Bill Cotton - Double Bill (Text Only)

Then we moved on to Brighton, where to my utter delight our takings for the week were up on the same period in the previous year when Dad was in charge of the band. I couldn’t wait to give him the good news: I thought it would aid his recovery if he knew how well things were going. Fat chance. He hated being upstaged, even by his own son.

One evening during the interval between houses at the Hippodrome Theatre, I went down to the bar and saw there a famous Brighton resident, the comedian Max Miller. Miller had done a memorable season with my Dad at the London Palladium which I attended virtually every evening because I admired his stand-up so much. Whether he was the greatest comedian of his day was a matter of argument, but he was indisputably the meanest. He had never been known to put his hand in his pocket and buy a drink, so I was not surprised to see him sitting staring glumly into an empty glass. We exchanged pleasantries and then I offered to buy him a drink. He was very grateful. We talked some more. ‘Can I refill your glass?’ I asked. He was beside himself with gratitude. Later: ‘Another one?’ I enquired. He overwhelmed me with thanks. Eventually I had to get back to business, but as I left, the barman called me over and he said, ‘Thanks very much for standing Max those rounds. If you hadn’t, I’d have had to do it. Every night he comes in here and just stands silently at the bar until I offer him a drink.’ Mean he might have been, but when he died Max left his entire estate to a home for unmarried mothers.

We ended our run with a week in Dublin. The Thursday happened to be St Patrick’s Day, which meant there were only two bars open in the entire city: one was at the Dog Show and the other at the Theatre Royal, where we were playing. Though the Billy Cotton Band was the star attraction, the theatre also had its own pit orchestra which accompanied the other turns. Since we were the final act on the bill, with an expansive gesture of the kind Billy Cotton Senior was noted for I handed a tenner to the stage manager and told him to send the pit orchestra out for a drink on me. I assured him my band would close the show with the national anthem. He was very grateful, and off went the pit orchestra for a drink while I warned our band how the show would end.

Half way through our act, I was happily waving my arms around when I had a sudden premonition of doom. I left the stage, got hold of the manager and said, ‘Where’s the pit orchestra?’ He told me they were in the pub where I’d sent them.

‘For Christ’s sake, get them back, quick!’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because my band doesn’t know “The Soldier’s Song”,’ I shrieked. ‘They only know one national anthem, “God Save the Queen”!’

‘Oh, my Gawd!’ he said, and dashed off. I spent the rest of the show with one eye glued to the orchestra pit, praying that the players would get back before we finished our act. By the time we reached the final curtain, there were just enough of them to strike up ‘The Soldier’s Song’. The Billy Cotton Band stood respectfully, blissfully unaware of the narrow escape they’d had. ‘God Save the Queen’ in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day in a house packed with drunken Irishmen!

‘You weren’t going to play what I think you were?’ the stage manager asked, scandalised. ‘What are you, a bloody kamikaze pilot?’ Speechless, I headed for the nearest bottle of whisky.

In spite of my success with Dad’s band, the experience did cure me of any idea of going on the stage permanently, though it was invaluable in later years when I had to deal with performers. I understood first hand the pressure they were under.

I had also come to believe that my future in show business lay in television, so I went to see Ronnie Waldman to ask if he would arrange for me to go on a BBC Television production course. I wanted no favours. I’d start at the bottom on a temporary contract, and if I didn’t make the grade he could get rid of me with no hard feelings. I’d got to know Ronnie well enough to work out his thought processes. To take me on as a trainee would only cost him the standard BBC rate of fifteen quid a week for six months, which would earn him the gratitude of his biggest stars and be another silken thread binding my Dad to the BBC. There can’t have been any other reason; I doubt Ronnie thought I was God’s gift to television.

Shortly before I left the music business to join the BBC, I was coming out of the office in Denmark Street when I ran into Dick James, the singer who had recorded the original title song to the TV series Robin Hood. He’d just finished a spell with the BBC Dance Orchestra and told me he was thinking of setting up a music publishing business. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘I’m getting out. It’s a dying industry. The record companies have it all sewn up; there’s nothing left for independent publishers.’ Like an idiot, he ignored my good advice, became the publisher of the Beatles and Elton John and made millions.

THREE

The first day I reported to the new half-built Television Centre at White City in January 1956 is indelibly imprinted on my memory. A young red-haired secretary who worked for Tom Sloan, the Assistant Head of Light Entertainment, greeted me. Her name was Queenie Lipyeat, and thirty years later she retired as my personal assistant because I was by then Managing Director of BBC TV. But on this particular day I was a trainee producer.

I knew Broadcasting House, the home of BBC Radio, very well. It had long, dark corridors and people worked behind closed doors. It had the hushed atmosphere of a museum or a library; John Reith called it (in Latin of course) ‘A Temple of the Arts’. It didn’t exactly buzz with excitement. Most of the actual broadcasting came from the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street and other studios around London. The Television Centre was quite different. It was noisy and bursting with life. Everyone seemed to be in a great hurry; the place echoed with shouting and laughter, and as you walked down a corridor you had to flatten yourself against the wall as technicians pushed past you trundling heavy camera equipment or pieces of scenery.

Since the BBC had begun as a radio service, all the big corporate decisions were made at Broadcasting House by a management who had originally been by and large lukewarm about television because they thought it was too expensive an operation to be paid for by the licence fee. However, against the BBC’s bitter opposition, the government passed the legislation which produced an Independent Television system, and in no time these companies were beating the BBC for audiences in the geographical regions where they operated. This created a certain amount of concern, even panic, at Broadcasting House as those who ran the BBC saw their position as the main purveyors of broadcasting being threatened. Hence, from being viewed somewhat superciliously, television was moved much higher up the governors’ agenda.

So in the very year I joined the BBC, it was decided that someone be appointed Director of Television. Gerald Beadle had no prior television experience and made no secret of the fact that up to the day of his appointment he didn’t even own a television set. He had been controller in charge of the Western Region of BBC Radio, was fifty-five years of age, and was looking for a gentle canter down the finishing straight to retirement.

Shortly after he arrived, Beadle summoned the entire production staff of the television service to a meeting. They all fitted comfortably into the Television Theatre at Shepherd’s Bush – by the time I left, it would have taken a football ground to contain them. I was present when Beadle asked what could be done about the mounting competition from ITV, and saw the legendary Grace Wyndham Goldie rise to her feet. She was a major figure in the Talks Department, then considered the serious side of the business, so her one-line intervention had a tremendous impact. She declared, ‘The trouble with the BBC is that it is considered vulgar to be popular.’ The roar of agreement from all the staff present shook Gerald Beadle and became something of a battle cry. He got the firm impression that the staff of the television service were a feisty lot, frustrated by lack of investment and the lukewarm endorsement of BBC management at Broadcasting House. Slowly the message got through to the powers that be and a new, exciting era dawned. I was fortunate to be there when it began.