’ agenda.
So in the very year I joined the BBC, it was decided that someone be appointed Director of Television. Gerald Beadle had no prior television experience and made no secret of the fact that up to the day of his appointment he didn’t even own a television set. He had been controller in charge of the Western Region of BBC Radio, was fifty-five years of age, and was looking for a gentle canter down the finishing straight to retirement.
Shortly after he arrived, Beadle summoned the entire production staff of the television service to a meeting. They all fitted comfortably into the Television Theatre at Shepherd’s Bush – by the time I left, it would have taken a football ground to contain them. I was present when Beadle asked what could be done about the mounting competition from ITV, and saw the legendary Grace Wyndham Goldie rise to her feet. She was a major figure in the Talks Department, then considered the serious side of the business, so her one-line intervention had a tremendous impact. She declared, ‘The trouble with the BBC is that it is considered vulgar to be popular.’ The roar of agreement from all the staff present shook Gerald Beadle and became something of a battle cry. He got the firm impression that the staff of the television service were a feisty lot, frustrated by lack of investment and the lukewarm endorsement of BBC management at Broadcasting House. Slowly the message got through to the powers that be and a new, exciting era dawned. I was fortunate to be there when it began.
I started work on the producers’ course. There were lectures on such things as the theory of camera direction and lighting, the importance of design and the organisation required to run a producer’s office. Clips of film illustrated many of these subjects. The problem was that every time they turned the lights down, I dozed off. But I’d learned a trick or two in the army and when the lights came up again I immediately asked the first question – which disarmed the suspicions of those who hadn’t realised that my eyes were closed in deep contemplation. In spite of this foible I had the privilege of learning from dedicated and talented instructors who, being the first generation in BBC TV, had virtually invented the techniques of television production.
After the course, we were sent back to our departments for the remainder of the six months to learn the practical side of the job under the supervision of senior producers. I was attached to a young lion, Francis Essex, who had built a great reputation as a programme director. He was later to become a major figure in ATV, and when he retired he created musicals, of which Jolson was probably his most successful. His production assistant was Yvonne Littlewood, who forty years later in 1999 earned a richly deserved place in the Royal Television Society’s Hall of Fame for her work in television.
There was also a production secretary, Hermione Doutre, and the four of us shared an office the size of a normal box room. Francis was a busy producer and for much of the time I just sat there and watched, very much a spare part. I sat at a small typist’s desk in the corner of the room, and at lunchtime I often used to pop down to Tin Pan Alley to my other office where I could luxuriate at a big walnut desk in a room with a carpet, armchairs, pictures on the wall and full cocktail cabinet and ponder whether I was doing the right thing by joining television.
But before long I was given some nursery-slope programmes. Going out under the generic title of Starlight, these were fifteen minutes long and used either a pop group or a solo performer. I did one with the Ray Ellington Quartet and Marion Ryan and another with