Now This is a Very True Story. Jimmy Jones
she had a cute smile too and she was very flirty.
In the middle of the night this Maureen came and crept in bed with me and what followed was as wonderful as it was inevitable. When we finished, she kissed me on the cheek, got up and went back in her own bed.
This happened on the Thursday night, the Friday night and the Saturday night. I shafted her all over the weekend. I was leaving on the Monday morning, so on the Sunday night her father gave me a pull and said, ‘Don’t keep Maureen up too late tonight, she’s got to get up for school in the morning.’ That frightened the bleedin’ life out of me, I can tell you. We got in the bed and I said to her, well how old are you? She said, ‘I’m 14.’
For crying out loud! I knew the law at that time and I thought, I could be nicked here! It frightened me because I’d given her enough rod to put a hand-rail round Harrogate.
But I still gave her one before I fucked off.
The following morning I was up with the cock – again, on the motorbike and off like a bloody rocket. I didn’t even say goodbye to her. My bike was older than Maureen was. Granted she had better acceleration and a quieter exhaust, but at least the motorbike was legal to ride.
Looking back now, I consider those three days as a bit of a Triumph.
* * * *
I’d left school at 15 with no qualifications. I could add up, nobody would ever have me over for a quid, but even now my writing looks like a spider has crawled over the paper. I was a grafter, though, and the bike made me properly independent. I could drive myself to work and to shows. I didn’t have to rely on anyone else any more, which was just how I liked it.
By the age of 17, people started to take notice of me. I was working the British Legion club down the Walworth Road in south London. It was an odd place; the entertainment secretary always used to warn you not to stay on stage for an extra song after your allotted time. This was for the very good reason that, if you did, you’d be wasting your time as the train went by every half hour and rocked the building for so long no one would have heard you. All you could hear was the bloody train. Of course it wouldn’t apply now because these days the trains are always delayed.
This particular night, Larry Parnes the famous impresario was in and he came backstage after I’d sung and asked me if I could raise £250. I said, ‘Are you joking, it was hard enough raising £25 for me bike.’ He said ‘That’s a pity because if you could raise £250 I could get you a record contract.’ We used to call him ‘Parnes, Shillings and Pence’ cos Larry was very reluctant to part with a pound note.
Well I didn’t have a snowman’s chance in the Sahara of raising that kind of dough. I was only getting paid £1.50 for a show. There was more chance of me giving Princess Margaret one. But there was another guy on the bill with me by the name of Tommy Hicks from Bermondsey, and his mother and father had a greengrocer’s at the time, and they raised the money for Tommy to take Larry up on his offer. And, of course, Tommy Hicks became Tommy Steele, who had his first hit a year later in 1956 with ‘Rock With The Caveman’, and his first Number One two months after that with ‘Singin’ The Blues’.
Just think, if I could have raised half a monkey that might have been me singing ‘Half A Sixpence’ on Broadway as opposed to singing for two and sixpence in the Broadway, Dagenham…
When I wasn’t out working as a singer, I would still enter whatever talent shows were going and work for free. There were a few of us who used to go in for all of these contests at the time. It was generally the same little crew, you may have heard of them. There was Queenie Watts who became a famous actress, Tommy Bruce, who sounded a lot like Louis Armstrong and had a Top Three hit in 1960, the singer Kim Cordell from Clacton who did a bit of telly in the ’60s, and a fella from Shoreditch by the name of Terry Parsons who changed his name and became an international showbusiness legend as Matt Monro.
Back then he was a bus driver; he worked out of Plaistow bus garage. He certainly rang the bell later on with massive international hits such as ‘Born Free’, ‘Walk Away’ and ‘Softly As I Leave You’.
The best of these pub talent contests was at the Rising Sun in Bethnal Green on a Tuesday night. I’d win one week, Queenie would win the second, then Matt, then Tommy… and we’d all come back for the big final. It was very competitive and the standards were sky high – far higher than they are on TV talent shows today. So there started to be a bit of a buzz about the place. I was in the pub one night when the legendary Judy Garland came in to watch the turns. Eventually the Rising Sun talent nights inspired the ATV television series Stars and Garters, which tried to recreate the feel of a variety show in your local pub. It made stars of Kathy Kirby, Vince Hill and my old mate Tommy Bruce. The compère on the TV show was Ray Martine – not Welsh George who did it in the pub – but they did use the pub band, the Don Harvey Trio, who were to figure in my life a fair bit. There was Don Harvey on organ, Eric Cornish on drums and George Watkins on bass.
On TV, the audience consisted of extras mixed with real regulars from the Rising Sun. Only non-alcoholic drinks were served but they did hand out free cigarettes. Ray Martine was a good comic from the Deuragon Arms in Hackney, but his routine was so blue that ATV had to bring in Barry Cryer, Dick Vosburgh and Marty Feldman to write clean gags for him.
Back in the real world, the Rising Sun nights were such a runaway success that other pubs followed suit. A guy called Daniel Farson started to run talent nights on the Isle of Dogs, with Martine as compère. He also put on a show called A Night At The Comedy in the West End with top turns such as Kenny Lynch and Vince Hill and a young up-and-coming Scouse comedian called Jimmy Tarbuck. Then he would have two acts competing in the new talent part of the show. One particular night, it was me versus Queenie Watts, and when Ray asked the audience who’d won, this one fella was most insistent. He said that Albert Simmonds was sensational and that he wanted to meet me after the show and give me his professional advice. I was thrilled and intrigued. It turned out he was a showbiz journalist called Godfrey Wynn from the Sunday Express – he was said to have been the highest paid columnist in Fleet Street, where his nickname was Winifred God. But Daniel and Ray pulled me over and said, ‘Be careful of this bloke because he’s not quite kosher’. I was 17 and didn’t know what they were getting at, so they spelt it: the guy was gay, and quite predatory. He’d give me some column inches in the newspapers all right but he would also want to slip a column up the back – where The Sun don’t shine.
Just as they’d predicted, I was propositioned straight afterwards. Godfrey came and spoke to me and his first words were, ‘I could put you on top of the tree.’
And me, being a cocky little bastard, said, ‘That’s very kind of you but I’m not a fairy.’ So there was my leg-up out the window, along with his leg-over.
Ray was gay himself, he just didn’t like men with a thing for underage kids.
A Night At The Comedy was an absolutely fabulous show. Ray Martine had a sidekick in Kim Cordell, and there was another regular on the bill called Mrs Shufflewick who was a drag act and very, very funny indeed; Shufflewick was a legend in variety theatre circles. She was played by Rex Jameson, and the character was a drunken old Cockney charlady whose stories got dirtier the more she drank her port and lemon. We knew her as Shuff.
Jimmy Tarbuck closed the first half, and top of the bill was the brilliant Northern comedian Jimmy James who we all called Stumpy Marsh because he had a bad leg; Roy Castle was his stooge. Queenie Watts opened the second half with a song and then it was all down to Jimmy James. Tarbuck and I would sit and watch him six nights a week. We never missed a show. He was wonderful, a real comedian’s comedian. We would just turn to each other and say, ‘Look at his timing!’ It was stunning, absolutely impeccable. He did a drunk sketch, an elephant in a box set, and his act was word perfect. It’s an over-used phrase, but Jimmy James really was a comedy icon.
Ironically, off-stage James was a teetotaller, he wouldn’t touch a drop, but no one played a better drunk. I can still see him now, lurching across the stage while ‘Three O’Clock In The Morning’ played in the