Arthur Askey

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

On our Desert Island this week is a broadcaster who's been around for quite a few years and it's not his first time on the island. Before your very ears, Arthur Askey. For the fourth time, is this a record?

Arthur Askey0:40

Is

Presenter0:41

Yes, it is. You're the first person to whom that's happened. That's marvellous. Thank you very much, Roy. We wanted you on, especially, Arthur, to celebrate your eightieth birthday. It's a bit late, so we'll celebrate your eightieth Christmas. How do you remember your childhood Christmases in in Liverpool? Oh, as being very, very happy. Of course, uh, my first Christmas was uh was spent in the Holy Land. In uh in Liverpool. You know, in Liverpool there's a little collection of streets uh called biblical names like David Street, Isaac Street, Jacob Street, Moses Street. Uh well I was born in Moses Street, so I was born in the Holy Land. But as a kid it was just the usual family, rather Victorian.

Speaker 41:03

And

Arthur Askey1:16

I will

Presenter1:25

Which I am.

Presenter1:26

I was born in good Queen Victoria's golden age, you know. Just. Only just, but I d I did it. And you had one sister at home? One sister. Mhm. One father.

Presenter1:36

Oh no, then you're gonna go through the family.

Arthur Askey1:37

Oh no, that you're gonna go through the family.

Presenter1:40

Here's a Desert Island Christmas for you, Arthur, and in your stocking we've stuck eight records which you've chosen. Which one do we play first? Tschaikovsky's, Romeo, and Juliet.

Arthur Askey1:50

Yeah.

Presenter1:51

I think it's a a a lovely piece of music. It's very corny, okay, but for me it holds all the melody and that w especially how much are you gonna pay? About a minute of it or something.

Arthur Askey2:02

Yeah

Presenter2:03

A couple of minutes. Well, I hope you get a bit of the uh the lush melody.

Presenter3:05

Part of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Previn. Now I've been rereading your autobiography before your very eyes, Arthur. I read it when it first came out five years ago. Something I'd forgotten, there's a programme of a very early appearance of yours in your teens when you were in the Welsh Regiment. And why were you in the Welsh Regiment, by the way? Influence. I went along to St George's Hall, Liverpool, to have my medical on my 18th birthday, 6th of June, 1918. And I thought they wouldn't for a minute take me with my stature and my bad eyesight and one thing and another, but by golly, they did. They were taking anything then. And I found myself at Kinmall Camp in North Wales in the Welsh Regiment for some reason, after which I was posted to the Far East, Great Yarmouth. And then in November, news got to the Kaiser that I was in, so he threw the towel in, and I was back in the office about a month later.

Arthur Askey3:59

Mm-hmm.

Presenter4:15

Well, there was this concert and Private A. Askey was singing songs. Not the B song or anything like that, but songs and arias by Handel and Schumann and Schubert and

Arthur Askey4:19

No.

Presenter4:25

Leon Cavallo and Guno, you obviously had a very good musical grounding. I did. Well, that was being a choir boy. And to be a choir boy in those days really meant something. I was in Liverpool Cathedral choir for a time and had a good voice and obviously a pretty good musical grounding. And I also learned to play. I was taught by the lady next door, Miss Aspinall. And as we were in terraced houses and she could hear through the walls very easily, although they were good thick cardboard, if I hadn't done my hours' practice, she knew. So I had to stick at my hours piano playing every day.

Arthur Askey4:37

For a

Presenter5:07

And the funny part was I got so good and proficient that I could read the magnet on the piano stand and play

Presenter5:17

Any of my pieces like The Merry Peasant actually graduating up to The Russell of Spring, which was then a rather difficult piece with crosshands. And I could play it and did play it. Well, I see you've got that done as your second record. That is it. That's what I was leading to. And who would you like to play it? I was on the bill once, well, more than once, with Mr. and Mrs. Preeney's son, Sem. And he always used to include Russell of Spring in his repertoire. And if you've got a record of Sem playing it, I'd like to hear it.

Presenter6:46

Semprini playing Russell of Spring.

Presenter6:48

Now, you sang in concerts, uh uh as as you said just now, and you ran a concert party. You used to sing with Tommy Handley.

Presenter6:56

That's right. That was during the war. During the war they organized concerts for the wounded soldiers, as if they hadn't suffered enough, and used to take us round to the various hospitals to um entertain the soldiers. And at that time Tommy was a baritone.

Arthur Askey7:11

Yeah.

Presenter7:14

He was about eight years older than me, Tommy.

Presenter7:16

But had a hell of a good barrage on voice, and he was singing, Where are the young men, the young men of England? And I was singing,

Arthur Askey7:24

You all for the rings for the brains of the bell

Presenter7:28

And we got away with it because the big thing was the bum fights afterwards. You got tea and buns and cakes and if the shows took place in the afternoon, I was excused school, and if the shows took place in the evening, I was excused homework. And I thought, aye, there's something in this entertaining game. And I think that is what laid the germ of me eventually going into show business. Did Tommy become a professional before you did? Oh, yes, he did.

Presenter7:57

When I came into show business, he was the only one in show business that I knew, the only person who was, as we used to say in those days, on the stage. And when I thought of giving up my job to go on the stage, my father went berserk.

Presenter8:13

He said you've got a good job with a pension at the end of it. You're giving it up to going to something you know nothing about. Look what happened to Tommy Hanley. He had a lovely job selling pramulators in Lisy Street.

Presenter8:25

And look what he's doing now he's in the court of Samait of the Mountain.

Arthur Askey8:28

Is the mountain

Presenter8:30

Now you went off to join a professional concert party against your father's wishes. What was the job you were giving up? You you mentioned you were in an office. I was in uh the Liverpool Education Offices, the Tonsils and Adenor's department.

Presenter8:44

In other words, I was in the medical part of it, and I used to have to send out slips of paper saying if Mrs. Murphy will present her daughter Bridget at the Stebble Street Clinic next Friday, she will have her tonsils and adenoids removed. Well, as you know, at Liverpool, everybody suffers with tonsils and adenoids. So I had a very busy job. I'm sure.

Arthur Askey8:48

Yeah.

Presenter9:10

And I went off to the war in nineteen eighteen and came back to the what? To the tonsils and endenoids. It was eight eight years' growth then.

Arthur Askey9:17

Yeah.

Presenter9:19

If you had stayed another sixty years, you'd have got a pension by now. Oh, I'd have been well on the pension.

Arthur Askey9:22

Uh

Presenter9:24

Now you went off to this concert party. How old were you then? Uh twenty-four. Twenty-three to be exact. I was twenty-four in the June. I gave up the job in the March and I got the usual gold watch and golden handshake. What was the concert party called that you joined? That I joined. It was called uh Song Salad. Funny name.

Presenter9:45

And it was a funny little party actually. But my golly, I did learn my trade there. In that nine or ten months, I joined in the March and we went through till pantomime time and went all over this seaside resorts in this country. Where did you open? What was the first stage you strode professionally? The Electric Theatre Colchester, which ran silent movies three weeks of the month. And the odd week they had a touring concert party. And I was with this songseller concert party. And that is how I started, or where I started. Let's have another record, Arthur. What's number three? Well, in the early 60s, I was doing a show for the BBC called Pop In.

Presenter10:34

Where they played records. And a long-haired boy came up to me and said, Excuse me, sir, I went to the same school as you did in Liverpool. I said, Oh, the Liverpool Institute. He said, Yes. He said, There's four of us from Liverpool, and two of us went to the Institute. And I said, What do you do? He said, Well, we play guitars and sing our own songs. We're quite well known in Germany. I think we'll make it here. I said, Oh, good for you. What do you call yourselves? He said, The Beatles. I said, The what?

Presenter11:04

He said the Beatles. Well, I immediately thought of cockroaches and things, as you would in those days. Oh, I said, that's a silly name, son. You'll never get anywhere in show business with a name like that. I said, Certainly change that. And who was that? It was my dear friend Paul McCartney. And he said he sat at the desk that I sat at because I must have been a vandal as a kid. I'd carved my initials on the desk, AA, and he said we looked on it as a sort of shrine.

Presenter11:35

So there you are two geniuses on the same seat

Arthur Askey11:37

See

Presenter11:38

So what's this leading us to others?

Presenter11:40

Well, it leads to what I think one of the best songs written for many, many years, and that is Yesterday.

Speaker 411:49

Yesterday

Speaker 411:52

All my troubles seem so far away

Speaker 411:57

God looks as though they're here to stay, oh I believe

Speaker 412:03

Yesterday, suddenly.

Speaker 412:09

I'm not half the man I used to be

Speaker 412:14

There's a shadow hanging over

Presenter12:18

Or McCartney, yesterday. Or just as so many theatres have have gone, so have all the theatrical landladies. Some of them were characters, weren't they? Some of them, they were all characters. Which ones did you remember? Of var varying quality.

Arthur Askey12:29

I'm very

Presenter12:31

I oh

Presenter12:33

Well, there there's millions of stories about theatrical landladies. My favourite is not mine. It was really the late Bobby Howes. You remember Bobby? And uh Bobby was on tour with a pal of his and they went to digs in Manchester. And on the Monday they went to the bank hall as usual. Then they went in the pub next door and had a drink or two and went home to lunch and took a bottle of sherry with them. Well they'd had enough to drink so they didn't bother opening the bottle of sherry. They put it in the cupboard in the sideboard. And the following day they went and had a game of golf in the morning, had a few gins up at the golf club, came back for lunch and thought, Oh, the sherry, we'll have a glass of sherry.

Presenter13:14

They opened the cupboard, got the sherry out, and the bottle had been opened.

Presenter13:18

And about two inches of it had gone down. And Bobby was furious, and as I said, he'd had a drink or two. So do you know what he did? He tinkled in the bottle and brought it up to the top, put the cork back and put the bottle back in the cupboard. Well, the following day, the Wednesday, the same thing happened. Off they went and had a game of golf and had a gin or two up at the golf club. Came back, let's have a look at the sherry. Got the bottle up. There it was, down a couple of inches again. So Bobby, used to giving an encore, gave another encore, topped it up again, put it back in the cupboard. And this went on all week. Well, came the Sunday, and they were moving off to the next town. And the landlady said, well, I hope you've been happy with staying with me here. And if you come to Manchester again, I hope you'll stay with me. And Bobby said, yes, we will. He said, but just one thing. We won't bother bringing a bottle of sherry next time. She said, why not? He said, you know very well why not. She said, yes, but don't you remember, when you arrived here on Monday, you told me you were very fond of trifle. I've been putting it in the trifle every day. That's what they call getting your own back, isn't it?

Arthur Askey14:27

That's right.

Presenter14:35

That's glorious.

Presenter14:37

Uh you've been in in so many pantomimes. Do you remember any particular Christmases you spent away from home in Diggs? Oh, I spent a lot of Christmases away from home. Uh some of them j very jolly, some of them a little on the sad side. For instance, when Anthea, my daughter, was born, that Christmas I was in Nottingham in pantomime, staying at a Temperance Hotel.

Presenter15:02

And I said to my little wife on the phone, Well, uh I'll get off early in the morning to get home for Christmas Day. I'd had my own little car then.

Presenter15:12

And uh when the uh dawn broke, it had been snowing all night, it was freezing, there were no trains, it was foggy, and to go by road would have been impossible. So I had to get on the phone to my little misses and say, I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it. And I was obviously with a newborn baby round as well, bursting to get home. So there I was in this commercial hotel. It was a quite a big one too. A temperance hotel was the uh

Presenter15:45

Temperance was the pivotal word, shall we say, that went from the manager down to the the boy cleaned the boots. Anyway, I was on my own in this hotel, and by twelve o'clock the entire staff that were on were plastered out of their mind. And I was sitting in this dining room, which seated about a hundred, on my own, and I'd been given some cold turkey with hot gravy from yesterday, you know, by a staggering waiter. And the dame in the pantomime, a fellow called Charlie Harrison, dear old Charlie, he was in digs around the corner, and his wife had said to him, I'll bet you Arthur hasn't attempted to go home today. Pop round and see how he's doing. And Charlie tells the story now of how he looked through the window at this temperance hotel, saw this forlorn figure in the corner eating the cold turkey and hot gravy. So he crept in, opened the door. I heard the door open. I looked round and I just said to him, and a Merry Christmas to you too.

Arthur Askey16:01

Yeah.

Presenter16:51

Anyway, Charlie said, Come back to the digs with me, so the rest of the day passed off all right. But uh that was one of the uh Christmases I remember with a bit of morbidity, shall I say. Yes, indeed.

Presenter17:05

Well, we got to record number four very quickly. Have we aren't we getting on?

Arthur Askey17:07

That would

Presenter17:09

Now then, I wonder what I'd better give you for number four. Well, I'd like to have a record of a fellow I'd not met up to the time we're up to now in my life story, and that is Jack Hilton. Jack Hilton I adored, he had a marvellous band, and whenever he appeared anywhere, I would go and see Jack, little knowing that later in my theatrical career he'd have a big influence with me, and we were great mates for 25 years. So if I was on a desert island, there's nothing I'd like better to bring back very many happy memories of a lovely guy and a great musician. Well, he wasn't a great musician, but a great showman. And that was Jack Hilton and his band. And the record I've chosen is perhaps not the greatest one he made, but one I particularly liked. And that was Music Maestro Please.

Presenter18:30

Jack Hilton and his orchestra, Music Maestro Please recorded in nineteen thirty eight.

Presenter18:35

Arthur, you had some very successful years in London as an after dinner entertainer. You were king of the Masonics. I certainly was, Stanley.

Presenter18:46

That that's uh Lull and Hardy, in case you didn't get the implication. Uh yes, I was king of the Masonics, no doubt. I used to do an average of when I first started, uh, two or three a week.

Presenter18:58

Then he eventually worked up to two or three a night.

Presenter19:01

In fact, I've done five on one night. And you did some pioneer television work. Oh, yes, very good. I started with John Logie Baird.

Arthur Askey19:06

Video.

Presenter19:09

I really did. Do you remember which year?

Presenter19:12

Or it would be early

Presenter19:14

early thirties when I started working with him. He started in Longacre and it was a very bare studio and I looked into a very, very bright light.

Arthur Askey19:20

Yeah.

Presenter19:25

with sort of railings going past my eyes. And he kept saying to me, Keep your arms in, keep'cause I was singing B songs in those days and seagulls were flapping my arms round. And he said, Keep your hands up to your face, keep close together, you know. And I thought, oh, this fellow's an idiot But I was getting a guinea and a half and it was in the afternoon, so uh I stuck to it. But I never thought it would get anywhere.

Arthur Askey19:43

And it was in the afternoon.

Arthur Askey19:47

Yeah.

Presenter19:50

All right, let's have record number five. Number five. And that opens back to my concert party days, because during those days I was doing everybody's material. In other words, I hadn't got all my own material. Anything I heard, I'd pinch and do. And a lot of my repertoire I owe to a great mate of mine, a lovely fella, a great artist, and the first star I ever met, and that was Stanley Holloway. I adored and do still adore Stanley Holloway, a wonderful fella. And he was very kind to me in my early days. And of all his repertoire, that includes Sam Sampicup the Muski, the one I used to love was Brown Boots. So I'd love to hear that again.

Arthur Askey20:27

And he was very

Presenter20:41

Our aunt Anna's passed away, We'd a funeral to-day.

Presenter20:45

And it was a posh affair.

Presenter20:48

Had to have two policemen there.

Presenter20:50

The earth was lovely, all plate glass What a coffin, oak and brass

Presenter20:55

With thousands weeping flazgalore

Presenter20:59

But Jim, our cousin.

Presenter21:01

What do you think he wore?

Presenter21:03

Brandon.

Presenter21:06

I asked you, Rand is

Presenter21:09

Fancy coming to a funeral in brown boots.

Presenter21:13

I'll admit he had a nice black tie.

Presenter21:15

Black fingernails and a nice black eye.

Presenter21:19

But you can't see people off when they die in Brando.

Presenter21:24

Brown Boots by Stanley Holloway.

Presenter21:27

For many of us, Arthur, we'll always associate you most with with bandwagon just before the war. You hadn't done much radio before that, had you?

Arthur Askey21:32

Yeah.

Presenter21:36

Uh spasmodic, uh Roy. Uh uh I used to do things like Monday Night at Eight or Monday Night at Seven, it varied John Sharman's Music Hall. Uh I did a a series called Eight Bells which didn't take off, but it was just spasmodic and uh

Arthur Askey21:43

Cool.

Presenter21:56

I suppose the money was too big. I was getting five guineas then. Were you? And I had to have my.

Arthur Askey21:59

Oh yeah.

Presenter22:01

Signature witnessed on the contract. I always remember that. But in 1938,

Presenter22:07

In this very building, um, bandwagon was born.

Presenter22:11

and the B B C

Presenter22:13

through their own publicity,

Presenter22:16

Dubbed me the resident comedian. That was their publicity, not mine. And I said, if this show is going to take off, if I'm the resident comedian, I must live on the premises. They said, oh, you can't do that, because this place was looked on then like Westminster Abbey, you know, this new wonderful building of the BBC. But I put my foot down, because the show was going to flop anyway. So they thought it might save it, and it did. You and Dickie Murdoch. My dear old mate, Dickie. You hadn't worked together before. We'd never worked before. We were thrown together. But you started writing the script.

Arthur Askey22:45

Yeah.

Presenter22:51

Well, the scripts we were getting were so bad that Dickie and I decided we could do better writing them ourselves. So in conjunction with Vernon Harris, who was brought in, we used to sit round a table like you and I are now in this studio and uh start writing next Wednesday's script. By modern standards the show didn't run all that long. How how many editions were there? Oh very very short. Not like Take It From Here or Much Binding or that went or Itmar that went on for what, fifteen, seventeen years. We were only that many months because the war broke out, you see. And Dickie Murdoch had to go into the Air Force or long to go into the Air Force. Are you listening, Dickie? And that split us up because Dickie had to um go into the air force as I say.

Presenter23:40

So uh that was the Anda bandwagon. Well it made both of your stars and it was a a lovely oh it did it. It was a miracle how it happened it so quickly to think that I was in concert party for my fifteenth season in nineteen thirty eight at Hastings with the Folderolles with dear old Jack Warner and the late uh Walter Medgley, dear Walter and in nineteen thirty eight at the seaside in concert party.

Arthur Askey23:44

Oh, it did.

Presenter24:08

Nineteen thirty nine

Presenter24:10

Through radio and the success of bandwagon.

Presenter24:14

Arthurski

Presenter24:16

The day war broke out, I was doing

Presenter24:20

Fourteen shows a week at the Palladium.

Presenter24:23

Twice nightly in two matinees and filming all day at Long Grove studios, including Sundays. It all happened very quickly. And that all through radio.

Presenter24:33

You see, we had it on the uh present day television fellows because the public see them. Now all we were were voices. And they naturally wanted to see what we looked like. Well, me, I've got a big voice. I'm talking Satavoshi now to match up with you. But I can, you know, let it go. And calling myself big-hearted Arthur, and with this big voice, people all thought I was a big fella. And when I used to walk on the stage, I could hear a gasp go round the theatre. And that was my opening egg. I used to say, This is all there is, you're not being diddled.

Presenter25:13

Right, the gasp goes round the studio and let's have record number six. And it will go round the studio. There's only the two of us here.

Presenter25:20

But I've I've done a little fixing, Roy. I've brought a record along that I want to play because I'm not sure about your letting me do it if I asked you. So I'll ask the boys in the uh engineering here, in the suit with the Meccano, if they'll uh put the record what I brought along and see how you like this.

Presenter26:09

You amaze me, Arthur. I had no idea that your tastes lay in that direction. Is that marvellous? Are you going to identify those gentlemen?

Arthur Askey26:16

Are you

Arthur Askey26:19

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:20

called the running sores.

Presenter26:25

If I was wrecked on a desert island.

Presenter26:29

and I was sitting very despondently one day and wishing I was back in civilization. When I hear records like that played, I think, well, I can't be so badly off being here, stuck on a desert island.

Presenter26:46

Nice and quiet. There are very few things in chair business you haven't done. I know you haven't been in a pop group. You've made a lot of films, haven't you? Yes.

Presenter26:54

And uh you've done musical comedies and straight plays? Well, fairly straight plays. Well fast, like comedy.

Arthur Askey26:58

Well, it's ours. Like

Presenter27:01

Are any other ASCIIs coming into the business? Your daughter Anthea, of course, is in pandomime issues. Anthea's in pandomim is here at Eastbourne. My granddaughter.

Arthur Askey27:05

Anthea

Presenter27:08

Jane, she's in pantomime, strangely enough, at Colchester as a dancer.

Arthur Askey27:12

Yeah.

Presenter27:14

And the other two, well, they're both at college, so um th they haven't thoughts in that dire. Although the uh sixteen-year-old he's he he wants uh a synthesizer, which only costs about four thousand pounds, so if you've got a few odd bar with you. But uh he he's thinking in that direction. So there are three generations of ASCII. Of the ASCII's, yes. Record number seven, what's that?

Arthur Askey27:35

Of the ass is.

Presenter27:39

Well now we've had a good selection. We started off with my favourite composer, Tchaikovsky, who I adore, everything of his, and my second favourite is uh Grieg. I I adore Grieg. I'd like one of his little light pieces like uh There's something to do about spring. The last spring. That's it. That is the one.

Arthur Askey27:59

The last

Presenter29:00

Riggs The Last Spring from his two elegiac melodies, played by the Northern Symphonia Orchestra conducted by Paul Tortellier.

Presenter29:08

Now, you're on this island. We picked a fairly comfortable one for you, and you like the sunshine, don't you? Oh, I thought it. Are you a handyman? Could you look after yourself? Not very well, Roy. No. It's I'm not really a handyman at all. Pity. What about fishing?

Presenter29:23

You must have played a pier pavilion where you had a fishing line out of the water.

Arthur Askey29:25

Oh yeah.

Presenter29:28

South Parade Pier at Southsea and I bought a fishing line. I found a loose board in the dressing room floor and used to leave the line in, baited, and then go onstage and do my next bit and then come and just feel a line. Oh, I've got one and uh very often go back to the digs with about uh twelve herrings or something like that and say, I'm back, Ma, I brought my supper in. All right, love, bring it in here, and that was it. So I could do a bit of fishing, I think. That's good. What about sailing? Sailing? Yes. Could you build a boat or a raft or something? No, I don't think so. And having heard that record earlier on, I don't think I'd be in such a hurry to get away from the island. You'd keep your feet up for a bit. I think I would.

Arthur Askey30:01

Could you

Arthur Askey30:03

No.

Arthur Askey30:10

I hear it.

Arthur Askey30:11

I think I

Presenter30:12

What's your last record? Well, now we're on a desert island.

Presenter30:16

One thing we are devoid of there is company, and particularly female company. I can still think, you know, even at the age of eighty. So please could I have something from South Pacific? How about nothing like a dame?

Presenter30:32

We have nothing to put on a clean white suit for.

Presenter30:38

What we need is what there ain't no substitute for.

Presenter30:44

There is nothing like a day.

Presenter30:47

I think it falls.

Presenter30:51

There is nothing you can make that is anything like a name.

Arthur Askey30:55

Anything like that?

Presenter30:59

There's nothing like a dame by members of the Broadway cast of South Pacific.

Presenter31:04

Oh, there are your eight records, Arthur. If you could only take one, which would it be?

Presenter31:09

Tchaikovsky. Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, Romeo and Juliet. And you're allowed one luxury, nothing of any practical use.

Arthur Askey31:15

Yeah.

Presenter31:16

Well you know the old gag Roy of the people who had a house and the the river ran at the bottom of the garden and it overflowed and mother floated out of the kitchen window on the kitchen table and I accompanied her on the piano. So it shows a piano can float. So please can I have a piano? A floating piano. And then I will become Tchaikovsky the second.

Arthur Askey31:40

And then I will become cha

Presenter31:43

And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which we assume is already on the island. I'll tell you what I'd like.

Arthur Askey31:46

What bird?

Presenter31:49

The Guinness Book of Records. Yes. If only to see if they spelt my name right.

Presenter31:54

All right. Right, the latest edition. And thank you, Arthur Askey, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs once again. And what can I say to you, Robot? Ah, thank you.

Presenter32:05

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 332:12

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