Titter Ye Not!

Frankie got off the stage. His eyes were streaming with tears of humiliation.

It was a chastening experience, the kind where a brave soul might say to himself: ‘One day I’ll laugh about this …’ And he did, years later, with Derek Roy. But not then. Frankie turned up his coat collar and crept away into the night.

He tried again, this time with the Carroll Levis Discoveries – nothing to do with jeans – that would eventually become a hit TV talent-spotting show. He keyed himself up no fewer than four times. ‘Comedy, impressions, comic monologues, dramatic speeches, I tried them all.’ Result? ‘Nothing. It was no good.’

Successful amateur, failed pro. Frankie Howard’s curriculum vitae could have been summed up in those few words, and it hardly made impressive reading. He could make people laugh with his sketches and gags on a local level – church hall audiences loved him. But when it came to the ‘real thing’, as far as a career in comedy was concerned, he was up against a brick wall and he knew it. Worse, he could see no way round or over it.

Then the war came, and with it a chance to conquer fresh pastures. That’s if he could conquer his nerves first.

3 (#ulink_493a462d-559f-5ddf-bff9-10dddf895aa3)

Basic Training (#ulink_493a462d-559f-5ddf-bff9-10dddf895aa3)

Five months after war was declared on 3 September 1939, Frankie received his call-up papers. Why the War Office waited until February 1940 before deciding that Howard F.A. should do his bit for King and Country has never been made clear. As it turned out, for the first two years of his service he lived up to his initials, and did just that.

He applied to join his dad’s old regiment, and was duly accepted for the Royal Artillery. First stop: the barracks at Shoeburyness where they fitted out his tall, ungainly figure in khaki, found him a bunk in one of the dormitory huts, and set about turning the new recruit into a fighting soldier.

Of course, it was hopeless from the start. Frankie was willing, no doubt about that. But his innate nervousness led him into all sorts of scrapes, the kind that would not be out of place in one of the Carry On farces he would later adorn.

First, basic training. It was nerves, he insisted, that led him to answer back to the fearsome Sergeant Major Alfred Tonks at his first appearance on the parade ground. To actually mutter the words ‘Speak up!’ when the sarge was bellowing his guts out in a roar that scattered the pigeons, smacked suspiciously of potential suicide rather than a wish to see the war through.

From that moment Private Howard’s fate was sealed. He was singled out as a troublemaker, and paid the price accordingly.

A fellow recruit, Private Peter Enright, recalled the early days of square-bashing with a nostalgic smile. ‘They had us out there all day and every day trying to drill some kind of discipline into us. But poor old Frank just couldn’t get it together. When the sarge shouted “Right wheel!” once, Frank actually headed off to the left. And when the order came to “Mark time!” – guess who bumped into my back and sent me sprawling into the bloke in front? Right first time.’

It was worse when it came to weaponry. After his initial introduction to the heavy .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, Frankie knew they were not destined to be friends. As someone who never got beyond the primary school level in Do-It-Yourself — his later boast was that he couldn’t even change a light bulb, let alone a fuse – Frankie was as out of place stripping down a rifle as a car mechanic performing a heart transplant.

Sergeant Major Tonks dubbed him the ‘Unknown Quantity’, and made his life a misery. But the one thing Frankie did know about himself was his desire to get back on the boards.

‘I couldn’t help myself. Even while I was square-bashing on the parade ground I was day-dreaming about it. Performing was something that was absolutely compulsive, and I must have had some sort of innate belief in myself to flounder on,’ he would claim later.

At that point in his life he needed all the faith in himself that he could muster. The Lewisham débâcle had been the start of the first low point in a career that would see him soar to the heights of stardom and sink to the depths of despair. But that was for later. Right now, if there was a graph on the wall of Frankie’s personal profit-and-loss account, it would show a minor dip.

His ego had been further dented on the actual outbreak of war, when he immediately applied to ENSA (Entertainments National Services Association) to offer his own services. ‘I wasn’t trying to dodge the column,’ he stated later. Just trying to do what he thought he was best at — entertaining.

Frankie’s best wasn’t good enough. He found himself alone on the vast stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which was frightening enough in itself, auditioning in front of an Army major and a group of colleagues, all of them in uniform. Years later he would hold that stage, and a 2,000-strong packed house, in the palm of his hand. Right then, gawky and uncertain at twenty-two, the sight of the khaki-clad line-up in the fourth row was too much.

Maybe it was a combination of the brooding atmosphere of the huge auditorium and the gaze of the critical authority. But once again his ‘nervous tendency to go to pieces at the wrong moment’ – Frankie’s own words – got the better of him.

The message was: Thanks a lot, but no thanks. Frankie gave them a weak salute, and found himself out on the street.

But now, at last, came his chance to shine. If not at the Front – well, at the back. The rigours of square-bashing day after day over the hard Tarmac at Shoeburyness were behind him, a memory of wasted hours and sore feet. He was transferred away from the basilisk stare and frightening lung power of Sergeant Major Tonks to B Battery in another section of the barracks, accorded the rank of Gunner, and taught the rudiments of the British Army’s fire-power in the face of a forthcoming Nazi invasion.

Because the threat was very real. The ill-fated British Expeditionary Force on the beaches of France had its back to the Channel, and the little boats prepared to sail for Dunkirk. All leave was cancelled. France was about to fall. From the safety of the garrison walls on the north bank of the Thames Estuary, Gunner Howard watched the small craft edge past the Maplin sandbanks on their way from Canvey Island, Westcliff and Southend to brave the Luftwaffe dive-bombers and write their own page into history.

And he waited for the call.

Which never came.

Instead he whiled away the hours until a different, unexpected demand came through: the urgent need in these darkest of hours to boost morale and give the chaps some diversion. In other words, camp entertainment. Frankie would prove adept at that, in every sense.

He stepped forward smartish, offered his services as a comic, and was snapped up on the spot by a grateful Entertainments Officer, possibly because there wasn’t too much other noticeable talent around at that time. At the first Sunday night concert in the Mess, he was introduced as ‘Gunner Frankie Howard’ – another first, because up to then he had always been called Frank. Away from the footlights he would remain Frank to his friends and relatives, Frankie to the profession.

‘I didn’t like Frankie too much,’ he admitted later. ‘It seemed positively babyish.’ But to the regiment he became Frankie, and to his comrades that’s how he stayed.

He went down a treat. Officers and lower ranks alike guffawed and cheered at his jokes. The Lewisham Hippodrome faded into obscurity.

The memory of those early days watching the North Sea stayed with him forever, to be recalled whenever the talk returned to ‘What did you do in the war … ?’

He remembered the sandbags along the beachfront at Southend, with Gunner Howard stretched out face downwards in their protective shadow, toes and elbows digging into the sand, peering along his rifle barrel through the barbed wire at a grey horizon with palpitating heart, waiting for an invisible enemy to appear. Frankie always likened it to that scene in the war epic The Longest Day when the helmeted German manning a pillbox on the coast of France saw the D-Day armada emerging out of the mist. ‘I knew how he felt. I think I’d have had a fit if that had happened to us.’

It didn’t. There was no German armada, just rumours.

Frankie told a nice story about how he and a young Welsh rookie were seconded to guard Wakering, a village not much more than a speck on the map located on the Essex marshes below Foulness Island. Actually there is a Great Wakering and its sister hamlet of Little Wakering, and it was their duty to ensure the two hundred-odd residents slept peacefully at night, knowing the British Army was on hand to protect them.

In fact the British Army consisted of Frankie, Dai and a tent in which they took turns to sleep while the other stood guard on round-the-clock twelve-hour shifts. In that summer of 1940 Frankie would clump around the country lanes, with his rifle in his hand and ideas for comedy sketches churning in his mind.

Back in the tent they had set up with a local farmer’s permission in a secluded corner of a turnip field, he would jot down the gags and save them for – who knew when?

One day the farmer emerged from his gate to accost Frankie in the lane. ‘You know, son, we’re really grateful to you,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ said Frankie. ‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Well, we can hear your boots marching up and down, and it gives us a great sense of security. If there is an invasion – we know you’re there!’

Yes, thought Frankie. Me and my rifle and ten rounds of ammunition to hold back the hordes. He thanked the farmer, and stomped on down the road, extra loud.

In fact, it was an idyllic time – and idle. If there was a war on, he wouldn’t have known it, apart from the blackout curtains over the windows of the farmhouses and the occasional plane flying overhead. Otherwise, in that hot dry summer, the only sounds to disturb his train of thought were the tractors in the fields and the cheery hum of insects in the hedgerows.

It was with mixed feelings that Gunner Howard was ordered back to the garrison as the first chill breath of autumn filtered through the trees. Sorry to leave the friends he had made in the village. Glad to have another crack at the concert parties and try out his new material.

Back at base, Frankie was swift to approach the Entertainments Officer. His enthusiasm proved infectious and soon he was practically running the weekly shows single-handed.

‘Tact’, he admitted, ‘was never my strong point. I tend to speak my mind.’ And speak it he did, with increasing volume and acerbity as the Sunday nights drew nearer and nerves started fraying. ‘There weren’t too many comedians around, so I largely had the field to myself. Just as well, because I wanted – nay, Francis, insisted – on being top of the bill!’

His rivals for the place of honour were usually singers, both from the Royal Artillery and the women ATS, who would help vary the bill, plus an assortment of conjurors, musical maestros, jugglers, even dancers. But Frankie was already virtually a semi-pro, head and shoulders above the rest, and he could pull rank on them all – in expertise if not in authority.

Insisting on anything in the Army when you are a lowly gunner may seem out of step with reality. But with a cunning combination of ‘Francis at his most charming’ and friendly persuasion, plus his sheer talent for making people laugh, Frankie invariably found himself where he felt he belonged. Top of the programme, closing the show. And always to the clamour of cheers, clapping and boot-stamping that are music to a performer’s ears. Particularly to one with a swollen head.

Because Frankie was cocksure, and he didn’t mind who knew it. ‘Yes, I was arrogant,’ he would admit. ‘I thought I knew it all. I mean, I felt some of them weren’t out of short trousers when it came to performing.’

The weekly Music Hall was a kind of military ‘Sunday Night is Talent Night’. Now, for the first time, Frankie was not afraid to exploit his nervous stammer. He found it got laughs, and began to capitalize on it.

First step: get the audience on your side. Frankie did this by the simple method of creating a conspiracy with his listeners. ‘Rather than acting to them, I did it with them. I told them my misfortunes as if I was gossiping over the garden fence. It’s the sort of thing you hear any night in any pub in the country. Everything happened to me, except that I let it get completely out of hand, and carried it to extremes.

‘It worked because people identified with my troubles. There but for the grace of God …

‘I was a bit raw in those days. But the essence of my act was born there, the seeds were sown in that Army camp on Sunday nights in the Mess.’