The opening chapter is about a formidable dog belonging to Joe Mulligan, a deaf old Irishman. In real life, he was a man called Mr Thompson, and the dog was one that no vet in his right mind would dream of approaching. This enormous animal – known simply as ‘Thompson’s dog’ – sparked waves of high tension along the corridors of the surgery whenever he walked through the door.
One day, Alf was walking his little Jack Russell terrier, Hector, across the fields near Thirsk, when he beheld the misleadingly benevolent face of ‘Thompson’s dog’ shambling along beside the old man. To his horror, Hector began to gambol around the huge animal. The big, shaggy creature displayed little more than mild interest towards the small black and white form that was swarming all over him, but my father was still concerned. Old Mr Thompson could see the consternation on Alf’s face. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Wight,’ he shouted, ‘’e only eats Alsatians!’
On 18 April 1973, at Michael Joseph’s new offices in Bedford Square, the official publication of Let Sleeping Vets Liewas celebrated. So pleased was the publishing house of Michael Joseph with their increasingly popular author that, besides throwing the special publication party for him, they had – two months previously – already contracted him to write three more books, for which they paid a total advance of £5,250. These were still early days and the figure was not a generous one, but to Alf Wight, with his ever accelerating sales over the next few years, this would turn out to be of little significance.
One of the benefits of having a now-famous father was the frequent attendance at many excellent parties, together with the meeting of hordes of interesting people. New friendships were forged at these functions, commonly enhanced by the presence of liberal quantities of alcohol. This first publication party was right up to expectations. Many of the family’s friends were willing participants. Denton Pette (later to be depicted as Granville Bennett), Brian Sinclair (Tristan, of course) and their wives were there, (Donald Sinclair remained at home to manage the practice), as was Eddie Straiton, as well as my future wife Gillian, who had been invited as a close friend of Rosie’s. Gill, unfortunately, having under-estimated the alcoholic content of the drinks that seemed to be poured into her glass in never-ending quantities, spent the latter part of the evening in a moribund state in the ladies’ cloakroom.
Full of remorse the following day, she wrote an abject letter of apology to the author. His reply is one that she has kept as a treasured memento:
My dear girl, I hasten to assure you that your feelings of remorse are entirely unnecessary and, in fact, there is something ludicrous in apologising to me, the veteran of a thousand untimely disappearances and as many black and hopeless dawns. I see you describe yourself as a ‘sordid little heap in the Ladies’. Well that’s a good description of me but for ‘Ladies’ read ‘Gents’ or ‘Friend’s back room’ or ‘Back seat of car’ or, in one case, ‘Corner of tennis court’.
Let me further assure you that your ‘awful behaviour’ was probably not even noticed by a roomful of people who had punished the champers for a couple of hours, then waded into the vino for a similar period. It remains rather a blur to me.
I dimly remember the two Michael Joseph men making rather incoherent speeches of thanks to which, they tell me, I made a slurring twelve-word reply. I honestly don’t remember and that goes for a very drunken Tristan and most of the others.
But I do remember meeting you right at the start and that was lovely!
Much love, James Herriot Gill received another souvenir of that memorable evening. ‘Larry’, the cartoonist whose brilliant illustrations brightened each chapter of the books, was also a guest at the party. On hearing that Gill was a doctor, he drew her a cartoon depicting a needle on the end of a massive syringe being thrust into an equally imposing backside. The drawing was completed in a matter of seconds, a feat watched with amazement by Alf; to him, painting or drawing – like mathematics – were pursuits that would forever remain shrouded in mystery.
I have cause to remember that evening as it was then that I heard, for the first time, Brian Sinclair giving a strident rendition of his ‘maniac laugh’, that my father had described to us so often. After the party was over and we were beating our uncertain way back to our hotel, he suddenly let loose. As I listened to the London streets echoing to the sinister, primeval cries, I felt exceedingly grateful that the man causing them was none other than old ‘Uncle Brian’ himself. At heart, he had changed little since those wild days in Thirsk so many years ago.
The fourth book, Vet in Harness, was published in 1974 and was another immediate success, this time with an initial printing of 20,000 copies. The reader is introduced to the larger-than-life Granville Bennett while, in chapter 25, a village cricket match on a hopelessly sloping and uneven pitch is described. Alf, always a great cricket fan, was very proud to receive a letter from Sir Leonard Hutton, whom he rated as one of the all-time great Yorkshire and England batsmen. He had obviously enjoyed the chapter. Dated 26 February 1976, it read:
I have just read your new book. May I congratulate you on the cricket match; it reminded me so much of one or two of my earliest matches in Yorkshire.
Thank you so much for making two dark February evenings so enjoyable. I know the people so well whom you have spent your life amongst. We have them in cricket, too.
This was where Alf scored. His books were not just a collection of stories about animals and vets. His professional experiences were a backcloth to a description of so many different walks of life; there was something in them to interest everyone.
As he kept generating more books in the early 1970s, Alf’s confidence grew. He had attempted the art of introducing flashbacks in the novel that was rejected in 1967, but he returned to this technique for his next two books, Vets Might Flywhich was published in 1976, and Vet in a Spinwhich appeared on the booksellers’ shelves in 1977. So successful was he now, that 60,000 copies of Vets Might Flywere printed by Michael Joseph and they flew off the shelves within a very short time.
These two books hark back to his time in the Royal Air Force and he returned to those earlier days with much greater skill in the use of flashbacks than in his previous attempts. By this time, he was a household name, with his books entering the best-seller lists within a couple of weeks of publication. As each new book was published, it acted as a catalyst for the sales of the preceding titles and, by the mid 1970s, he had sold hundreds of thousands of copies in hardback together with millions in paperback.
Paperback books, of course, sell more copies than the more expensive hardback editions. In the 1970s, Michael Joseph – along with many other publishers at the time – did not have a regular paperback partner with whom they shared profits. They would sell paperback rights to any number of paperback houses, Penguin Books, Pan Books and Corgi being some of the leading names.
With the shelf-life of a commercial hardback book rarely being more than six months nowadays, the paperback edition usually follows a year after the hardback is published – often coinciding, if the author is prolific, with the next hardback. In the 1970s, however, the hardbacks usually continued in circulation for much longer and, with a higher income from the hardback rather than a part-share of a lower-priced book, the gap between hardback and paperback publication was often two years.