Howerd’s manager, skipped down the steps to the cellar.
‘Spike’s just walked in.’
Simultaneously the phone rang. It was Ann. ‘He’s arrived.’
David clattered downstairs.
‘He’s back,’ he said, in a voice that was both relieved and tinged with the unspoken suggestion that a peaceful interlude was about to be shattered.
Pam and I looked at one another and giggled.
Seconds later the phone rang. It was Ann again. ‘He wants you to go up.’
Up the stairs I went to room six on the first floor, my notebook in my hand ready to take dictation. Now I would get an explanation. I opened the door and he glanced at me quickly. No niceties, no formalities, just the glance.
‘Yes. You’re the one I chose.’ He paused and opened his diary. ‘It’s Norma Farnes, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so.’
He looked at me quickly. I sat down on the chair opposite him.
‘Okay. Let’s get down to it.’ He slid several pieces of paper across the table. ‘This is what I’m working on. A children’s poetry book. All the poems are about animals. What do you think?’
I read quickly.
Said a tiny Ant
To the Elephant
‘Mind how you tread in this clearing.’
But alas! Cruel fate!
She was crushed by the weight
Of an Elephant, hard of hearing.
Then another.
A very rash young lady pig
(They say she was a smasher)
Suddenly ran
Under a van –
Now she’s a gammon rasher.
And another.
A baby Sardine
Saw her first submarine:
She was scared and watched through a peephole.
‘Oh come, come, come,’
Said the Sardine’s mum,
‘It’s only a tin full of people.’
There were several more. I had never read any of his work before and wondered why on earth he wanted my opinion.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
‘They’re enchanting,’ I said, meaning it.
He smiled. ‘Good.’
As I was to find out, disagreement could have led to ‘What do you know about comedy?’ or ‘Since when did you become a judge of what’s funny and what isn’t?’ But we were in our honeymoon period.
He took the pieces of paper from me.
‘Enough! The poems can wait. There are more important matters to deal with. The Amazonian rain-forest for one.’
‘What about the poems?’
He looked at me, incredulous. ‘Get a sense of proportion. Forget the rain-forests and we’re all in trouble.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Get me Ted Allbeury.’ Then an aside to me. ‘He has lots of radio contacts.’ Ted had run a pirate radio station and was now a successful author. Spike waited on the line then looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. ‘Come to think of it, as you’re here you can help.’
So much for my passport to the entertainment industry. Instead I found myself plunged into a campaign to save the Amazonian rain-forest and got given a nature lesson.
‘Always remember, the earth’s resources are finite. The stupid bastards who run the world need a lesson in that. But they don’t bloody care.’
Welcome to Spike. Long before the importance of the world’s rain-forests became accepted wisdom he had been alerted, how I do not know, to the need to preserve them. Later others joined in but it took Spike, with his wide following, to start the crusade in the U.K., as he would also do with campaigns to save the seal, the whale, the elephant, the rhinoceros and the lion.
That first day initiated me to the foibles of that exhilarating man. Okay, I reflected, when it was time to leave, I have given myself three months, but if it turns out to be as interesting and challenging as it promises then that could stretch to six. Because this was more of a commitment than I’d anticipated the next day I took my bits and pieces to the office, including my pin-up photograph. By then poor Kenneth had been given the old heave-ho. Anthony Hopkins had taken Kenneth’s place after I had seen him in A Lion in Winter, and once he was pinned to the wall I was ready to face the world. But could I be as confident about coping with Spike?
Day Two was an introduction to the single-minded dedication Spike was always prepared to devote to what he considered to be an injustice, an affront or a con. On this occasion Lord Fraser, owner of Harrods, was the enemy, as apparently he had been for more than a year. The reason for this was that Spike had bought a ladder from the store (it had to be Harrods, not a hardware store or builders’ merchant where most people would buy a ladder). Spike was adamant that the bolts were insecure and therefore the ladder unsafe. The department head was dubious, however, and would not exchange it. So Spike, as was his way, aimed for the top man. Nothing else mattered on the second day I worked for him: Harrods and Lord Fraser were in the wrong and justice had to be done, honour salvaged and punishment meted out.
Victory did not come immediately but later Lord Fraser wilted under the torrent of letters, raised the white flag and sent a new ladder. Spike was relentless and won almost every battle of this nature. ‘Don’t let the bastards get away with it,’ he often said, and he never did. Over the years he had many run-ins with Harrods, over chairs, lace tablecloths, white envelopes he did not consider sufficiently white. Despite it all he would never shop anywhere else. Indeed, the following day, when we ran out of toilet paper, I said we could get some from the shop round the corner. Not a bit of it: Harrods was his corner shop. He rang and had them delivered by taxi, the fare being three or four times their cost. That was typical.
In my early days at Number Nine I had the feeling that the girls in my flat thought life there was one long cabaret but it was anything but that. Popularly it may have been known as ‘The Fun Factory’, where incredibly talented people were a laugh a minute, yet although I had a lot of laughs, the reality was very different. Eric Sykes summed it up. ‘Every business has its products. Show business is no exception. One of them is humour. And that is a very serious business.’ They certainly set about it seriously, which is not to say that they were not funny as well. Whereas work for Spike could start at two or three in the afternoon if he had been working on a script until the early hours, the rest of them started any time between ten and eleven. They all had their own idiosyncratic way of writing their material. But one thing they had in common was that all of them, bar Johnny, were six feet or more tall. When Eric introduced me to his old RAF mate, Denis Norden, and his writing partner Frank Muir, both six feet four, I wondered whether it was height that made them all able to see the funny side of life.
In the office opposite Spike were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson – the lads, or the boys as far as he was concerned. I walked in one day and did a double take. Both their long frames were stretched out on the floor, facing each other like bookends and throwing out lines and suggestions. This was how they got their inspiration and flat out on the floor was how they liked to work. It sounds relaxed but actually they were intensely disciplined and set a target each day of how much they needed to write between the hours of ten and six. Then office hours were over. Immaculate, charming Ray, with his handmade silk shirts by Turnbull and Asser, was an inveterate clubber, and smart, football-loving Alan more of a gourmet and an expert on vintage wines, which they could both, and still do, consume in amazing quantities without any apparent effect.
Eric worked on the next