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In the mid-80s I was looking for an agent to represent me. Tessa Le Bars was one of the best known in the business and had a client list that read like a who’s who of comedy royalty. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, Johnny Speight, John Antrobus and Frankie Howerd were just a few of her clients. I had known Tessa during my days working at the Robert Stigwood Organisation where she had run A.L.S. Management at the company’s headquarters in Mayfair. As I had just had my comedy play Laugh? I Nearly Went to Miami! produced at a small fringe theatre in Hampstead which in turn had attracted interest from theatre publishers Samuel French Ltd, I wrote to Tessa and asked her if she would consider representing me starting with the deal at French’s. To my amazement she said yes.
One day I was having a meeting with her in her smart suite of offices in Queen Anne Street just off Harley Street when she said that she’d given Frankie Howerd a copy of Laugh? I Nearly Went to Miami! to read. “Why?” I asked. There wasn’t really a part suitable for him to play, the leading man was in his early 40s and not even Frank would have got away with that. Tessa went on to explain that Frank was always on the lookout for new writers but in particular he was looking for a new farce writer as he wanted to revive his most popular TV work Up Pompeii! as a stage play. The plan was to take it on a national tour before bringing it into the West End. She couldn’t promise anything, the first step was to see if Frank liked my style of writing.
Three days later Tessa phoned me to say that Frank had found my farce very funny and would like to meet me. A meeting was arranged for the following Tuesday.
As I walked along to that meeting, I wondered exactly what Frankie Howerd would be like. Would he be like his public persona in real life? Would he litter his conversation with his famous catchphrases “Oh no missus” and “Titter ye not”? Would he always be waiting for you to make your own dirty interpretation of some innocent remark he made?
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Offstage Frank was a most serious man. He was well read (Aquinas and Aristotle being favoured fireside books) and intelligent. Later I would discover that there was nothing he enjoyed more than a good political argument. He kept up to date on current affairs and I always thought he would have been rather good on Question Time especially today where the trend seems to be “let’s get someone on that people actually like.”
When I arrived he was actually standing in Tessa’s little cloakroom adjusting his outrageous toupee in the mirror. The door was ajar and he didn’t seem at all fazed when he saw me standing in the corridor observing him. Without taking his eyes off his reflection he acknowledged me and quickly made the final adjustments to his rust coloured mop. He then led me into the office where he talked about himself a bit before embarking on his Up Pompeii! plans.
He admitted that he hadn’t been in a stage production for a while and was missing it. He spoke of his blackest moments in the early 1960s when he had suffered from terrible depression. At that time he had gone from being the country’s top comedy star with headlining stints at the London Palladium, Variety Bandbox on the radio and several films to his name to the position of being considered ‘old hat’ when the new wave of Oxbridge wits broke through. Ironically though it was one of this new breed, Peter Cook, who had reinflated Frank’s career by inviting him to perform at his Establishment Club in Soho. This engagement directly led to him getting a regular slot on the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was and since then he had been constantly in work. But he had never forgotten those dark days. He would often refer to them as I got to know him better over the forthcoming years.
Frank’s idea was to revisit his greatest role, that of Lurcio the slave in the BBC sitcom Up Pompeii! He asked me did I know the show? I replied that I did. He asked me if I thought it was funny. I said I did. He asked me to go away and write a two-hour stage version. I said I would.
It was that simple.
Back home at my flat in Cricklewood, I got to work. There was no point in trying to change the format, it was all there. The characters with the wonderful names; Lurcio’s Master, Ludicrus Sextus, his promiscuous wife Ammonia, their daughter Erotica and innocent son Nausius and of course Senna the Soothsayer were eternally etched in the nation’s psyche. All I had to do was give the play ‘legs’. Make the script stretch out to a full evening’s entertainment of two hours and make sure that Frank had the lion’s share of the gags but not the running around. “I’m not as agile as I was Miles,” he explained, “make sure I chase all the girls but make sure they’re the ones who run out of breath.”
I quickly set about creating scenes where Frank would have to do as little physical activity as possible whilst at the same time making sure he got all the laughs. This normally had him not moving far away from his ‘stone’. The one where he would sit whilst attempting to tell us “The Prologue”.
Within a few weeks I had what I considered a promising first draft. It had a cast of ten and used one economical set. I rang Frank to tell him the news. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “What we must do is have a read-through. I’ll get a little cast together. How about Saturday evening?”
That Saturday my wife and I plus ten copies of my script turned up at Frank’s beautiful house in Edwardes Square just off Kensington High Street. His partner and manager Dennis let us in and poured out a couple of his highly generous gin and tonics. “Frank’s just popped out,” he explained. “He’s knocking on a few doors trying to drum up a little cast for the read-through. But he shouldn’t be long. I’m to keep you entertained until he’s here.”
My mind boggled. The idea that Frankie Howerd would be knocking on neighbours’ doors of various well known Kensington actors and trying to persuade them to join his little repertory company was priceless. I could just picture the scene.
FRANKIE: (On doorstep of well known actor) I was just wondering if you fancied popping around to mine for a little reading of Up Pompeii!?
ACTOR: But Frank I was just settling down to an episode of Casualty. You see I play this farmer trapped under his tractor who is bleeding to death and…
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