Frankie Howerd: Stand-Up Comic. Graham McCann

and the vanity, to form his very own tiny troupe – consisting of himself, his sister Betty, and one or two of their mutual friends – called Frank Howard’s Knockout Concert Party (‘the ego was in full flight again’²⁹). This troupe went on to stage innumerable 21-sketch-long revues – all of them strictly for charity (Edith was still watching) – based on whatever Howard had time to write in the office and whatever he and the others found the wit and the will to improvise in front of the audience. They toured all of the scout huts, church halls and retirement homes in the Eltham area, carrying their homemade scenery, costumes and props along with them on the tram, and did far more good than harm.

      Even when he was part of a group, however, Howard always remained, in spirit, an incorrigible solo artiste. His instructions to his fellow-performers tended to take the following self-serving form: ‘Now you, Betty, will go on the stage and say something. Anything. Then I’ll say something. Then Charlie here will say something. We’ll make it up as we go along – always remembering that we’re aiming for the tag-line … Which I will deliver!’³⁰

      Few talent contests in South London went ahead without the participation of Frank Howard. It was easy enough to execute: most of the old music-halls used to accommodate some sort of cheap and cheerful ‘Talent Night’ spot once a week on one of their bills, and all any amateur performer needed to do was to turn up, sign on and then try their luck. Such occasions were not for the faint-hearted – a bad act, or a good act that just happened to be having a bad day, would soon be loudly booed and crudely abused – but, for those with thicker skins or stronger dreams, these events were the places where hope would spring eternal, because, regardless of how awful it might have been on any one particular night, there would always be the promise of another week, another audience and another chance.

      Howard, in spite of his notoriously pronounced susceptibility to stage fright, was one of those determined characters who kept going back for more. The first time, he walked on, delivered a comic monologue, and then walked back off again to the lonely sound of his own footsteps. The following week, he returned to try out a few impressions (the list included Noël Coward, Charles Laughton, Maurice Chevalier, James Cagney and Gary Cooper), but, once again, the act fell horribly flat. The week after that, he reappeared dressed like an overgrown schoolboy and proceeded to sing a novelty comedy song: that, too, sank like the proverbial stone.

      One week, he even tried changing his name to ‘Ronnie Ordex’, but when that failed to change his fortunes, he promptly changed it back again, and then proceeded to try something else. He went on, and on, and on, into his early twenties, trying anything and everything that did not demand any great degree of physical dexterity. ‘I kept trying,’ he later explained, ‘because the utter conviction that I did have talent was stronger than the flaws of personality that crucified me when it came to an actual performance.’³¹

      Not even an exceptionally humiliating on-stage experience at the Lewisham Hippodrome would shake this underlying faith in his own potential. It was during a talent night here – on a bill that boasted some of the biggest names (including the band leader Jack Payne and the crooner and stand-up comic Derek Roy) on the current Variety circuit – that Frank Howard discovered just what it really meant, in the cutthroat world of show business, to ‘die a death’ in front of a large live audience.

      The root of the problem was the fact that, as the slot for new talent came straight after the interval, Howard was obliged to follow the comedian who closed the first half – and the comedian who closed the first half was Jimmy James. Soon to be dubbed ‘the comedians’ comedian’,³² Jimmy James was already widely admired as an inimitable performer, an inspired ad-libber and an exquisite timer of a line. With his woozily lugubrious looks (suggestive of a bulldog whose water has recently been laced with Scotch) and downbeat demeanour, he was a masterful droll, and Howard, who watched him fascinated from the wings, was left, quite understandably, feeling utterly awestruck.

      Then, after the short interval, it was his turn. The curtain rose back up, he strode on to the stage, and was immediately blinded by the most powerful spotlight he had ever encountered. He winced, blinked, shifted from side to side in search of a shadow, winced and blinked again, and then gave up and began his act. It was no good: whatever he tried to remember, whatever he tried to say, he could not get that blinding light from out of his eyes or out of his mind. His mouth dried up, the beads of cold sweat crept down his brow, the eyes froze open and one of his knees, inevitably, began to tremble. The stage seemed to be getting bigger, and he was getting smaller. He squinted out at the audience, and the audience stared back at him. For one puzzled moment, there was just silence and rapt attention, but then, as the unmistakeable scent of sheer naked fear drifted its way slowly out over and beyond the stalls, there came a reaction: ‘The audience began to laugh, but it was the most dreaded of all laughter for a performer – derision. And the more they fell about, the worse I became. The orchestra leader hissed from the pit: “Do something, or get off!” I stumbled off – in tears.’³³

      He realised, as he sobbed backstage, that he could not take any more of this, but he also recognised, as he dried his eyes, that he would be unable not to take any more of this. He was trapped, and he knew it, and so, yet again, he resolved to go on.

      He tried more talent nights, but won none. He staged more plays, concerts and revues, but most of them faded from memory soon after they were done. He auditioned on no fewer than four separate occasions for Carroll Levis, the powerful talent scout, but the result of each one of them was the same: rejection. The recurring problem was not that people failed to glimpse any potential; it was just that, far too often, the nerves kept getting in the way. No matter how many times someone said ‘No,’ however, Frank Howard never stopped believing that, one day, someone would say ‘Yes’: ‘I was the most undiscovered discovery of my day!’³⁴

      This, for the foreseeable future, was what he would remain. A war was about to break out. His own personal breakthrough would have to wait.

       CHAPTER 3

       Army Camp

       So, anyway, he said, ‘I was wondering if you could go to the lads,’ he said, ‘and give them a turn. ’ Yes! That’s what I thought – cheeky devil!

      This time, he did not even need to audition: the British Army showed no hesitation in signing him up for the duration. It had taken the outbreak of a war, but, at last, Frank Howard was able to feel that he was wanted.

      The precise date of his admission is a matter of some dispute. Howerd – that notorious biographical dissembler – would claim that it had arrived one day in February 1940¹ – more or less a month short of his twenty-third birthday, and a decidedly dilatory-sounding four months after his name was first registered for conscription.² On this particular occasion, however, he was probably telling the truth: his call-up papers remain unavailable for public scrutiny, but, given the bureaucratic inefficiency that is known to have dogged the entire process of mobilisation, the date is not quite as implausible as, at first glance, it might seem.³

      His initial hope, once war was declared, had been to join ENSA (an acronym that stood formally for ‘Entertainments National Service Association’, and informally for ‘Every Night Something Awful’).⁴