Sir David Jason - A Life of Laughter. Stafford Hildred
started at school I was not very bright and I did not do very well. I always seemed to be very backward. Then I found that there was something I could do well and that helped me a lot. I was always very physical and we had a very good young teacher, called Mr Joy, who taught us gymnastics. Because I was agile and could do things, he said, “That is very good,” and he told the rest of the class to watch how I did one exercise and try to copy it.’
David had never before been used as a model for his contemporaries to match, and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. ‘It was the first time a teacher had ever said anything like that to me. That was a big turning point for me, because I thought if I can do that in gymnastics, why can’t I do it in History or Geography or whatever?
‘I was never very good at Maths, but at English and Science I began to creep up the scale because I realised that if I could do something well physically, it gave me a spur. Before then, I believe that deep down I had subconsciously given up. I always used to feel the lessons were so complicated and I would just give up before I started, so I was always bottom of the class. But Mr Joy proved that I could do something well. That gave me enormous confidence and it opened the door for me. I was a natural gymnast and it has been with me ever since.
‘He started me reading a lot and helped me in every way. I worked at science and got an award, and I went on to become a prefect and captain of the football and swimming teams. I owe that man a lot.’
David deliberately avoided pointing out that his improvement at school exactly coincided with his discovery that he was a surviving twin. He prefers not to delve into the psychology of loss but it seems clear that his new-found purpose and sense of awareness had at least some connection with the surprising new knowledge that he was the surviving twin.
Maureen Wanders was another teacher who treated young David more gently. She spotted his flair for entertaining and recalls, ‘He was a natural performer who always made the other children laugh. He seemed to stop growing when he was 13 or 14 and I think he was quite self-conscious about being short. But he was high spirited and very popular. He brought the house down in one play we put on.
‘And in class he could always be relied upon to liven things up. He wasn’t naughty, just great fun, with a great sense of humour. David shone at English, but drama was where his real talent lay. You could not miss his natural flair.’
David frankly recalled, ‘At school, I was a well known joker and the reason why was because I was very small and very slight and, in order to survive, I started clowning. I think this is true of a lot of people who are in comedy.
‘In my case, I knew that if you’re little you tend to get beaten up by the bigger lads, so in order to defend myself as I was not very well built, I decided to make them laugh. It was no help being a coward. They kicked cowards. You had to use your brains. And all bullies need a court jester. I couldn’t fight them with my fists so I fought them with my wits. I didn’t want to get kicked to death so I made them laugh. I really worked at it so, if there was any problem, I could get them so busy laughing that they forgot about beating me up.’
David was always able to laugh off his lack of inches but just sometimes he yearned to be tall. He often looked smaller than he was because he used to be swallowed by clothes which were just a little too big for him to provide long lasting value.
‘We never had much money in our family,’ he said. ‘Everything I owned my mother would say, “He’ll grow into it,” so I had jackets with sleeves that were too long and shoes that were too big. And, one Christmas, when I was 10 or 11, the thing I wanted more than anything was a bike. Come Christmas morning and there it was, but my feet wouldn’t reach the pedals.
‘As usual my mother had bought me a full-size model, “to grow into”. My father had to put wooden blocks on the pedals and even then my toes only just touched them. My street cred really plummeted after that.’
David’s mother always had great hopes for her children. She was pleased that David’s schoolwork was improving, but was still anxious to help. She frequently sent David, and any other youngsters she could dragoon, up to the local library in Finchley to listen to worthy, self-improving lectures as an addition to their schoolwork.
A youngster, called Brian Barnycoat (known as Bodgy for short) became friendly with David and Mike Weedon and the trio became great pals for many years.
Even as a young boy, the most noticeable thing about David was his sharp sense of humour. He led the threesome on a trip into central London to see his radio heroes The Goons. Peter Sellers was David’s childhood idol. He played his Goons records over and over again on the record player in the White front room and marvelled at the hilarious Sellers mimicry and range of voices. David was addicted to the Goons and thoroughly enjoyed watching one episode being recorded. He said, ‘They broke all the rules and, of course, the older generation did not understand what on earth we were all going on about. They were so off the wall.’
David gradually realised that he had a talent to amuse, even if it did embarrass his friends sometimes. A favourite early comic stunt was to alarm the occupants of a crowded Tube train by pretending to sew his fingers together.
‘He would pull a hair from his head and then go to thread it through a needle,’ recalls Mike Weedon. ‘He would start with his little finger and work round them all and then pass through the palm of his hand. Then he would pull it and automatically the fingers of his hands would close. He would take about ten minutes for it all to happen and people would be fascinated. We would be cringing, it was so embarrassing. We all thought he was crazy. But I suppose he was only acting.’
Not all young David’s attempts at humour were quite so subtle. A hapless window cleaner, widely considered by David and his young pals in Lodge Lane to be something of a dirty old man, experienced a rather smellier and more slapstick comedy routine. In those days, when horse-drawn carts were still a familiar feature of the north London traffic, the window cleaner always carried buckets to scoop up the horse droppings to sell as manure to some of the enthusiastic rose-growers of the community. This meant his barrow was usually laden with, not just ladders, but buckets of steaming natural fertiliser.
David thoughtfully inserted two bangers deep into one bucket, lit the fuse and made a run for it. The resulting explosion left the poor window cleaner and a couple of innocent passers-by covered in horse muck.
Ernie’s younger sister Julie Pressland was a good friend from childhood. She remembers the incident clearly. ‘We all thought the window cleaner was a pervert so no one was very sorry for him,’ she says. ‘It was a real mess. There was horse shit everywhere. The window cleaner was really mad and, kids being kids, someone told him David was responsible. But, by then, David was long gone.
‘That was pretty typical of David. He was full of devilment but he never did anyone any real harm. It was just for a joke. He loved to make people laugh even in those days. I remember he had an air gun and he filled another neighbour’s tin bath full of holes.
‘Another time we had some washing strung out on a line in the back yard and my mum kept looking out and saying, “There’s a funny wind – it’s only blowing the knickers.” David was hanging out of his back window taking pot shots at our underwear with his toy gun! There were five women in our family so there were always plenty of drawers on the line for him to aim at.’
David did later become an accomplished cook, but one of his early efforts looked distinctly unpalatable. His mother was baking and young David came out into the yard with some pastry that he said he wanted to make into pies. He mixed it up with leaves, mud and sugar and baked it. Then, when he had cooked the alarming mixture, he sat down and ate it and, with characteristically convincing dramatic style, he pretended he was munching on a chocolate eclair!
Julie says, ‘He was always very funny. And even when we were young he could walk into a room and make people laugh. It was never unkind, cruel humour but always gentle, taking the mickey out of himself instead of other people. He would make a joke about his lack of height and get everyone laughing at him. We lived on the poor side of the street. The houses on the other side were more expensive and we always used to call that the posh side.’
Julie