He had responded in the style that Charles’ show business reporter approach demanded. The story had been told many times before, but he was prepared to tell it again, so long as no one expected him to get too excited about it.
‘And then you toured the halls as a double-act?’
‘Yes, a good few years of that.’
‘And were you a success right from the start?’
‘Good God, no. We died the death. I tell you, you name any theatre in this country and we’ve died there. There’s no such thing as overnight success in this business. You’re as good as your last show. Even when you’ve got a good act, it can suddenly all go wrong. The audience just stops laughing. No reason, no reason you can tell, anyway. They just suddenly don’t find it funny anymore and you’re back where you started.’
‘So you and Wilkie Pole just plugged away at it, doing the same act time and again until the audience began to appreciate it?’
‘No, of course not. Blimey, where were you brought up — the Royal Academy of bleedin’ Dramatic Art? A music hall act is not a play. You don’t go on doing it the same until the audience likes it. You change it all the way so that the audience likes it. Wilkie and I changed the act every night, added little bits I’d thought of, tried new things out. That way we got to know what was going to work. I mean, take something like our barbershop routine, you wouldn’t recognize that from the way we done it at first. By the time we got it good we’d changed every line, we were only doing the stuff that worked. Mind you, an audience could still surprise you and give you nothing, but at least we knew we were in with a chance. That act took at least five years to get going and we were still developing it while we was doing the radios and telly shows.’
Lennie Barber paused and poked rather suspiciously at his Martin Chuzzlewit, which had just arrived. Walter Proud took the opportunity to assert his entrepreneurial position.
‘Actually, I wanted to talk about the Barbershop Sketch. I think that’s the one we should do for The Alexander Harvey Show.’
‘I knew it bloody would be.’ Morosely Lennie Barber speared one of the sausages in his Martin Chuzzlewit. ‘I done more routines than most people have had hot shits and all they ever bloody want is the Barbershop Sketch.’
‘Well, it is a classic.’
‘Oh yeah.’ He sounded resigned. ‘I feel like bloody Elgar must’ve felt — wrote all this acres and acres of music and all anyone remembers is Land of Hope and bleedin’ Glory. Whoever he met, I bet they all said, “Show us your Land of Hope and Glory. Go on.” He must’ve got bloomin’ cheesed off with it.’
It was an unexpected parallel for the comedian to draw. Lennie Barber was more cultured than he might appear. For Charles it offered a new insight to the man’s character, which was beginning to exercise a strong fascination.
However, what Barber said did raise immediate worries for him as a performer. ‘Lennie, if it took you all those years of doing the sketch, presumably twice nightly, to get it right, how on earth do you reckon I’m going to be able to learn it up in one day of rehearsal?’
‘No problem. It’s because we done all that work that it’ll be easy. I know exactly how that sketch works. Wilkie was only the feed anyway; I had all the lines. No, so long as you can get the voice right — and I presume you can, otherwise Walter wouldn’t have booked you — it’ll be all right. I’ll give you the timing. You just do exactly as I say and it’ll work.’
‘I don’t look a lot like Wilkie Pole.’
‘You will in the costume, don’t worry. He had the special wig, so’s I could cut the hair, then that big moustache and the pasty face. Under that lot anyone who’d got two eyes, a nose and a mouth would look like Wilkie Pole.’
While not wholly flattering to his self-esteem as an actor, this was at least a comfort for the job in question.
‘But, Lennie, if it was so easy to get someone to look like Pole, why didn’t you take on a new feed after he died? Any number of comics have done that. Jimmy James kept on changing his stooges, why couldn’t you do that?’
‘Bloody hell, Charles, haven’t I told you?’ Lennie Barber now sounded quite annoyed. Other people munching through the Complete Works of Dickens looked over to their table. ‘I wanted to do something else. I had been trying to get out of the Barber and Pole thing for years.’
‘Look, I’m a comedian, that’s my profession, and like anyone in any other profession, I want to get better at it. I’ve been on the boards for fifty-six years and I’m still improving my act. I started in 1921, six years old I was, did a comic song and a dance. Harry, What Are You Doing With That Hammer? — that was the number. On the same bill as my Dad.’ His tone softened with pride. ‘Did you ever see my Dad? Freddie Darvill he was called — Darvill’s my real name. He was on the halls all his life. Billed as The Simple Pieman — did an act with a barrow of hot pies. Sang, danced — did a lovely clog dance — not that he come from the North, Londoner born and bred, like me. He could do it all, my Dad. Taught me the lot.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t think I ever saw him.’
‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t have done. Too young. He died 1936, backstage at the Derby Hippodrome. Perforated ulcer.’ The memory abstracted him for a moment and the watery eyes fixed in space. Then he turned to Charles with a gleam of malice. ‘Still, I’m sure you weren’t traipsing round the halls at that age. Getting your dose of culture down the bleedin’ Old Vic, I dare say.’
Charles smiled indulgently, hoping to disguise the fact that Lennie Barber was absolutely tight.
‘I still got all my Dad’s old gear. All his props and that. Look after them very carefully. In fact, I used his old pie-cart in a summer season I just finished.’
‘Hunstanton.’
‘Right.’
‘I saw it.’
‘Oh, did you?’ For the first time in the conversation the comedian looked embarrassed. ‘Well, I can only apologize. Not my greatest performance. No, I wanted to work up a new act there, you know, using some of my Dad’s routines with the pies, but the audiences up there. . Jesus. Like I said, you got to give the audience what they want and that lot of old biddies just wanted jokes they knew so well they could join in the punch-lines. I’m afraid I give up on that lot.’
‘But you’re still going to work up the new act, are you?’ Walter Proud asked with professional interest.
‘Oh sure, I will do it.’
‘Because I’m still convinced that with the right sort of act, the right breaks, a timely telly show, you could make a very big come-back. Nostalgia’s very big in the entertainment business.’
‘Thank you very much.’ The words were loaded with irony. ‘If I make a come-back, it won’t just be because nostalgia’s very big, whatever that means. It’ll be because I’m a bloody good comic. I’m going to go on being a comic and if it turns out that I’m what the audience wants suddenly, then I’m sure I’ll be a rich and popular comic again. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t stop me working.’
‘But don’t you get depressed when it’s going badly?’ asked Charles, prepared to identify with the reply.
‘Of course you do, but it doesn’t stop you doing it. It’s my profession. Look, an estate agent doesn’t stop estate agenting when a house sale falls through and I don’t stop being a comic when I get the bird. I get depressed, sure, but it just makes me determined to do it better. I’m not like that poor boy who used to do I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside, what was his name? Mark Sheridan, that’s right. He shot himself in Glasgow when the audience hadn’t liked his act. Well, that’s not my style. I just keep doing it.’
‘But surely you want to get back to the success you had in the forties and fifties?’
‘Oh sure I’d like to get back. I’m human. That was good, that was a peak. The money, for a start, being recognized in the street, flash restaurants, showbiz golf, Royal Variety Show, all the ballyhoo. But if it doesn’t happen, I’ll still be a comic, that’s all I’m saying.’