Sir David Jason - A Life of Laughter. Stafford Hildred
was enough. After agreeing, to the relief of ITV bosses, to make two final Frost adventures in 2009 he announced they would be the last we would see of the crumpled, yet charismatic, copper.
‘I don’t want to go down the Dixon of Dock Green route, where George Dixon was apparently still in the police force when he was in his 80s, leaning on the cop shop counter for support and wearing his carpet slippers out of view of the camera.’
But fortunately, no more Inspector Jack Frost does not mean no more David Jason. The actor remains in remarkable demand. Even Marks and Spencer called on his voice as they decided to re-vamp their award-winning ads. And also for screening in 2009 is the remarkable television film Albert’s Memorial. It is the moving story of three World War Two veterans, Albert, Harry and Frank. As Albert lies dying in hospital his old comrades decide to make his last wish, to be buried on one of their old German battlefields, come true. The last time Albert, played by Michael Jayston, felt really alive was in the closing stages of the taking of Berlin so Harry (David Jason) and Frank (David Warner) take his body and attempt to take it to Germany. The plot unfolds as Harry and Frank eventually kidnap Albert’s body from the hospital mortuary and begin a journey that will change their lives forever, as they explore dark events, hardly mentioned since 1945. With Albert’s coffin tied to the roof rack of Harry’s black cab, they set off on their adventure to honour their friend’s last wish and create Albert’s memorial. The journey will see Frank and Harry coming to terms with the trauma and emotion of what happened all those years ago, when as soldiers fighting for their survival, they joined forces with the Russians to encircle Berlin. Throughout their voyage of adventure, each skates on dangerously thin emotional ice, as the events of 1945 continue to haunt them. It’s a brilliant black comedy about friendship that provides yet another enthralling platform for the sublime and enduring acting talents of Sir David Jason.
One great sadness was the death of David Jason’s great friend and mentor Ronnie Barker. The memories are very precious. David Jason said, ‘I will always feel very, very, very lucky to have been able to work with Ronnie. I’ll always remember one particularly wonderful line that Ronnie said to me one day. We were rehearsing Open All Hours and all the cast were laughing their heads off about something. Ronnie turned to me with this big grin and he said, “Isn’t this marvelous – we’re getting paid to make ourselves laugh!” That’s how I remember him.’
But with his young family and his energy for work Sir David Jason spends much more time looking forwards than backwards. Aged 69, he is still going up in the world, having swapped his bus pass for a helicopter pilot’s licence. He said, ‘It’s taken me quite a long time to achieve, but I finally got it at the end of last year, just at the age when most people are retiring. You’ve got to have something to aim at if you want to get off the ground and go places, haven’t you?’
Stafford Hildred and Tim Ewbank
The tidy, terraced houses in Lodge Lane, Finchley, were built more than 200 years ago. They were first built as farm cottages for workers on the agricultural estates that swept right down into the edges of north London which have long since been swallowed up by suburbia. On 2 February 1940, as the Second World War raged bitterly across Europe, one of the coldest winters in years had encouraged most residents to stoke up the fires and stay indoors. But Billingsgate fish porter Arthur White and his sprightly little Welsh wife Olwen, who lived at 26 Lodge Lane, were otherwise occupied at the nearby North Middlesex Hospital bringing twin baby boys into the world.
They already had a seven-year-old son, also called Arthur, and they were delighted to increase the size of their young family two-fold. Four days later, a neighbour generously used some of Arthur’s precious petrol ration to ferry Olwen and the baby boys home and, for a few days, their joy at their domestic bliss was undimmed, even by the horrors of war. But one of the boys was weak and ailing. His breathing was failing as a massive infection took hold of his fragile frame. Olwen did everything she could to try to breathe life into her sickening son but, tragically, he died after just two short weeks of life.
‘I was in such despair,’ said Olwen bleakly, years later. ‘We had decided to call the twins David and Jason. David was healthy but Jason was so sickly he never had a chance and I felt so helpless. I just had to watch him go. I don’t even know what was really wrong with him. I buried the tiny body myself, out the back. I didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t tell anybody. We had no money for a proper burial. It was war and I had to do it.’
The healthy twin thrived and his birth was registered a month afterwards when Arthur and Olwen later trudged to Edmonton Register Office on 19 March 1940 to record, sadly, a single addition to the family. David John White was a lively baby with a powerful set of lungs which he was always eager to demonstrate to his grieving parents. Olwen and Arthur were devastated by their loss, but they were also determined that their tiny son should not be forgotten, and would often quietly wonder together what might have become of Jason had he been strong enough to survive. Olwen was naturally especially delighted when her surviving twin eventually went on to make the two names so well loved and famous throughout the land.
Yet, in fact, it was not until David was 14 that he discovered the stunning truth that he was a twin and that his baby brother had died soon after birth. It was an enormous shock to the teenager. To outsiders, David has always tried hard to look deeply unimpressed by the revelation but, in reality, it had a shattering effect on the young man. When asked by the authors about his lost brother, he quickly became very businesslike and matter-of-fact, insisting coolly, ‘It just came out during the course of some conversation with my mother that apparently I had had a twin.’
David is typically anxious to play down any hint of the family trauma and would say only, ‘The bottom line of the story is that one survived and one did not. It happens all the time. Many years ago, my brother Arthur’s wife was pregnant with twins and she lost both of them. They now have a son called Russell which is wonderful.’ David insists publicly that he does not feel his determination to do well is any sort of compensation for the death of his brother. ‘It has never, ever occurred to me,’ he said. ‘Two little dots came out. One dot lived and one did not. I just found out casually in the course of a conversation. “You did have a twin, you know”, said my mother. I just said, “Oh did I? Oh really”. At that time, my mother was great and there was no problem. It was never given any weight and it was not a problem for me. I was not made to feel any responsibility. The irony is that we are all made from a moment in time.’
But one school friend remembers it very differently. ‘When he came to school the day after his mum told him about his twin dying, he looked terrible. He was shaking with emotion and he looked absolutely shattered. He swore us to secrecy about it and I think he hardly ever mentioned it again. But that day he looked awful, as though all his humour and energy had drained out of him. That day he said he felt guilty but, to be honest, I think afterwards he somehow drew strength from it, as if he had an added responsibility to achieve things on behalf of his brother as well as himself.’
David’s parents were determined to do the very best for all their children. Olwen insisted that the long family tradition of looking after your own was very strongly in her mind. In any case, there was a war on and tragedy was an everyday occurrence.
England in 1940 experienced a bitterly cold winter and it was a shivering London that welcomed baby David. The Thames froze over as temperatures tumbled to the lowest of the century. But inside the humble terraced house, with its outside toilet and its tin bath hanging on a nail in the back door, David White spent his first months and years of life in a home which was always warm and happy, air raids permitting.
Baby David did his bit for the family war effort by noisily resisting attempts to put on his tiny gas mask. Whenever the air raid sirens sounded and the family started to move to the relative safety of the shelter erected in the house, David’s screams of protest began. ‘It used to worry me a lot, that gas mask,’ recalls Olwen. ‘He just screamed like mad when I put it on him.’
David’s cries often had to compete against the noise of German