Sir David Jason - A Life of Laughter. Stafford Hildred
dishes around in her tiny kitchen. Once, the Luftwaffe almost silenced these outbursts with a near miss, which left the house structurally undamaged but somehow managed to blow out Olwen’s cooker. Happily, the only casualty was the cake she was baking at the time.
The War made its grim effects felt as food rationing was brought in and, just four days after the birth of the twins, that most famous of Government campaigns was launched to combat the threat of German spies – ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’. Olwen was determined to protect her brood from the worst of the war. Her native Wales had endowed her with brisk efficiency and a warm sense of humour. A baby girl, June, completed the family four years after David was born. And while there was never much money to go around, the fiercely independent Olwen supplemented her husband’s meagre wages by going out and working as a cleaner.
The wartime blackouts frequently disrupted Arthur’s trips to work. He had to get up at about 4.00am to cycle to Billingsgate and, soon after war broke out, he overslept. Arthur looked like being very late and was urgently pedalling through a dark and gloomy north London when the road simply disappeared and he went careering into a bomb crater about 50ft wide and 40ft deep.
Arthur was knocked out cold. When he came round about 20 minutes later, he found he was trapped at the bottom of a huge hole and, try as he might, he was unable to scramble up the sides and out. He started shouting for help and, after a further 15 minutes, two men arrived and shone their torches down on an anguished Arthur.
‘Go on,’ said Arthur, ‘get me out of here will you, lads?’ The faces looking down were wide-eyed in amazement. Then one of the rescuers said, ‘Bloody hell. He’s had a 50-ton bomb dropped on him and the bugger’s still alive!’
There always was a black side to wartime humour. David’s older brother, Arthur junior, was growing up fast and was quick to capitalise when a German air raid on north London blasted a part of a human arm up on to the guttering at the back of 26 Lodge Lane. Enterprising Arthur was charging the other children 2d (two old pennies) a look until his sideshow was interrupted by angry adults. The local doctor was called to remove the arm in a bag, much to the irritation and disappointment of Arthur and his ghoulish young customers.
Arthur was always a boisterous lad and came close to ending one of Britain’s most promising acting careers some 20 years before it had begun, with a badly aimed house brick. Arthur recalled the incident with a wince.
‘When we were schoolboys, David wanted to come to a camp I had made with my mates. I wouldn’t let him, and he was hanging about trying to get in. Unfortunately, he got in the way of a brick I was throwing at our ‘enemies’. It hit him on the head and nearly killed him. I was shattered, and to this day he still carries the scar.’
Olwen was the driving force of the family and, on most matters, whatever she said went. Neighbours were always treated with just enough friendliness and respect but kept firmly at a safe distance. The family was well-liked but Olwen saw to it that they always kept themselves very much to themselves.
David’s early explorations of his locality were conducted in a somewhat unusual form of transport, a rickety wooden wheelbarrow. Next-door neighbour Ernie Pressland recalls David as … ‘a little ragged-arsed sod in a barrow. His brother Arthur used to get lumbered with pushing him around. All the kids from Lodge Lane used to stick together in one great big sprawling gang. Arthur was our leader – we used to call him ‘King Arthur’ – and we used to go scrumping apples over near the posh houses in Totteridge.’
The Whites were one important social step up on the Presslands in that their air raid shelter was an indoor Morrison device, while their neighbours relied upon the outdoor Anderson variety to save them from the Germans. But after young Eileen Pressland caught what tragically became a fatal dose of pneumonia after a night of shivering in the cold, the family shunned either form of shelter.
Ernie recalls, ‘After Eileen died, we all slept together in the same bedroom, all six kids and my mum and dad. My mother said, “We’ll all go together if we go.” But we all became close in the Blitz. The Whites were good friends and neighbours.’
Young David was known as ‘Whitey’ and, it seems, had a real dramatic talent right from his early days.
Ernie Pressland remembers, ‘I had been firing potato pellets from a toy gun and David reckoned I’d copped him one in the ear. I didn’t really know if I hit him but he went through such a dying spasm act that my mother went bananas and broke the gun to pieces over my back.’
It was certainly obvious to all the family that David’s flair for acting was apparent from a very early age. Olwen found her children’s favourite game was dressing up. Her frilly blouses and floppy hats, dresses and coats and her husband’s trousers and shirts were all in constant demand from the three youngsters who loved to act out their own little plays. Arthur, the oldest, generally took the early lead in the junior White dramatic society, but David and June always seemed to be playing the biggest parts by the end.
When they got older, they pestered their mother to take them to scavenge in junk shops for even more outlandish outfits. Olwen encouraged the artistic side in her offspring. She was steeped in the Welsh family tradition of creating your own entertainment through large gatherings with every relation called upon to deliver a song or a monologue.
In fact, when the children moved on to nearby Northside School, it was June who impressed dramatically with a spirited portrayal of Queen Victoria in an early school play. At Northside School, David’s cheeky sense of humour certainly began to develop. His best friend was a lad called Mike Weedon who lived just two streets away in Grange Avenue. The two youngsters made sure that life was never dull for their English teacher, an endlessly harassed lady called Miss Holmes. Mike recalls that one of David’s early pranks was to spray on a little extra decoration to her dress.
‘I remember once, as Miss Holmes walked up the aisle between desks with a smart blue dress on, David got a pen full of ink and flicked it on to the back of her dress. She never knew it was him as the ink blended in with the colour of the dress.’
David was always the form clown and his high-spirited partnership with Mike Weedon made sure both boys were regularly in trouble with some teachers.
‘We were always getting separated because of our antics,’ recalls Mike Weedon. ‘Every lesson seemed to begin with “White, get down to the front of the class. Weedon, get to the back of the class.” We always tried to sit next to each other, but we played up too much.’
Certainly, Miss Holmes did not always fully appreciate David’s irrepressible sense of fun. She once caned him very hard on his wrist and hand in front of the class.
Mike Weedon says, ‘She was so mad at something he had done, she struck him haphazardly across the wrist and we couldn’t believe it when David turned round and said, “I’m going to report you to the headmaster.” And he went right along to the headmaster, Mr Maurice Hackett. Huge weals had come up on his wrist and he just stormed out of the classroom and into the head’s office. She got into trouble and was told to ease off by the Head. She missed his hand and hit his wrist and it could have been quite damaging.’ David was never shy about sticking up for himself. He was well below average height but, somehow, his energy and his ready wit meant that he was rarely picked on by bigger boys.
But Mr Hackett was not always so sympathetic. David and Mike packed countless scrapes into their school careers. A favourite way to start the day was to devise a new way of avoiding assembly in the morning. One day, the pair dodged down into a darkened tunnel area that ran underneath school to get out of the tedious ceremony. Unfortunately, the tunnel contained a drain which swiftly soaked them up to the ankles in water, and much worse was to come when they squelched out after assembly.
Mike remembers, ‘We kept quiet until everybody had gone and crept up the stairs and round to the front door. Who should be standing there, but Mr Hackett. He caught us fair and square and we had to wait outside his room before we finally got the cane. One stroke on the hand.’
David certainly did not shine in his first years at school. He was painfully shy and in his early teens lacked any sort of confidence. But a perceptive and thoughtful