I’VE NEVER been able completely to separate holidays from work, a situation that used to exasperate my wife. There was one particular holiday she never really forgave me for.
It was in the 1950s and I’d been working flat out, so we decided to take the family to Italy for a fortnight. We went to Alassio, on the Italian Riviera, and on our first night went out to dinner at the Grand Hotel Mediterranée. They knew who I was and asked if I’d do a show. I was reluctant, but when they offered me 10% of the takings, I agreed, despite my wife’s protests. I thought it would be low-key, but I opened our bedroom curtains the following morning to find banners advertising my show strung across the main street. At the beach, there was a plane flying around, dropping leaflets for it. A big crowd came, which meant my 10% was an enormous wad of lire that paid for the holiday.
I ended up doing another show a couple of nights later — I’d run into Norman Vaughan and put him on to the restaurant, but he’d gone to hospital with an acute case of stage fright and I had to fill in. And later that week, I was called home to meet a film agent. So it was not the relaxing trip we’d envisaged.
Ironically, I’ve found that I can relax far more when I’m working. When you’re touring, you get spoilt rotten. As soon as you step off the plane, you’re met and taken to your hotel, where people arrange for you to play golf or fish, or escort you to the sights.
Some of my best fishing trips happened while I was working in the antipodes. They gave me the red-carpet treatment. I went to the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, one of the best fishing grounds in the world. There were some pretty hefty fish around and they used snapper, up to 2-3ft long, as bait. Usually, we never caught anything, but that was okay: we would just cook the bait on the boat and eat it out at sea.
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I always enjoy Hong Kong, and one of the best times I had began when Jimmy Edwards and I walked into a vast circular bar, in the middle of which was a completely starkers Australian girl serving drinks. I had a chat with her, but was interrupted by a man who turned out to be the young cockney chief of the Hong Kong police. He decided it was very important that he took care of us. So, we enjoyed trips to restaurants where bloodstains marked the spot, and out on the police boat to islands where the gangs hang out.
He obviously wielded enormous power, because wherever we went, we never had to pay the bill. There was one occasion eight of us had the most splendid Chinese meal, with lots of wine, and Jim, who never put his hand in his pocket, asked for the bill. Unfortunately for him, nobody objected, and he began to look rather nervous at the thought of having to cough up. However, when the bill arrived it was for 18 dollars — not enough even to cover service.
The first time I went abroad was as part of the Normandy invasions. We covered a lot of ground, but I saw very little of the country. My impression of Normandy was largely of a place with cheese that I couldn’t bear the smell of.
After the war, I married Edith, who was a nurse in the hospital I went to to have a mastoid removed from my ear. We went on honeymoon to Jersey, which was very cold and rainy. I loved brass bands and, for our wedding present, Tony Hancock arranged for one to be playing on the tarmac at London airport as we set off. But the king, George VI, scuppered it. It was his funeral that day, and to have a brass band playing while the king was being buried would have been in very poor taste.
In those days, we liked to arrange little treats for each other. On one occasion, Stanley Baker was making a film in Venice and staying at the Hotel Danieli — one of the best. It wasn’t good enough for Stanley, though, and he kept writing to Harry Secombe, complaining that they couldn’t get good sausages. So, Harry and I bought 6lb of sausages, flew out to Venice and walked into the reception of the Danieli, saying: “There’s your sausages — now stop complaining!”