Frankie Howerd: Stand-Up Comic. Graham McCann

very thin, slightly stooping scholarship boy – and feared that most of his middle-class, fee-paying classmates were mocking him behind his back for being nothing more than a mere ‘charity’ case.²⁷ His sense of discomfort was made even more intense by the fact that, having exchanged a ‘safe’ school environment that he had known so well for ‘the terrifying question-mark of a strange unknown’,²⁸ his stammer had started to worsen.

      From the second year on, however, he began to feel more at home and increasingly happy, forming a fairly large circle of friends, producing consistently solid if unspectacular work in class and performing considerably better than he had expected at cricket. He even developed ‘a great crush’ on one of his fellow-pupils, a young girl named Sheila, although it led only to humiliation when the draft of a love letter was discovered by a mischievous classmate and subsequently displayed for all to see on the school notice board.²⁹

      His extra-curricular interest in religion, meanwhile, appeared stronger and deeper than ever. Indeed, he came to be regarded as so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the subject that in 1930, when he had reached the age of thirteen, his vicar at St Barnabas, the Reverend Jonathan Chisholm, invited him to become a Sunday School teacher. It all seemed to be going smoothly and swiftly to plan: ‘I was happy teaching, despite my diffidence, for being religious I was anxious to serve.’³⁰

      Religion, however, was far from being Frank’s only serious interest. The world of popular entertainment had by now come to rival it as a source both of fascination and inspiration.

      As with so much else that felt positive in Frank’s young life, this appetite had been inherited from, and cultivated by, his mother. Although devoted to the solemn code of the black book, Edith was far from averse to sampling the odd bit of sauciness culled from the ‘blue’ book, and she was always happy to hear her eldest son repeat the latest jokes in circulation (though she did draw the line – and administer a crisp clip round the ear – when, without knowing quite what it meant, he included a certain four-letter word he had overheard being uttered by the local greengrocer).

      She also introduced him to the potentially thrilling spectacle of live entertainment when, on 26 December 1925, she took him to the Woolwich Artillery Theatre to see his first pantomime, Cinderella, featuring the fragrant Nora Delaney as the principal boy: ‘It was an exciting, glittering, over-the-rainbow world, and I instantly wanted to become a part of it: not specifically as an actor or comedian or singer or anything else, but just in order to escape to wonderland.’³¹

      From that moment on, Frank seized every opportunity to see, hear, read about or re-enact the very best that the stage, screen and radio had to offer. There were countless outings to the various local cinemas, which in those days ranged from the upmarket Palace (which boasted a ‘well-appointed’ café lounge) to the downmarket Little Cinema (or the ‘Bug Hutch’, as Eltham’s youngsters preferred to call it,³² which during the silent years featured a piano accompanist called Lena Crisp – a future Frankie Howerd stooge). There were also many sessions spent in front of the wireless set, listening to all of the big dance bands (first Jack Payne’s, later Henry Hall’s), plenty of revue and Variety shows (such as Radio Radiance and Music Hall) and the first few broadcast attempts at sketch and situation-comedy (starting off with Myrtle and Bertie).³³ There were even, when Edith’s meagre funds allowed, occasional excursions to local clubs, theatres and fairs, as well as a visit to the novelty ‘Air Circus’ that was held one summer on (and above) Eltham’s green and pleasant Nine Fields. In addition to all of this, of course, there remained the keenly anticipated annual pilgrimage to the pantomime.

      The urge to imitate and emulate these glamorous forms and figures grew stronger with each passing year. Inside the Howard home, Frank started out by entertaining his mother and baby sister with peep-shows created from old cardboard boxes, and original plays that came complete with a miniature theatre (made out of rags, sticks and Edith’s best tea tray, and populated by a cast of cut-outs from well-thumbed copies of Film Fun), as well as a selection of self-authored gags, funny stories and painful puns grouped together under the banner of Howard’s Howlers.

      It was not long before he began hankering for a bigger and broader audience, and he soon managed to persuade the girl next door, Ivy Smith, to help him form a ‘two-child concert party’. The duo managed to perform several surprisingly lucrative Saturday matinées at the bottom of his back garden, charging other children a farthing a time for the privilege of admission, before a startled Edith stumbled upon the event (or ‘robbery’ as she called it) and demanded that everyone present be reimbursed without delay.³⁴ His response was to transform the operation into a scrupulously charitable affair, performing a further series of concerts (first with Ivy and then later with his similarly-minded sister, Betty) designed to benefit a variety of worthwhile local causes.

      By the time, therefore, that Frank began his spell as a Sunday School teacher, his strong sense of duty to the Church was already prone to distraction from his even deeper desire to perform. Things soon grew worse, as far as spiritual matters were concerned, when he found himself obliged, as part of the preparation for his new duties, to join his fellow-tutors each Monday evening at Reverend Chisholm’s home in Appleton Road for tea, cake and very, very, lengthy hermeneutical advice: ‘I remember how I’d look at him, trying to be attentive, but with my mind wandering to films and music and the theatre.’³⁵

      The problem was not just that so little now seemed to be seeping in; it was also that so much that was already in seemed to be leaking out. With nothing more to rely on than a wafer-thin recollection of the basic theme of the kindly but rather dull Reverend Chisholm’s latest briefing, Frank would find that he had no choice but to improvise his way through each one of his own Sunday School sessions, spending more time regaling his audience with tales of Robin Hood, Morgan the Pirate and Sexton Blake than he did engaging them with any pertinent biblical issues, axioms or events. His popularity soared as an unusually entertaining teacher, but so too did his sense of guilt as an increasingly heavy-lidded trainee saint: ‘I thought I’d let God down in some way.’³⁶

      He soldiered on for a while in a state of stubborn denial, unable to face up to the fact that he was on the verge of disappointing a mother who seemed so proud that he had found what she had taken to terming his ‘calling’.³⁷ Then, to his great surprise and immense relief, he stumbled upon a compromise: the deceptively perceptive Reverend Chisholm, sensing that his protégé was an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s cassock, encouraged him to join the Church Dramatic Society. It struck Frank immediately as an inspired piece of advice: now, instead of having to abandon the Church for the theatre, he could accommodate the theatre within the Church.

      The Society’s upcoming project was a revival of Ian Hay’s 1919 Cinderella-style drawing-room comedy Tilly of Bloomsbury, and the newest member of the company made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was ‘pathetically eager’ to take part.³⁸ Although the play had acquired a certain reputation for containing several roles that were suitable for the most ‘wooden’ of actors (even the BBC’s notoriously teak-taut Director-General, John Reith, had managed to march his way through a recent amateur production without appearing too out-of-place³⁹), it was immediately clear to the current producer, Winifred Young, that Frank represented a serious casting challenge.