Tony Hancock: The Definitive Biography. John Fisher
Everybody shout it,
Sing a song about it,
If you ever doubt it you’ll be blue.
Oh the drums are drumming,
’Cos a great day’s coming,
And about time too.
Hancock later claimed that Derek hated uttering a single word during the whole proceedings and that when he had to open his mouth ‘he would curl up into embarrassment at the sound of his own voice’. Interestingly, a small part of the act brought back family memories: ‘He did a grand job at the piano and boosted my morale no end, as my mother once boosted my father’s, by laughing all through the act. I had no need to turn round; I could hear him spluttering away behind my back. More often than not it was because something had gone wrong – that man went delirious over disaster – but no matter. It was heartening to know that he was enjoying himself, however firmly those blocks of stone out front might sit on their hands.’
The Variety Bandbox broadcast was still in the future when Scott and Hancock, billed as ‘Derek Scott and Hank’, played the Windmill Theatre for six weeks from 12 July 1948. It was the most encouraging sign yet to the young comedian that his career was on track, although why he had reverted to using his wartime Gang Show appellation is a mystery. To audiences on the Wings tour and in Oxford he had used his birth name, and there would appear to have been no rival ‘Tony’ in the new cast. The additional comedy support on a bill dominated by musical sequences and the so-called ‘scenas’ that featured bare expanses of the statuesque female form for which the theatre was famous was provided by a comedy ventriloquist with a dithering style who would one day drop his dummy, figuratively speaking, and a rather rough conventional double act. Van Damn really could afford only two of the three acts, but took them all on trial on the understanding that he could let one of the double acts go at the end of the first week. Harry Worth was safe, and Morecambe and Wise – they had recently changed their billing from their actual names, Bartholomew and Wiseman – fell by the wayside. No one needs telling that their talent and resilience were such that it did not matter. One wonders if Hancock, with or without his partner, would have bounced back from such early rejection.
What may well have been Hancock’s first mention in the national press appeared in a review in the Daily Herald the day after the Windmill opening, stating how ‘young comedian makes a hit’ performing his ‘brilliant thumbnail impressions of a “dud” concert party among the nimble youthful feminine pulchritude’ of what was the 214th edition of Revudeville, the revue in miniature with its coy intimation of nudity in its title, at the theatrical institution that could proudly boast of its wartime record, ‘We never closed,’ only for some wag to echo, ‘We never clothed!’ At a much later date Barry Cryer recalled his surprise at discovering that between shows, which were otherwise more or less continuous, a voice would boom over a loudspeaker with a request that patrons not climb over the seats to get nearer to the front for the next show, an announcement that was usually drowned out by the very sound of men clambering over the seats to get nearer to the first row. Jimmy Edwards, one of the most successful comedians to make his initial impact there, christened the ritual ‘The Grand National’. Every morning the theatre handyman had to tighten the bolts to ensure the seats were secure. The initial slogan, incidentally, referred specifically to the period between 16 September and 12 October 1940 at the height of the Blitz when the Windmill was the only theatre to remain open in London, and not the two weeks at the outbreak of war when all such venues were closed by Act of Parliament.
Later Hancock remarked that his season at the theatre just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus coincided with the London Olympics, and that the front six rows of the stalls were full of Mongolian discus-throwers and non-English-speaking Ethiopians. He was a little less flippant when John Freeman asked him about the experience: ‘It’s a marvellous place to run in an act. We did six shows a day, six days a week, and you learnt to die like a swan, you know, gracefully. The show used to start at 12.15. I used to go on at 12.19 to three rows of gentlemen reading newspapers, and nothing, you see, absolutely nothing, but you’d learn to die with a smile on your face and walk off. Then you came back again at two o’clock to see the same people, and you died again. But it was a great experience. I didn’t enjoy it at the time, but it’s been a great benefit afterwards … but I’ll tell you what was the best thing. The drunks used to come in about twenty past three, when the pubs were closed, and they were quite lively, so it made the day go.’ On a later radio interview, he added, ‘Windmill? Call it the Treadmill … either you’re a comedian after that or you’re out.’ Hancock boasted of arriving at the theatre with four minutes to spare before his first entrance, a situation helped by the decision, forced upon him by necessity, to wear his street clothes, the hardy pinstripe demob suit. ‘I wanted to appear casual,’ he would explain by way of excuse.
For all the pressure to succeed, these were obviously happy times with a close-knit family atmosphere backstage. Phyllis Rounce remembered how the girls would fall about with laughter backstage, unable to go on properly, as Tony mimicked the way they walked, his own penguin gait not entirely conducive to their elegant high-heeled demeanour. What he could never bring himself to do was to refer to Van Damm as V.D. in the way everyone else did. From the beginning he settled for ‘Sir’ or as he once admitted, ‘Mr – er – um – V – er – um – Mr Van – Damm’. His reticence had no effect on the success of his audition and continued until the end of their association. Also on the bill was a magician, Francis Watts, with whom Hancock shared a dressing room: ‘He had just time between shows to grab a cup of tea, then start putting the strings up his sleeves, folding the trick silk flags, putting the rabbits back in the hat … and he was on! Just time to get on stage. Perpetual motion.’ On one occasion the schedule did not go to plan. Someone knocked over a tray of drinks that were an integral part of the act. Hancock and Scott gallantly came to his aid, helping to load the various accoutrements into his bulging dress suit. Unfortunately not everything went into the right place, leaving the conjuror on stage more bewildered than his audience and Hancock helpless with laughter again at the side of the stage. Derek recalled that the big finish to the act was a paper-tearing trick that revealed a torn-out representation of a clock showing the time of the moment accompanied by the grand pronouncement, ‘As the time is now … whatever it was … I shall say good afternoon,’ or whatever was appropriate. The pressure of six shows a day, six days a week eventually got the better of Watts, and Tony would lose control as the magician found himself saying, ‘As the time is now nine thirty …’ when the paper clock told the world it was not yet teatime. As Derek added, the real tragedy was that no one noticed, which made the situation all the more appealing to Hancock. With their U-boat Commander binoculars around their necks, those out front had not come for miracles, let alone laughter, only for the nudes, or as Tony, perhaps ungraciously, once referred to them, ‘these little scrubbers with small tits like dartboards’.
They were paid £30 a week. Hancock worked this out as the equivalent of about 4s. an hour. ‘At these rates,’ he added, ‘no wonder they never closed!’ It was, however, a small venue with a limited capacity of just over 300 and, at the time Hancock played there, entertainment tax to pay of £50,000 a year. But it was never just about the money. There was curiously the glory as well, or what would one day be perceived as such. It may be a myth that Van Damm had the skill of Nostradamus when it came to spotting comedy talent. The law of averages dictated that most of the acts that passed the Windmill audition were forgotten, while among those who failed Van Damm’s scrutiny were Spike Milligan, Benny Hill and Roy Castle. But ahead of Hancock, as the roll call of honour installed in the front of the theatre would show, were Jimmy Edwards, Harry Secombe, Alfred Marks, Michael Bentine, Peter Sellers, Arthur English and, noticeably, Bill Kerr. There became a sense of almost military pride in which those who survived the six-week campaign could vaunt their achievement. Galton and Simpson picked up on this in the radio episode where Hancock contemplated his old school reunion. Sid points out that the rest of his contemporaries may well be big-business tycoons and cabinet ministers by now, but Tony reminds him that he too has made his mark in his chosen profession. ‘You got your name up on the board outside the Windmill,’