BLACKPOOL

Going to Blackpool on the 24th of October with my mate Michael Jayston. Charity signings and selling a few books.

I’ve always liked Blackpool. Years ago ago I narrated a series called Cine Memo, showing old personal films from before the 19th century up until the the 30’s. Extraordinary   

footage was found. Mostly in those days it was rich people had cine cameras. Loads of families on picnics posing in front of their gleaming cars.

Wakes Week was when Blackpool was full. Factories were closed for a fortnight and they all flooded in. The film that showed them was taken from the Big Boss’s camera.

The film that touched my heart, was a film shot in 1938 of young men and girls, in the sunshine, dancing along the promenade. Glorious, happy young faces and in a couple of years, those young men would be fighting a war. How many came back?

Memories include being driven up there by Sid James, his wife, my wife and me. We were filming Taxi along the seafront. Another time was taking Tom when he was about eight up to Blackpool to see Fulham playing a match. We stayed in a dodgy B&B, had an iffy Italian  meal. Next day Tom was sick but insisted that we go and get tickets for the match. He began to feel worse and we abandoned the game and came straight home. Fulham lost 1-0.

I’m sure when I go up there on the 24th, a lot of memories will come flooding back but none so more than that flickering image of those happy, optimistic young people danciing arm in arm along the promenade in the sunshine. 

     

Luck

After an exhausting day in a V.O studio in London, I arrived in Brighton at 5.30. I made my way down to Western Road to find something to eat for dinner.

Walking ahead of me were three thirty year olds, beautifully dressed, laughing and talking excitedly in a language I couldn’t place.

I saw on my left a man in a suit and tie scrabbling around in a bin. He was about seventy, wearing a hat, he seemed like a man who had a good position in earlier years. But feeling around in this this bin for half an sandwich or a fag end, and seeing these booted and suited gigging youngsters was very disturbing. Even more so was that at distance this man looked like Barry Cryer. But, of course, Barry would be looking for class fag ends outside the Dorchester. The old tart.

Next night I go to see Barry in the The Space in London Road in Brighton. The person selling he tickets for Barry’s show hadn’t arrived yet so I shot off to the pub opposite to the theatre. Bloody hell. It was a noisy place, televisions blasting out competing with musac for the top volume slot. The beer though was excellent. The door opened and a young man came over to me.

‘Heard you were here. I’m Wayne, I interviewed you on the radio Reverb four years ago. I’ve put you on the Guest list.’

I bought him a drink.

Barry arrived at 7.30 to be told that he wasn’t on ’til 9.00. He was a bit pissed off. But when he got on he was sensational. They loved him. And the woman interviewing him was well boned up on his past achievements so it was easier for him to roar on.

After, we walked dow the road to a recommended pub followed by a few of his ‘fans’. We had a jolly time. I must say that he always seems pleased to see me.  A few rounds later we get a taxi. It’s 12.00. Drop him off at his hotel and I go on back to the flat. Scrambled eggs on toast.

But I can’t get the man and bin out of head. Me feeling aggrieved about a hard day in the studio. I suddenly realised that without these VO’s and my amazing agent Wendy Noel I would have been on my uppers now. My acting career would never have kept me afloat. So that man and me would have been both at the same bin searching for dog ends.

Yes, I’ve lucky and that poor man hasn’t been Count your blessings Ray. 

SEAFORD

Grand opening at the Seaford Little theatre on Friday the 4th of September. New seating. maybe a dob of paint and a DVD projector.

I’ll be there to shake a few hands of the members hoping, if they like me, they may even come along for my show on the 11th. I’m a bit of tart, I know, but it’s all in the a cause. Mine!

Speaking to Barry Cryer the other day. He tells me that Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has been on tour. They get audiences of 2,000. Bloody hell.

If I get fifteen I’ll be happy.

Heres hoping. 

IS IT JUST ME?

I get a lot of people wanting signed photos and others wanting to hear about Mr Benn. I send them. I don’t mind.

Now, is it just me, but I never get a ‘thank you‘ response from any of these people. Is it asking too much?

I was always taught to say thank you. What’s gone wrong?       

MOJO

After my interview with Andrew Mate at Mojo magazine my CD has gone mad.

Then son Tom told me that Amazon Music Streaming service has released an Album part 4 which contains a song of mine called Pictures. Which incidentally is on my CD.

It’s all very interesting. (to me)      

THE SEAGULL

I’m not going to give a deep analysis of Anton Checkov’s The Seagull or the 70’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull nor Roald Dahl’s James and The Giant Peach or mad Eric Cantona’s statement that ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler it’s because they throw sardines into the sea.’ Pick the bones out of that.

Yes, Seagulls have had a good press. Until now. They killed a little dog. I’ve seen them snatch Pasties from people, ice creams, cod and chips, all during a stroll along the seafront in St Ives.

They grab pigeons drown them then gobble them up. Flip tortoises over and eat them. And yet, these buggers are protected. It’s all crazy. Okay, they are pretty, swooping around in the sky. But those gimlet black eyes tell a different story.

The roof in Brighton became a nesting place for these gulls. Always there. I wanted to get rid of them because they scared the grandchildren. I spoke to some roofers in a pub.

‘You get some bread,’ they said. ‘Squash some Alcaselzer in it. That’ll shift them.’

Get the stuff, mix it all up and prepare to throw it among the seething mass of birds but there were two baby gulls waddling around. I couldn’t harm them, could I? So I called up John the Bird man.

He fixed up a sound system that emitted Falcon sounds and various other bird calls that would scare the gulls off. It worked for a while. But then a man from the Council came round.

‘Those noises are keeping people awake in the afternoons.‘ So I had to turn it off.

There have been reports in the paper about the Brighton Council banning smoking on the beach. Maybe that’s the answer.

Get some whizz kid with all the know-how on YouTube to fake gulls flying around with fags in their beaks. That should get the Council out with their popguns blasting the flying smokers out of the sky.

Even their precious seagulls aren’t immune from the self centered rights of the do-gooders.

Then...Ha, ha, job done. Hopefully.      

A DAY OUT

It’s difficult writing a new show when the only person to judge it’s quality is you. No director, no producer. Of course, under normal circumstances, I’d always thought they could be a bloody nuisance. But at he moment it would be wonderful for someone to tell me what was good and what didn’t work.

So in order to get out, get some air, I joined Sadie for a coach trip to Anglesey Abbey. A two and half hour journey.

Looking round the coach at all these people I tried to imagine what they were like when they were young. The men were well preserved. Their wives, sitting next to them, I could see they were once very attractive. Some almost beautiful. Now just sitting on a coach to some obscure Abbey. Not talking to each other. 

The guide gives a message from the from of the coach, when we finally arrive, in a voice so soft that it sounded like a mouse with a sore throat. No one can hear him.

Bewildered geriatrics struggle to exit. Half an hour later we are on terra firma. The rumour was that he’s said that a guided tour would start at 12.00.

‘Are you going to come?‘ Sadie said.

‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll just have a wander.’

It was very hot. Yes, I did wander but stopped frequently under the shade of a tree. Time passed very pleasantly. I kept thinking about the guided tour, those poor people hobbling along and being told when a tree was planted or where Lord Fairhaven bought a particular statue. I came across a glade of beautiful trees. Looking in the National Trust Guide I saw hat they were Himalayan silver birches. Stunning. Well, his Lordship certainly got about. On the same page it said that he had bought this vast estate at the age of 30 at an auction sight unseen! Sight unseen! Where had 30 year old got all that money and be so cavalier when spending it? I saw one of the officials and asked him.

‘His dad was a bit of a lad.’he said. ‘He married an heiress who within a few years she inherited a giant oil company in America. And Fairhaven got the lot. He bred horses and raced them, loved gardening.‘ now he lowered his voice. ‘There’s a statue here, we’re not allowed to point it out to anyone, that’s worth a couple of million.’

The average age of the visitors here were well above eighty, I couldn’t imagine one of them putting this statue in a supermarket trolly and trundling it back to the coach and having it away. Not allowed to tell anybody!

The day ended and we assembled in the car park. The oldies looked exhausted.

‘The guided tour was over two hours. A lot of them fell by the wayside.‘ Sadie explained.

The coach was stopped on the M 11. There had been an accident. Fire engines roaring towards the scene. The oldies were very animated now. Scuttling up the aisle trying to get a good view of the chaos ahead. After about an hour we were on the move. The waterworks of the passengers were at bursting point. There was a queue waiting to climb down to the onboard toilet, one or two tumbling over as the driver raced back to London.

Four and half hours later we got back. There was the statuary half an hour wait as the grumbling oldsters disembarked. Were they ever young, I thought, watching them. Of course they were. Beautiful, rich and vibrant.

I was glad Sadie didn’t have a makeup mirror in her bag because I might have been tempted to look at myself just to check whether I’d ever been young.