Denis Norden - Clips From A Life

DENIS NORDEN

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Fourth Estate

Copyright © Denis Norden 2008

The right of Denis Norden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007277957

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2008 ISBN:9780007287796

Version: 2017-05-05

For Max and Angus (Latest in series)

All photographs are from the author’s private collection, unless otherwise credited.

PLATE ONE

The Gaumont State Kilburn, 1937. Photograph courtesy of Cinema Theatre Association Archive.

The foyer of the State Kilburn. Photograph courtesy of Cinema Theatre Association Archive.

The Hyams Brothers: Mr Phil, Mr Sid and Mr Mick. Photographs courtesy of Ronald Grant Archive.

The Trocadero, Elephant and Castle. Photograph courtesy of Cinema Theatre Association Archive.

The Trocadero auditorium. Photograph courtesy of Cinema Theatre Association Archive.

LAC D. Norden.

Nick and Maggie on a foreign beach.

Post CBE ceremony – Nick, Maggie, DN and Avril.

Wilson, Keppel and Betty.

Ted Kavanagh. Photograph © Topfoto.co.uk.

Frank Muir, Charles Maxwell and DN. Photograph © BBC Photo Library.

Take It From Here : Wallas Eaton, Dick Bentley, Alma Cogan, Jimmy Edwards and June Whitfield. Photograph © BBC Photo Library.

Take It From Here : Frank and DN. Photograph courtesy of Popperfoto/Getty Images.

Bernard Braden. Photography courtesy of The Kobal Collection/Melina Prods.

What’s My Line: Frank, Lady Isobel Barnett, Barbara Kelly and DN. Photograph © BBC Photo Library.

London Laughs .

PLATE TWO

Whack-o! : Jimmy Edwards. Photograph © BBC Photo Library.

My Word! : Frank Muir and Dilys Powell. Photograph © BBC Photo Library.

Inspirational sheet-music for My Music .

My Music : Steve Race, Frank, Ian Wallace and John Amis. Photographs © BBC Photo Library.

Looks Familiar . Courtesy of FremantleMedia Ltd.

Looks Familiar : Dickie Henderson, Diana Dors and Danny La Rue. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills.

Looks Familiar : Alec McCowen, DN, Pat Phoenix and Eric Sykes. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills.

Looks Familiar : Alice Faye. Photograph © FremantleMedia Ltd.

Looks Familiar : David Niven. Photograph © FremantleMedia Ltd.

Looks Familiar : Sammy Davis Jr. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills. Our Kid .

PLATE THREE

Melvin Frank. Photograph courtesy of Brut Productions/Ronald Grant Archive.

Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell .

A Thurber original.

It’ll Be Alright on the Night .

It’ll Be Alright on the Night cartoon.

The Crazy Gang: Bud Flanagan, Charlie Naughton, Jimmy Gold, Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox. Photograph by Houston Rogers courtesy of the Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection, © V&A.

‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray.

Chesney Allen and Bud Flanagan.

DN and the Brylcreem touch. Photograph courtesy of Ronald Grant Archive.

Sanders of the River . Photograph courtesy of London Film Productions/Ronald Grant Archive.

Moore Marriott. Photograph courtesy of BFI Stills.

Countdown : Richard Whiteley, Carol Vorderman and DN. Photograph © ITV/Granada.

The young DN.

In a long-ago New Yorker cartoon, a publisher is seen advising the anxious author whose slim volume of memoirs he has just tossed aside, ‘Cut out all the insights and beef up the anecdotes.’

And insofar as I have followed any guiding principle for the ensuing ruminative rummage, that injunction would more or less cover it.

No other discipline was observed. For some eighteen months or so, I simply set down each recollection as it arrived, making no attempt to impose any order, merely letting them pile up without regard for chronology or variousness. The process was so similar to the way we used to gather in clips for the TV shows from which I had been earning my bread and non-fat butter-substitute over the past forty-some years, it seemed appropriate to acknowledge the resemblance in the book’s title. At the very least, that gave me an excuse to abandon This is On Me, The Story Thus Far, Innocent Bystanding and Some of the Bits Frank’s Book Left Out .

As might have been expected, the project ended up as a higgledy-piggledy mishmash of moments that had amused or impressed me over the course of my working life, each complete in itself but in aggregate an undisciplined jumble of 250-plus jottings as disconnected and random as the wisps and scraps of memory that delivered them.

‘Do you want me to rearrange them so that they make more of a straight line across the decades?’ I asked Louise Haines, my infinitely patient editor.

‘I’m not averse to a bit of backwards and forwards zig-zagging,’ she replied. ‘We might even make some kind of virtue of it.’

Thankful for this – you only have to Google my screenplay credits to see how small a gift I have for sustained narrative – I was even more grateful when she added, ‘If you could just work out a separate timeline for me, I’ll try to put the bits and pieces into some kind of minimally coherent order, then chop it into chapters.’

This she proceeded to do, with considerable diligence and ingenuity, in the process achieving an agreeable (to me, anyway) reversal of Life’s customary running order by positioning my chronicles of childhood up towards the book’s rear end. Incidentally, that timeline, for those who feel the need of it, can be found on page xvii.

But in addition to Louise, there are several others to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for helping me get the thing finished. Foremost among them is Avril, my wife, who not only painstakingly scrutinised and proofed each paragraph as it was hewn from the living rock, she managed the some would say impossible task of keeping my spirits up throughout.