Les Dawson

Les Dawson0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Les Dawson0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

This week our castaway is the comedian Les Dawson. Les, how do you feel about this desert island proposition? Could you take loneliness for a fair amount of time? I think so,'cause I've played enough clubs to be lonely in.

Presenter0:44

Some of those clubs. But may I say first of all that it's such a pleasure to be closeted with you in this technological cupboard.

Les Dawson0:44

Some of those

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And I think that in in fact you've given me a confidence that I hitherto hadn't felt, and your opening remark was such that

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For a moment I was thrown there. Yes, I have been lonely on several occasions. To be a committee, it is lonely. What would you be happiest on this island to have got away from?

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I think I hate indifference.

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I think indifference is probably greatest killer.

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indifference towards neighbors to indifference towards people or children, whatever it is. I mean, the whole of life is basically one of being together. And I think indifference is

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It's pretty rotten and I've been married for twenty years and I've had an indifference every year, you know, year of my life.

Speaker 21:23

difference every year, you know, you're

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How did you set about choosing just eight records to last for a long, long time?

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Records that would remind me.

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Or what I'd had before, or what I'd known before, nostalgic.

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discs, if you like, I suppose, which would uh

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Remind me of things in the past.

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The first one I've chosen is uh A Wonderful Piece by Revelle.

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the French composer, who I had great admiration for,

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because I used to play the piano seriously many years ago.

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In fact, many people said there was only one difference between myself and Chopin, he'd been dead longer than I have.

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And I think Rafael's Pavan for Infante Defunct is the ultimate in beauty.

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Ravel's Papan for a Dead Infanta played by the Orchestra of the Swiss Romonde conducted by Ernest Ansomé.

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Now I know you were brought up in a fairly

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run down area, if one can call it that of suburban Manchester.

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Did you know actual hardship as a as a boy? We lived in a road called Millital Road.

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and the reason why it was called Mirror Road if the houses stood it was a miracle.

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To give you some idea of the way we'd lived up to the age of fifteen I thought knives and forks were jewellery.

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But my mother always did her best to give me something nourishing. I've known the times where I when she's take the bones from her corsets to give me something nourishing. No, it wasn't easy, it was it.

Les Dawson3:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter3:40

Very harsh upbringing really. Father was superstitious. He wouldn't work if it was a Friday of the week.

Les Dawson3:43

We found the

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What were you good at at school?

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Um essays. Were you at that age? Were you a comic? Were you the school jester? Yes, by the sheer physical size of me, because I was fat.

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And the thing is when you're fat you can't run and you can't fight, so you have to be merry with people and pleasant.

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Now, as we know to our cost, somebody taught you to play the piano. Whose idea was that?

Presenter4:09

Well, it's it's a long story, is it? Because I used to play the piano when I was a child and the neighbors loved it.

Les Dawson4:09

Well, it's it

Presenter4:14

They used to break the windows to hear me better. And my father used to help me to keep time by banging the lid up and down on my fingers. And, um, from then I sort of progressed and uh

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I did my first concert, which is always a sort of salutary lesson for any child.

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Entered the music business, it was my first school concert.

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And when I'd finished playing this piece the the kids just stamped their feet and clapped their hands all over me.

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And I really began to realize that I had a musical career, you know. What was your first job when you left school?

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And my first job, um, I was an apprentice electrician.

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What did you want to be? What had you got in mind? Anything apart from being the repentant electrician. You were pretty good at boxing.

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Yes, that was about sir. Yeah, yeah.

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In fact, uh I was the only box ever carried a ring as well as out.

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I was carrying out the ring so often I'd handle some on my shorts. And my father was very good on this. He said to me one night, he said, Give it up, son. I said, We've not left the dressing room yet, Dad and I rumed then that the career had come to an end because I am basically a coward.

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The time for National Service came along. What did you opt for?

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Uh for desertion.

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Uh they wouldn't accept that, so I went into the tank where I became a tank driver. Yes. And your impressions of Al Jolson in regimental concerts are still spoken of by your comrades with

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Awed reverence. Was that the first time you faced an audience?

Presenter5:37

Yes, yes it was actually. Um

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Actually, the full story of this is: if you want to have man-to-man face to face, man-to-man face-to-face.

Les Dawson5:45

How many people?

Les Dawson5:48

But

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in this ridiculous surroundings in this cellar.

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Well, t the absolute truth was I got forty-eight days detention for going absent without leave.

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Where'd you go?

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I didn't go anywhere. I got caught, just I went out of the premise of the wire. There was a big fellow there, much bigger than I, in fact, he had shoulders like the Cotswolds.

Presenter6:06

and he bundled me up into a small heap and took me back again. But because of that small misdemeanour I got forty eight days.

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Luckily for me, it was Cambria Day in the Tank Corps, which of course is the

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Uh the first time that tanks were ever used in any sort of mechanized warfare was the First World War, Cambridge, nineteen fifteen, and there was nobody to play the piano.

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And so they dragged me out of the uh guard house, whatever it was.

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And they marched me briskly to the piano, and I played the piano, and never went back.

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Which was why we still have a British Army. Good. Let's have your second record. What's that?

Presenter6:41

Well, um

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There's a record that's now currently popular.

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And it reminds me so much of Lancashire life.

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a sort of seediness of self and

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Mist from the canals, and you can you know, you can find beauty in anything you care to look for. Indeed. I keep looking at the wife sometimes and I see beauty, but.

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I mean, that is really a tax of the imagination. But this record really sort of sums it all up, and it's called uh

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He painted Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. It's about Lowry, the painter. You knew Lowry, didn't you? Yes, I met Lowry, yeah.

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And he paints it, matched up men and matched on cats and dogs.

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He painted kids on the corner of a street of a sparking cross.

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Now he takes his brush and he waits.

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Outside them factory gates to paint his matchdog men and match dog cats and dogs.

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Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs sung by Brian and Michael. What happened when you came out of the army?

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But I couldn't settle.

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Because I once uh had a very sort of upsetting experience in the army, apart from what I've just disclosed to you, and that was the fact I couldn't get up in the morning.

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I was court-martialled.

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And the officer at the court martial said, Don't you hear the bugle? I said, No, they play when I'm asleep.

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And so I found myself in, as I dunno, in the horns of a dilemma when I came out of the army. I couldn't settle. There was nowhere to go. My parents disowned me.

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And so I thought I'd go to Paris'cause I wanted to be a writer. Yeah. I'd always had this beam me money to be a writer, so I gravitated to Paris, which I thought was the absolute Valhalla.

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For the arts in the middle of the city,

Les Dawson8:23

Do it.

Presenter8:25

Yes, in the army I had, yeah, for the soldier magazine, a mother two bits and pieces, you know. Yes. What were you trying to write? Essays.

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S's

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You see, I'm a great Thomas Chatterton fan. Yeah. I'm not near

Les Dawson8:36

Uh

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You know, your listeners probably heard of Chattanham, he was a great poet, and he died when he was eighteen.

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and he wrote that marvellous couplet hither all due away from a convent's cell, which to me summarises

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The very essence of beauty untouched, you know. So, of course, I wanted to be like a lamb. I wanted this sort of syndrome which wouldn't work. You weren't going to make much of a living writing essays. How did you live?

Presenter8:57

I played the piano. Where? In the brothel. Yes. Successfully? Uh the brothel was successful, I wasn't.

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And this is Purley too. The place was a brothel. I didn't know at the time. I must be perfectly honest. I was engaged as far as I knew to play the piano from three in the morning till six. How long did the Paris experiment last? A year.

Presenter9:15

Why did you give it up? I mean, was the piano playing falling off or the essays?

Les Dawson9:19

Now I'm going to go to the next.

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I was so thin the museum is a hat rack.

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And so I decided to come back home. I had my tail tucked well between my legs and I came back to my parents and

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I still miss Paris. I loved it and it was really nice. Let's have another record. What shall we have? Well, I would like to have a remembrance of Paris.

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I've spent in those.

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Mildless and somewhat lonely days the Kidios say

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uh and listening in the Tuileries to uh

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Well to me, one of the most fantastic singers in the world. And she when she did no regrets.

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Although it was mildness, of course he'd just be f

Speaker 410:06

Nigga beyond my

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Uh

Presenter10:15

Usa Mebianega

Speaker 410:21

Yeah.

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Edit PF, I regret nothing.

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So you came back to England. What happened?

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Back to the piano? No, it was a sort of a limbo period. I uh

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I lived in London for a while.

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and had a succession of jobs from well, professional babysitting to washing pots in Lions's cafes, you know, and things like this.

Les Dawson10:44

What source?

Presenter10:49

Yes. Only because I could get three meals a day. Had you started comicing at all yet?

Presenter10:54

No, no, because oddly enough, although as I say in the earlier sort of formative years of my life

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The only way I could succeed with any society wasn't by being funny, because I had nothing going for me, you know, physically.

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Built rather like a sort of absurd orangutang.

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I really hadn't got down to the comedy field, so I tried playing the piano and

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singing a few songs and getting a few laughs, mainly when I sang and played the piano, so

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I started doing one or two clubs in London and uh didn't get me anywhere at all.

Presenter11:23

What sort of material did you use apart from the piano play?

Les Dawson11:23

What sort of material?

Presenter11:25

Well it wasn't sort of dolefully, it was sort of hi there, I just love you people. It was sort of translating American because I thought you had to be like agency and telling wonderful, funny stories and it died very successfully. So that was the pattern for a few years. Club jobs when you could get them and uninteresting jobs to keep yourself. Oh, very interesting. I did I saw babies potties, for instance.

Les Dawson11:38

Cloud job.

Les Dawson11:40

I'm not sure.

Les Dawson11:42

Is it valuable?

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And one particular company is important to where the

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The advertising bill matter was the fact that you couldn't spill this potty. It was a non-spilled potty. Mhm. And they booked me as a rep for this, and I'd proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could spill this potty. So it didn't last very long.

Speaker 211:59

Get my finger.

Les Dawson11:59

Uh

Presenter12:00

So I was ousted once again. Now, there's a story about a job you had in a club in Hull, which had a traumatic effect on your career.

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Yes, there was a man called Al Heath, and if he's still listening, I still bless him that he he auditioned me at Max Rivers' studios.

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which is sort of beltsome with lights.

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He invited me along there and I did this audition and he paid me about £18 for the week to do a club in Hull. Well, it wasn't just one club, it was a series of clubs.

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And I don't think that any comic in the business has gone through what I went through.

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I'm a night.

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I didn't just die, I was resurrected nightly.

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We had people that used to throw tape measures, you know, I I thought they were sort of undertakers, and I died the death of deaths. So the the Thursday night I had quite sufficient. So I went to a place in Hull which is very old and steeped in history, called the Land of Green Ginger, which is where Wilberforce and the slave business all began and ended.

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And I got completely and utterly

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Incapable through drink.

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Which isn't like me'cause I don't drink about you know, it's just the odd cup of coffee with a probably spiced little bit of

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Brandy. And I got terribly stoned and I couldn't take any more. So I went back to this club and the curtains open, which were very makeshift curtains.

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Very faded, very old.

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and I slumped on the piano, and I couldn't rise, I was incapable of it.

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And I said the first thing that came into my mind was it's great pleasure to be in this reconverted Kipper depot, and they just spent twenty-five thousand pounds on the club.

Les Dawson13:26

Twenty five.

Presenter13:28

And the odd thing was, instead of being hooted off as I had in the past, I started to laugh.

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I began to realise what I'd done actually was being m you know, being myself.

Les Dawson13:34

I mean I'm just

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Suddenly I realized what a phony I was complete and utter phony.

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And so it was a moment of truth when once I live her dad, as the Spanish said, it's very true, I suddenly realized I was a flop.

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I'd never seen it before, you see. Yes. And you began to sort things out from then on. Yeah, I'm still a flopper making more money. But the thing was that, um, it happened then. I began to sort myself out. Yeah, very true. A turning point, so let's have another record. It was a turning point, yes, it was indeed.

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Uh what is the record, then?

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Which has very str uh strange connotations actually in the fact that uh one of the first big dates I ever played was in the north east.

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On the top of the bill was an artist I'd always admired.

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Had him on record and so on, and I followed him from music hall in the old days when they were still in existence.

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And he was so nice to me, this man, and his name is Billy Eckstein, and I think he did a marvellous record with Serivo, which to me always reminded me of those days.

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We seem like passing strangers now.

Speaker 214:47

How can you hurry by?

Speaker 214:52

There were never too loved.

Les Dawson14:56

Uh

Speaker 214:57

Half as much as

Les Dawson15:00

Yeah.

Speaker 215:00

You and I

Les Dawson15:01

Bye.

Presenter15:02

Billy Eckstein and Sarah Vaughan, Passing Strangers. Now what was the breakthrough? When were you able finally to become a full-time professional comedian?

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It was about nineteen sixty four.

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There was a show called Big Nights Out at Blackpool.

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I'd an agent in those days.

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I got a letter off him, which came as a shock, you know, and I went down to the office to see where he cleaned.

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And we talked about this, Sir.

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Basically, what it was that Iris Fredericks in those days I think she still is was the casting di directress, I suppose for want of a better word, at Thames Television.

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Wanted a cheap stand up comedian who was available. Now there was only one man ever fitted that bill, and that was me. I was always available, always cheap.

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And they gave me a chance on a show called Big Night Head at Blackpool, which was a sort of summer follow on from the London Palladium. Yes. And much to my chagrin, I might add, because I'd been so used to dying that bec I was a Marty, you see, I was a second Latimer.

Presenter16:00

I went very well and uh it really started from there on. And then came the radio series and the television series. You've done some plays on television.

Presenter16:10

Yes, yeah. They've been you know, they're they're mixed sort of greases about the press and about the public alike.

Les Dawson16:12

Yeah, it's

Presenter16:15

You've said that you'd like to play some Shakespeare.

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Yes, I would. You could play False Star.

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Well, yeah, Prospero in the Tempers, any of those people, yeah.

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Record number five. I love bottom music.

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And I think that um in today's interpretation of

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The evocative sound of music. There's one record which stands out, for my money, which has sort of a great um orchestral

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A feel to it, and also the words are very nice, is you make me feel brand new by the stylistics.

Speaker 216:47

Uh Who made me feel?

Speaker 216:53

Oh God, bless me with you.

Speaker 217:00

You make me feel brand new.

Speaker 217:06

I sing this song cause you

Presenter17:19

You make me feel brand new, the stylistics. Now, the writing ambitions were still lurking, weren't they? You hadn't given that up, although you had cooled a bit, I think, on essays.

Presenter17:30

Yes, that's true, yeah. In fact, you've written two books now, or is it three? No, I've got two books and one on the uh

Les Dawson17:33

Yes, sorry.

Presenter17:36

One ready to be published.

Les Dawson17:37

Jeff Tell me

Presenter17:39

Well, the first one, right in a strange sort of way, is um

Presenter17:43

It's not an autobiography, but I I I just thought that was nobody's ever written about the lowest aspect of show business, the basics of show business, where it all begins, which was the the clubs in the north of England.

Presenter17:53

I mean, some of those clubs were pretty bad, you know, they were grim. If they liked that, they didn't clap, they let you live. So I thought, well, somebody must write about these, and so that was the reason for the first book. Yeah, what was that called? Card for the Clubs. And the second one?

Presenter18:06

The second one was a complete take-off, uh spoof of everything that had ever been written, which was called The Spy Who Came.

Presenter18:13

I won't embellish on the title of it. It wasn't my uh choice, but that was the publisher's. We did quite well. Now, what next? Which way do you want your career to go? Do you want to go on doing the clubs? Do you want to write? I don't know easy because it's something that nobody knows about. And I think I can confine you'cause we've been friends for a long time, Roy, but I am very much conservative conservatism of uh natural wildlife.

Les Dawson18:25

Don't know.

Presenter18:33

And we do have a problem in our hands now, particularly with the the horned whelk of Morecambe Bay. I'm finding indifference like a wall everywhere I go on this. The problem is that the whelk, one of our natural denizens of our shores, is in danger of extinction because of silt which is raised from the seabed.

Les Dawson18:47

And that's it.

Presenter18:52

Because of people drilling for oil, this relentless search for natural

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minerals and so forth is destroying the very aspect of our life. What is happening is that the the horn whelk has a very small nasal passage.

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So it relies on the search for a mate.

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to its eyes. Its eyesight is all important. The silk causes stigmatism, and in some cases the Welt's are cross eyed. We found the other week in Fleetwood that one Welk was trying to mount a discarded yoghurt carton, and we can't permit this.

Presenter19:24

Which shows that of course its eyesight is no longer keen and we're trying to open a chain of clinics from devices to the wash.

Presenter19:30

Where welts can be fitted with contact lenses and be reintroduced to the natural nautical life.

Presenter19:36

Well, I'm very happy to hear this.

Presenter19:41

Mm-hmm

Presenter19:42

I think it's time for another record.

Presenter19:46

of a band who I had a great admiration for,

Presenter19:49

and I'm unashamedly an avid fan. He's dead now, and he was never really the star that I think he should have been. I don't think women liked him. He was essentially a masculine comedian.

Presenter19:59

And he endeared me with one line, and that was on his death bed.

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When a man called

Presenter20:04

Slashinger came to see him.

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Now this particular comedian

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was lay in bed very close to his end.

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In one hand he had the Bible, in the other a glass of martine.

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And this chap came in, this producer, and said

Presenter20:19

Mr. Fields, you of all people.

Presenter20:22

The life you've led, you're reading the Bible, what for?

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And this man gave the supreme exit vanished I'm looking for a loophole

Presenter20:30

And the man of course is W C Fields.

Speaker 420:33

Do you have

Speaker 420:34

W.C. Fields is reaching for a glass of water. He's lifting it from the bar.

Speaker 420:39

There it goes up to his lips and there goes my hunter. He's just taught him to drink. No, no, he's putting it back in the bar.

Speaker 420:45

Whoops, he's lifting it to his lips again. He he grits his teeth.

Speaker 420:50

Fuck, Cracky, he's

Speaker 420:52

He's a drinking that water.

Speaker 420:54

Oh.

Speaker 420:57

Oh, Mr. Fields, Mr. Fields, oh, what's for? Oh, get it, Doc, you idiot.

Speaker 421:03

It's been poison.

Presenter21:06

WC FIELDS An excerpt from The Day I Drank a Glass of Water.

Presenter21:11

Now, Les, you're an ex-Army man. You should be able to look after yourself on a desert island. Do you agree?

Presenter21:17

Yes, yes, I think I could uh

Presenter21:20

Built a shelter of some sort? Yes. Done any fishing? Yes, well, my father used to sent me shark fishing.

Presenter21:26

and he always seemed to get annoyed when I fell off the hoop.

Presenter21:29

Would you try to escape?

Presenter21:31

Uh no, I don't think I'm that type of bloke. I think I'm too lazy to escape. I think if I found myself with any sort of reasonable shelter

Presenter21:38

I'll be rather inclined to stay there. There's a lot of coward in me.

Presenter21:42

Record number seven. What's that? Well, the record actually I've chosen is um evocative of uh the sort of song which I like, which is when one person stands alone on the stage.

Presenter21:53

Drenched in a spotlight and has to sing a very moving song. And I thought the one that

Presenter21:58

Summarise my feelings towards this was Judy Coventy when she sang Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.

Les Dawson22:04

Don't cry for me. We ought to

Les Dawson22:09

The truth is...

Les Dawson22:11

I never left you.

Les Dawson22:14

All through my wild days, my mad existence.

Presenter22:18

See you.

Les Dawson22:20

I kept my promise.

Les Dawson22:23

Don't keep your distance

Presenter22:30

Julie Covington, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, from Avita.

Presenter22:35

One more disc wants that to be low.

Presenter22:38

Well, it's um

Presenter22:40

It's a piano forty piece written by which I consider one of the greatest composers ever, with Chopin. And the reason why I I particularly like this record is it summarizes man's spirit in the face of adversity.

Presenter22:53

And it's called The Revolutionary.

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I think I could listen to this record and think, well, if anything gets me down

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Here's a spirited sort of composition which will make me think well it's worth carrying on for.

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And that's why I've been married for so long. Every time I ever ride with a wife, I play this. Last week I played it sixteen times. So at least, you know, there's this sort of.

Presenter23:11

A belief that this is a number which will enable me to carry on against adversity.

Presenter24:18

Svatoslav Richter playing Chopin's Revolutionary Study. If you could take just one disc out of the eight lists, which would it be?

Presenter24:26

I think I would take a record which would give me beauty, and therefore I would opt.

Presenter24:31

Freels per van for infanta de fant.

Presenter24:34

And one luxury to take with you. Any piece of furniture belonging to the Georgian period, be it be an escrabir, or a desk, or a chair, because I think that when the Georgian period ended, civilization ended.

Presenter24:47

And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Big Encyclopedias. A book that gave me a lot of pleasure, written by, I think, a marvellous author, Neville Shutes, Trustee from the Two Room, only because it summarises one small

Presenter24:59

Man's fight against a tremendous society in which he wins through and I think I would like that. Neville Schultz, trustee from the tool room, yeah.

Les Dawson25:06

Trust me from the trustee from

Presenter25:09

And thank you, Les Dawson, for letting us hear your dazzled idea. May I have the check now, please? Yes, Mr. Dawson, indeed you may.

Les Dawson25:11

Dagger died.

Les Dawson25:25

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.