Titter Ye Not!

Now, in that heady summer of 1946, it actually seemed on the cards that Frankie would tie this particular knot himself. ‘Frank was head over heels in love with Pam, totally enamoured,’ Max Bygraves recalls. ‘The three of us teamed up together, and Frank and I shared a room in boarding house digs up and down the country.’ But as often as not Frankie was spending more nights with her than in the room with Max.

The star of the show was singer Donald Peers. His chirpy pianist Ernie Ponticelli made up a friendly foursome as the variety ‘circus’ travelled the length and breadth of Britain, spending a week at each venue. They found themselves in typical theatrical digs, a gas fire in one corner, faded curtains, occasional lumpy beds, a constant smell of floor polish – and the tempting aroma of bacon and eggs to bring them downstairs for breakfast in the morning.

Four was a good number, they found. ‘The landlady was pleased to see that many of us, and somehow we could make the food last longer,’ says Max. The average charge was £2.10s. a week for bed, breakfast and a late evening snack after the show, with a meter for the gas and electricity. They were earning £12 a week, sometimes a quid or two more.

The variety joke about their lodgings was to say: ‘I’m staying at the George and Dragon.’ Meaning? ‘If a man answered the door when we knocked, we’d say: “You must be George!”’ Max still chuckles at old memories – and the old jokes that went with them.

They would talk about comedy into the small hours, the adrenalin still running long after the curtain had come down on the show. One of Frankie’s long-standing idols was W.C. Fields and he regaled Max, Pam and Ernie with some of the great man’s patter. Like:

Fields: ‘We must think of the poor.’

Stooge: ‘Which poor?’

Fields: ‘Us poor.’

And Frankie’s favourite, with Fields sternly telling his straight man: ‘Have I not been a father and mother to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘A brother and sister –?’

‘Yes.’

‘An uncle and aunt and two cousins …?’

Frankie liked that one.

The tour lasted nine months, and Frankie dubbed it ‘Our Tour of the Empire’. Adding: ‘The Empire Sheffield, Wigan, Huddersfield, Glasgow …’ For Frankie, they were nine of the happiest months of his life. He was ambitious, he was out on the road where he belonged, buzzing with new ideas and routines. He was among friends. And eventually he was in love – with Pam.

He wasn’t bad looking, exhibiting the gauche charm of a young Michael Crawford. His insecurity, which he never bothered to hide, meant that women were drawn to him by quite simply wanting to mother him. With no financial responsibilities, Frankie was as carefree as any doubting comic can ever be when he is crippled by nightly nerves.

‘Max and I were total opposites,’ he would say later. ‘I was in a continual state of panic. He brimmed over with confidence. I was a-mazed how we hit it off!’

But they did. Frankie would stand in the wings and observe the other two-thirds of the They’re Out! trio. The pair of comics had eight minutes each, Pam had six. Max would return the compliment, and afterwards all three would hold an inquest over supper, comparing notes. Frankie was living dangerously, an unknown comic daring to face his audience full-frontal, so to speak, and talk to them, berate them – ‘What, are you deaf or something?’