William Hall - Titter Ye Not!

Back in the tent they had set up with a local farmer’s permission in a secluded corner of a turnip field, he would jot down the gags and save them for – who knew when?

One day the farmer emerged from his gate to accost Frankie in the lane. ‘You know, son, we’re really grateful to you,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ said Frankie. ‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Well, we can hear your boots marching up and down, and it gives us a great sense of security. If there is an invasion – we know you’re there!’

Yes, thought Frankie. Me and my rifle and ten rounds of ammunition to hold back the hordes. He thanked the farmer, and stomped on down the road, extra loud.

In fact, it was an idyllic time – and idle. If there was a war on, he wouldn’t have known it, apart from the blackout curtains over the windows of the farmhouses and the occasional plane flying overhead. Otherwise, in that hot dry summer, the only sounds to disturb his train of thought were the tractors in the fields and the cheery hum of insects in the hedgerows.

It was with mixed feelings that Gunner Howard was ordered back to the garrison as the first chill breath of autumn filtered through the trees. Sorry to leave the friends he had made in the village. Glad to have another crack at the concert parties and try out his new material.

Back at base, Frankie was swift to approach the Entertainments Officer. His enthusiasm proved infectious and soon he was practically running the weekly shows single-handed.

‘Tact’, he admitted, ‘was never my strong point. I tend to speak my mind.’ And speak it he did, with increasing volume and acerbity as the Sunday nights drew nearer and nerves started fraying. ‘There weren’t too many comedians around, so I largely had the field to myself. Just as well, because I wanted – nay, Francis, insisted – on being top of the bill!’

His rivals for the place of honour were usually singers, both from the Royal Artillery and the women ATS, who would help vary the bill, plus an assortment of conjurors, musical maestros, jugglers, even dancers. But Frankie was already virtually a semi-pro, head and shoulders above the rest, and he could pull rank on them all – in expertise if not in authority.

Insisting on anything in the Army when you are a lowly gunner may seem out of step with reality. But with a cunning combination of ‘Francis at his most charming’ and friendly persuasion, plus his sheer talent for making people laugh, Frankie invariably found himself where he felt he belonged. Top of the programme, closing the show. And always to the clamour of cheers, clapping and boot-stamping that are music to a performer’s ears. Particularly to one with a swollen head.

Because Frankie was cocksure, and he didn’t mind who knew it. ‘Yes, I was arrogant,’ he would admit. ‘I thought I knew it all. I mean, I felt some of them weren’t out of short trousers when it came to performing.’

The weekly Music Hall was a kind of military ‘Sunday Night is Talent Night’. Now, for the first time, Frankie was not afraid to exploit his nervous stammer. He found it got laughs, and began to capitalize on it.

First step: get the audience on your side. Frankie did this by the simple method of creating a conspiracy with his listeners. ‘Rather than acting to them, I did it with them. I told them my misfortunes as if I was gossiping over the garden fence. It’s the sort of thing you hear any night in any pub in the country. Everything happened to me, except that I let it get completely out of hand, and carried it to extremes.

‘It worked because people identified with my troubles. There but for the grace of God …

‘I was a bit raw in those days. But the essence of my act was born there, the seeds were sown in that Army camp on Sunday nights in the Mess.’

In the crowded, smoky haze with the troops crammed at tables over their beer, Frankie hit the right nerve – and touched funny-bones. The other secret of his act was that everything he did tilted at Authority – with a capital A.

Later he would christen all bosses, be they managing directors, chief producers, entrepreneurs or impresarios (take a bow, Bernard Delfont!) with the sobriquet of ‘Thing’. For now his barbs were directed at ‘Them’, the faceless Top Brass who were never named but shown up as causing Gunner Howard F.A. maximum discomfort while sheltering behind their pips and their stripes. He would end his act for the troops by leading them into one of the wartime songs that brought a catch to the throat and a tear to the eye: ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ or the rousing ‘Bless ’Em All’.

Frankie’s face was rapidly becoming his fortune in terms of the laughter it provoked. So was a voice which had the first hint of what later persuaded Harry Secombe to suggest he wore ‘the tenor’s friend – a truss with a spike in it.’ It could be likened, as one critic suggested, to ‘A corncrake suffering from an overdose of gravel’.

In fact Frankie had been working assiduously on his voice while on lonely patrol in the country lanes of Essex. He told his friend Lew Lane, the producer of numerous events for the Water Rats charity, how he expanded his vocal cords. ‘I sing the alphabet,’ he revealed. ‘It’s really very simple.’ And in front of Lew one night in his dressing-room at the Prince of Wales Theatre he sang it from A to Z, up and down the scale.

‘They say some actors can read a telephone book and make you laugh,’ Lew said later. ‘Hearing Frankie sing the alphabet sent shivers down my spine. All the letters had a resonance of their own … it was weird.’

Weird or not, it worked. Frankie grew in confidence. And his voice grew fuller by the day, its range reaching out to the corners of the low-ceilinged Mess at Shoeburyness Barracks.

He totally flouted the advice once given to budding comics by the legendary Lupino Lane: ‘Any inclination to fidget and lack stage repose should be immediately controlled. This can often cause great annoyance to the audience and result in a point being missed. Bad, too, is the continual use of phrases such as “You see? … You know! … Of course …”’

But on an unashamed wave of ‘You sees’ and ‘You knows’ emanating from the makeshift stage by the bar, no one could possibly miss the rumpled khaki-clad figure fidgeting and pulling faces up there through the cigarette smoke.

‘Listen … Lis-sen!’ it exhorted. The voice was demanding, petulant, and in the end it got its way. ‘ Pull yourselves together! You’ll make me a laughing stock, you know. Now, who can manage a little titter? It isn’t always easy to get your titters out on a wet Sunday …’

They listened. They got their titters out. And they laughed.

Full of new-found zest, buoyed by the applause of his weekly ventures on to the public stage, Frankie grew bolder. His sister Betty helped out on some occasions, forging the close-knit bond that would stay with them for life. Sometimes he persuaded her to take to the stage as his stooge, even sing a song or two. At other times she would take the train out from Fenchurch Street on a cheap-day return to lend him moral support.

Frankie’s downfall came one November day in 1941, and it was spectacular.

Autumnal mists were swirling around the barracks, lending a chill to the air from the North Sea. To cheer up the battalion, Frankie persuaded his Entertainments Officer to put on a lunchtime show in the Mess.

Only this time he was in drag.

‘I was dressed as an old ATS scrubber, with huge balloons pushed under my jacket, a straw wig, a white powder face and a great half-moon blob of lipstick over my mouth,’ Frankie would say, regaling friends with the story after much persuasion. ‘I got up on a table and sang a comic song – but in the middle of it, the air-raid siren suddenly started up.