Sir David Jason - A Life of Laughter. Stafford Hildred
He was still just 15 years old in July 1955, when noted local critic Bill Gelder from the Barnet and Finchley Press warmly praised his performance in Robert’s Wife by St John Ervine. David deeply appreciated Gelder’s comment: ‘David White did well as a young chap wanting to do the ‘right’ thing by a girl.’
But it was a guest appearance for the nearby Manor Players when Bill Gelder hinted publicly that the youngster might one day earn his living from his acting. Gelder wrote: ‘… the extraordinarily precocious schoolboy by David White, looking like a young James Cagney and playing, though only 16, with the ease of a born actor … possibly the highlight of the evening which was bright enough in all conscience.’ The acclaim delighted David. He carefully cut out the review and made sure it didn’t escape his parents’ notice.
His mother, who still considered that one son risking his future in such a risky profession was more than enough, proudly noted the critic’s perceptive opinion but was still insistent that David persevere with his electrical qualifications.
‘It was very nice to get praise from Bill Gelder,’ says David. ‘He was always considered the best drama critic of the lot. If you got a good review from him, it counted. Most of the local press tend to praise the whole cast for fear of offending someone. I suppose they can’t say so-and-so is a load of rubbish, but Bill Gelder could be quite hard and quite cutting and he was always respected.’
Not that David took life too seriously in those days. Julie Pressland remembers a young man who was always terrific fun to be with. ‘It was great to be in David’s company,’ she says. ‘I used to love to go around with him. He had determination. We all enrolled for some evening classes or other but most of us dropped out soon afterwards. But David was very single-minded, he carried on with his amateur dramatics. He went for it. David always believed that you should decide whatever you want to do and then go for it.
‘But he was a laugh as well. It was in 1962 when David took me for my first Chinese meal. I had never had Chinese food before but he talked me into it. He said it was delicious and really raved about it. I remember I had a new suit for the evening and when we got to the restaurant and the food arrived I thought it was the most dreadful slop I had ever seen in my life. The first time you see Chinese food it can look disgusting. I kept saying, “It’s very nice, it’s very nice,” because I didn’t want to offend David.
‘When I got home, I was sick all over this new suit and I never touched Chinese food again for about 15 years after that. I will never forget that night. I pretended all evening that I liked the food as muchas he did. Then, at the end, he said, “Oh, we must finish off with some jasmine tea.” I thought, “My God, that will certainly finish me off.” I told David the next day that I had brought up his Chinese all over my new suit and he just burst out laughing. He thought it was hilarious.’
But he was also honest enough to admit later that, during those early stages of his amateur career, ‘I really didn’t think I had the ability to turn professional. Most people who become actors are so confident. They know for certain that they are right and everybody else is wrong. I was the opposite. I was very, very insecure – mind you, I think I’m still insecure, but I’m not as bad as I was.’
In fact, the black moods of frustration that would sometimes descend on the generally perky young man do date right back to his youth. A workmate said, ‘David was a great guy to go out with because normally he was a laugh a minute. But he could suddenly turn. One night, we were in a pub in Finchley and he had been working hard at chatting up this very pretty young girl. Then an old boyfriend of hers arrived, a very well spoken chap dressed in a smart blazer and cavalry twills. I think he was home from the Army. All of a sudden, she just turned away from David and started talking to this posh bloke. David was livid. He hardly said another word all night. When I mentioned it the next day he gave me a really menacing look and said, “I hate those stuck-up bastards. They think they own the world.” I was surprised because he was still seething with anger. He wasn’t that keen on the girl – it was just the way he had been dropped. He couldn’t bear that.’
The ability to get laughs that he had displayed so often at school was swiftly transferred to the stage. He had enormous straight acting talent but always preferred comedy. Vera Neck says, ‘He did do quite a variety of straight roles, but if there was a chance to drop a tray, sit on his bottom or drop his trousers, he was there.’
Vera is a statuesque lady of 5ft 7in, which caused some amusing moments when she and David were cast as lovers in a Spanish play. ‘We had to devise ways of making me look a bit shorter than David,’ recalls Vera. ‘I sat at his feet rather a lot. We didn’t have many love scenes because we were physically so ill-matched. On the few occasions it did happen, we just had to cheat it.
‘I found him quite affectionate. We had tremendous warmth and rapport on stage. He had it with everyone. He is such a lovely actor. We chanced on a time in our group when there must have been half-a-dozen people who could, in ordinary circumstances, have earned their living as actors, had they been tempera-mentally suited to it. I wasn’t – I had the talent but not the temperament. But the feeling that flowed between those few people who were there at that time was wonderful.
‘David was the leading light. We loved him. He used to come to all the parties and he was always the life and soul in a muck-about way. He was a clown. He just liked mucking about.’
Another of David’s regular leading ladies was Barbara Dunks. Again, she was an inch or so taller than he was, so a fair amount of knee-bending and sitting down was called for. Barbara became another firm friend and a devoted fan of the poverty stricken young hopeful. She remembers, ‘He was such a callow, gangling youth when I first saw him, but I knew straight away that he had that magical something that all actors yearn for … presence.
‘He was so full of life and even at 15 you knew he was special. But he was such a monkey at making you laugh at all the wrong moments. When you were in the middle of a terribly serious interchange in rehearsals, he could just look at you and you would just break up. He just had that twinkle. The producer would be going mad but there was nothing you could do about it. He was always very serious and proper when we were doing it for real, but in rehearsals you could never be sure he wasn’t going to produce a piece of mischief.
‘It was so sad, though, that it seemed he could never take the hero’s part because he was so short. Instead, he was automatically put into the comedy parts which he was brilliant at. But other boys, who frequently did not possess a millionth of his talent, so often became the tall hero.
‘I always felt that the height thing did bother him. Knowing David, he would say it didn’t, but I have seen him watch a play with the hero or leading man in a scene and I just knew that he would have loved that part.
‘The trouble was that, even in amateur things, you get typecast, people start to forget you might be able to do anything but comedy. If ever there was a funny part they would think, “Oh, we’ll get David to do that and 6ft Henry to do the hero.” Sometimes it was simply the wrong way round. You could see it was.’
Barbara recognised that David had decided he did not want to get involved with any girls. ‘He was friendly with the girls in the club but he did not seem to want to get serious about anybody. He used to come down to the theatre in his little van. We used to pull his leg about being an electrician, say he was enough to give anyone a shock.
‘We were in a revue together, early on in his time with the Incognitos and we had to sing “Bye, Bye Blackbird”. I remember we were in hysterics in the wings because it was so bad. Well, we thought it was bad but in fact the audience loved it because they knew us all from the serious plays and thought for us all to be in this light-hearted revue singing this silly song not very well was great fun.
‘It was a real joke for all of us and, although we were all supposed to behave ourselves, we thought it was a huge joke. We were all togged up ready to sing this bloomin’ song, but in all the giggling and larking about in the wings just as we were supposed to dance on, I happened to stand on poor old David’s bootlace and he rolled on to the stage in a heap. Being David of course, he carried the mistake off brilliantly