Brian was ten, and that broadcasting was pretty rudimentary while the boys were growing up, this showed remarkable foresight and perception. But Brian apparently shrugged it off. If he was moved towards anything – and that is debatable – he wanted to be an actor. What he did not want to do was to pursue a career as a coffee merchant in the family business.
Nevertheless, within two years he was indeed despatched to Santos, an island port off the Brazilian coast with a dreadful reputation for yellow fever. He had at least learned the art of coffee-tasting during a brief apprenticeship in London, which included a short posting to pre-war Hamburg, where he was taken to listen to a tub-thumping speech by Josef Goebbels. He was based in Kensington, staying with his uncle, Alex Johnston, in a house that sounds like something out of Upstairs, Downstairs. Certainly there was a substantial staff that Brian was quick to befriend, a particular favourite being the butler, Targett. Brian and Targett would meet below stairs for games of crib-bage which included Edward the footman and a one-legged tailor, who would remove his wooden leg and carefully lodge it under the table for the duration. Edward reappeared after the war when Brian married Pauline, working as Brian’s valet and ironing his shirts once a week. Brian’s son Barry tells me that he also served the drinks at the Johnstons’ much anticipated annual summer parties before he was fired for becoming incapably drunk in the course of one such event, and was last seen being bundled unceremoniously into the back of a taxi.
Much more significant in this brief interlude while he was learning about coffee beans was that Johnners fell passionately in love with music-hall comedy. He devoted much of his time in London to the theatre, watching the best comedians on stage. His favourites were Flanagan and Allen, who as well as being a double act in their own right were also members of the Crazy Gang, and Max Miller, whose risqué brand of humour particularly appealed to Brian. It was during these often solitary evenings that Brian’s love of word-play de -veloped, and while in Brazil he took to amateur dramatics, probably for the first time; there is no evidence of his having performed in so much as a single school play either at Temple Grove or at Eton, which is something of a surprise considering he was such a natural showman, and hardly the shy and retiring type. These productions, which Brian essentially ran himself, were far and away the highlight of what was clearly a miserable experience. Brian admits to having been pretty useless at his job: he could hardly tell the coffee beans apart, and consequently was never given a position of any authority or responsibility. Within eighteen months he was struck down by peripheral neuritis, a nasty-sounding illness affecting the nervous system which all but paralysed him. So serious was his condition that his mother had to travel to Santos and take him home. A poor diet, and a lack of vegetables in particular, is believed to be one of the primary causes of peripheral neuritis, so Brian’s fussy eating may have played its part. Unlike at prep school, there was no supply of Marmite to fall back on.
Brian’s convalescence saw him reunited with William Douglas-Home for more pranks and more cricket. He saw the 1938 Australians, including the innings of 240 by Wally Hammond for England in the second Test at Lord’s which, during those inevitable commentary box discussions when rain stopped play, Brian always determinedly ad -vocated as being one of the greatest Test innings of all time. He was soon back at work as assistant manager in the coffee business, and although he still hated the job he was now twenty-six, and much as he resented it, the prospect of a lifetime in coffee trading loomed realistically large. Indeed, had it not been for the outbreak of the Second World War the following year, that might very well have been his destiny.
With a group of fellow Old Etonians, Brian signed up with the Grenadier Guards shortly after Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 – his cousin happened to be in command of the 2nd Battalion. He was drilled at Sandhurst, although it tests the imagin -ation somewhat to imagine Johnners marching and saluting with absolutely razor-sharp military precision. But, back in the ‘boys together’ environment he had so enjoyed at school and at university, Brian felt liberated and able to express himself in a way that he never could in an office. He was clearly excellent entertainment in the officers’ mess, where he would often sing ‘Underneath the Arches’, perhaps the most famous song of Flanagan and Allen, just about accompanying himself on the piano. The song would remain a lifelong favourite of his: he sang it live on Test Match Special with Roy Hudd, the comedian and music-hall singer, who he was interviewing for ‘A View from the Boundary’ in the final Ashes Test of 1993. I remember it well: the unaccompanied duet drifting through the open window of the old commentary box at The Oval in a passable impersonation of Flanagan and Allen, their mutual heroes. Poignantly, this would be Brian’s last match on Test Match Special. He died five months later.
In May 1940 Brian was preparing to join the 2nd Battalion in France when it was evacuated from Dunkirk. After a brief period in charge of the motorcycle platoon, which he led from a sidecar brandishing a pistol – I suspect he loved this enormously – he became Technical Adjutant in the newly formed armoured div -ision. Brian was not the least bit technically minded, and his first challenge was to learn about the workings of a tank engine. With two of his fellow trainees – one of whom was the future Conservative Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary William Whitelaw, the other Gerald Upjohn, later the Lord Justice of Appeal, Lord Upjohn – Brian was given an engine and told to strip it down and reassemble it. The first task was a good deal easier than the second, but finally their engine was apparently rebuilt, although there remained several pieces that they simply could not account for. Looking around the room, Brian and Whitelaw could see the inspecting officer ser iously reprimanding any trainees who had attempted to hide surplus engine parts or nuts and bolts, so at Brian’s instigation they decided to pop their leftovers into Upjohn’s pocket. Come the inspection, Brian and Whitelaw duly turned out their pockets with absolute confidence, while the unfortunate Upjohn found himself handing over an unfeasible number of redundant nuts and bolts to an increasingly agitated inspector. It fell to Upjohn to find homes for all the remaining parts while Brian and Whitelaw were given leave to retire to the NAAFI.
Action for Brian started three weeks after the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. His battalion had been due to sail with the main force, but bad weather delayed their departure. His first encounter with the Germans was on 18 July, and in his autobiography he wrote powerfully and graphically about the experience.
The heat and the dust, the flattened cornfields, the ‘liberated’ villages which were just piles of rubble, the refugees, the stench of dead cows, our first shelling, real fear, the first casualties, friends wounded or killed, men with whom one had laughed and joked the evening before, lying burned beside their knocked-out tank. No, war is not fun, though as years go by one tends only to remember the good things. The changes are so sudden. One minute boredom or laughter, the next, action and death. So it was with us.
Essentially, Brian’s job was to rescue and recover the tanks that had been damaged on the battlefield. In practice this meant physically pulling burning and horribly injured colleagues from their wrecked machines as battle raged around him. So dismissive was Brian of the Military Cross he was awarded towards the end of the campaign that he would claim it was more or less given out with the rations. In fact, the MC is the third-highest military decoration, awarded to officers in recognition of ‘an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy’. To treat it as a sort of handout was typical of Brian, who would genuinely have been embarrassed to have dwelt on his own acts of bravery, and certainly would in no way consider himself to be a hero. Unusually, although not uniquely, Brian’s MC was awarded not for a single incident, but more for his consistent attitude and contribution throughout what was clearly a ghastly situation. His citation included the words: ‘His own dynamic personality, coupled with his untiring determination and cheerfulness under fire, have inspired those around him always to reach the highest standard of efficiency.’
Just as Brian chose not to talk about the tragic and distressing circumstances of his father’s death, his time in the army was a topic of conversation we never shared. In his talk at the school when I was at Uppingham, and later in his supposed retirement when he toured the country’s theatres with An Evening with Johnners, his entire army career of six years was more or less dispensed with in three jokes.
When the war ended, it is fair to say that Brian had no idea what to do with his life. He was now thirty-three years old, and knew that a return