“If he’s from the Windmill,” says Gunner Hall, “why doesn’t he take his clothes off?” The night ends with Bill Hall splitting away from us — the last sight we had of him was on a tram playing opera to adoring passengers. What a night. It would lead us slowly down the road to oblivion.
The show-stopping Bill Hall Trio: J. Mulgrew on bass, Bill Hall on violin and Spike Milligan on guitar
Capt. Reg O’List, Pioneer Corps, playing and singing ‘ When they Begin the Beguine’, Italy 1945
ROME AGAIN
Rome Again
I’m going to Rome again! This time with a difference. No more three-ton trucks, but a charabanc! Our touring officer is Lieutenant Ronnie Priest, a misnomer if ever there was one. Ronnie looked like someone whose cab was off the road for repairs. His cockney accent clashes with the officer’s uniform, but he does the job. The charabanc! stops at the hotel in Vuomero to pick up our Italian artistes. As the girls enter there’s the usual ‘Hello little darlin’’ from the lads. Mitzi, the violin-accordion player, is Hungarian and forty-three; she’s i/c the girl musicians and getting it from Franco Lati, our Charles Boyerish conductor (see photo). The route you all know by now. We arrive in Rome, Sunday evening, at the Albergo Universo. Spring beds! Sheets! En suite bathrooms! Secombe and I share a room. Disaster. I am neat and tidy. Secombe is not. He hits the room like an exploding shell. One drawer a vest and a comb, a shoe wrapped up in an Army shirt, a broken bottle of Brylcreem wrapped in newspaper, a shaving brush with three hairs in a box, a towel shot with holes, mess tins stuck with toothpaste. If a Red Cross official had been present he would have been declared a disaster area. Secombe was a mass of nervous energy, he went in all directions at once — you needed a man-size flyswat to catch him. Whichever part of the room you went, he was there first; if you looked in a mirror, he was looking back at you. He gave off long bursts of garbled conversation, interspersed with raspberries and bits of songs. His record for staying in one place was three seconds. Having spread his kit like a plague around the room he was massaging his head with Brylcreem, and singing, raspberrying, insane laughter, and babbling: “Rome, Rome ha ha ha, lovely Rome, ha ha ha raspberry…Pretty girls pretty girls…ha ha ha, scream, raspberry” and was gone. I dined alone in the hotel. The manageress: “Was everything alright, signor?” No, could she kill Secombe? She is a strapping thirty-year-old with black Eton-cropped hair; she joins me for coffee. She had been an Olympic athlete, a javelin thrower.
Would I like to have tea with her some time and see her javelino? Yes. I retire to my wonderful room, I luxuriate in the bath and watch the bubbles rise. Wearing my now splodgy blue pyjamas I slide slowly between the sheets. Ahhh!
Oh wonderful clean sheets
One of nature’s real treats
Tho’ my pyjamas don’t look very good
It’s better than walking the streets.
— W. McGonagall
Around about midnight I have written several letters and am reading an anthology of British Verse printed in Italy. I’m skimming through Shakespeare’s Sonnets and in comes Staggering L/Bdr Secombe, ha ha, he has that huge grin with revolving teeth. “Hello, hello, hoo! up! scream! raspberry: Whoops.” He gets up again. “Spike, do you like beer?” Yes, he empties a bottle of it over me, screams with laughter, falls back on the bed, which collapses, and goes into a deep cross-eyed grinning sleep. Thank God, he’s unconscious. I strip off my sodden pyjamas, take a shower, and when I get back he’s gone!!! No, no, he’s hammering on the door, he thought he was going into the bathroom and went into the hall. I let the chattering farting thing in, he lets go with a few top C’s and vanishes into the bathroom. There’s a great crash as he does something or other. I put my beer-soaked pillows on his bed and take his.
He didn’t come out of the bathroom. Next morning I found him asleep in his bath, an idiotic smile on his face and one boot off. God, Wales has a lot to answer for.
He arises and is full of the joys of chattering, farting, singing and cries of Hey hup la! He’s down the stairs like a clockwork doll, into the dining-room, eats six breakfasts, sings, whistles and farts his way through ten cups of tea. Where was he last night? He went to a dance, met a pretty signorina hoi hup! and in a moment of Welsh hieraith hoi! hup! gave her his leather Army jerkin. From now on he froze.
“The hit of the night was Bill Hall’s trio. Bill’s ecentric hot fiddling will take him far and his partners on bass and guitar make up the best act of the night.”
The show opened at the Argentina Theatre; again the Bill Hall Trio are the hit of the show.
The act was basically very fast jazz numbers; ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, then ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’, ‘Tiger Rag’, all with visual gags. The response was unbelievable; we realized that here we might have something that would have great potential in civvy street.
The Alexander Club, Rome, Harry Secombe (l) willing Johnny Mulgrew (r) to pay the bill. Bob Wayne standing.
Life was really better than I had ever had it. First-class hotel accommodation, food, free all day, and a roaring success at night. Tomorrow didn’t matter, except it kept arriving. By day we’d swan around Rome with the inevitable visit to the Alexander Club.
We had a sword of Damocles. It was Bill Hall. He was itinerant, and we never knew where he was or what he was doing. After the show he’d disappear into the Rome night and its naughty areas and we wouldn’t see him till a few minutes before we were due back on stage. It got so bad that I would go on stage without him even being in the theatre; it was then I started to tell jokes just to hold the fort.
Spike on top of the Colosseum
BOLOGNA
Bologna
Sunday. We are off to Bologna. Where the hell is Bill Hall? Someone says Italy! We search the hotel, then his room; there’s nothing in it though he’s slept in both beds, left a tap running, and a pair of socks in the sink. Wait, what is this unshaven wreck with a violin case? It is he. He gets on the charabanc, ignoring the fact that we’ve been waiting half an hour. A desultory cheer greets him. Totally unmoved, he sits down. I watch a drip from his nose fall and extinguish his dog-end. I am seated at the back on a bench seat. I have placed my guitar case on the luggage rack and as we start, it falls off on to Hall’s head. “You have-a musica on yewer brayne,” says Mitzi. It is a good joke for a forty-three-year-old Hungarian accordion player.
We are heading inland and it’s snowing. NO car heaters in those days! We are climbing the narrow road up the Apennines, and it’s getting colder. All is not well. Nino the driver is shouting and praying in a stricken voice, the roads are very slippery, we’ll have to put the skid chains on. We set to, straining and swearing. “What a bleedin’ liberty,” says Gunner Hall. “How can you put bloody skid chains on and be expected to play the violin.” Lieutenant Priest answers that there’s no need to play the violin when putting the skid chains on but as Gunner Hall is just standing and watching, it would help if he did. Fingers are aching with cold; finally it’s done; a quick drink of hot tea from the thermos and we’re off again. We are at three thousand feet, heavy snow, icy roads, very dark and very cold. We have all gone quiet as we sense that the driver Nino is none too brave. Then the sound of Hall’s violin playing ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’. There’s a lot of laughter, then we all join in.
Varied lyrics: ‘I’m dreaming of a white mistress’, or ‘I’m steaming on an old mattress’. Quiet again. We pass a chiesa, it’s ringing out the Angelus; several of the Italian girls cross themselves.
“I don’t understand ‘em,” says Bill Hall. “Last night they were all screwing themselves silly.”
Lieutenant Priest passes sandwiches down the charabanc. “Ham and cheese,” he says. We are all stamping our feet and blowing into cupped hands. Sometimes we cupped our feet and stamped our hands: variety is the spice of life. It was an awful long cold boring darkness. It wasn’t a moment too soon when we arrived in Bologna; with the Tower of Dante looming into the night sky, we pull up
at the Albergo Oralogio. A fin de cycle building. All is Baroque, even the porters.
We are soon in wonderful bedrooms, faded but lovely. I have a huge marble bath with gorgon-headed taps, and a giant brass shower rose in a wooden boxed-in cabinet. The curtains are damask. It’s a single room, so I’m safe from singing, farting, chattering Secombe.
“Hey, come and ha’ a drink, Spike.” It’s Mulgrew, he’s found a vino bar right next door. “We could do with one after that bloody journey.” OK. I join him. The manageress falls for Johnny.
Mulgrew set fair for free drinks
The vino bar is the meeting place of all the local footballers. They have money, do we have anything to sell. Mulgrew puts up his soul. I have a fine officer’s raincoat given me by my father. Can they see it? Not from here. I dash into the Albergo and return gasping. Oh, I’m in no hurry to sell, you understand, but how much? Five thousand lire. The word thousand disorientates the mind. Used to humble one, two, three in sterling but five thousand! Rich! rich! rich! Wrong! wrong! wrong! little international banker. It came to four quid: and it cost fifteen! It was brand new, and there it is going out the door to a football match. Still, four quid was four quid, but it wasn’t fifteen.
Tired by the trip, elated by the five thousand lire, pissed by the wine, I retired to my Baroque bedroom, laid out my mottled blue pyjamas, took a marble bath, a brass shower, got into the Baroque bed and rang for room service. There’s bugger all: room service is ‘finito’. What have they got? La fredda colazione!! Argggh, well it was better than nothing, though when it arrived I realized it wasn’t. What’s the old waiter hanging about for? All service after ten has to be paid for by cash. What? But I’m travelling on the King’s warrant, this trip is all found. Well find a tip. No! OK, he’ll call the manager. No, no, OK, I pay. Has he got change for a ten thousand lire note? Yes, he says, have I been selling raincoats to those footballers?
Again the Bill Hall Triumph. It’s getting to be a habit. With the raincoat money I brought an old Kodak camera. I filmed everything, see over:
The streets of Bologna were swarming with Italian Partisans wearing bandoliers, their belts stuffed with German stick grenades. They sauntered the sidewalks with a braggadocio air, waving their captured weapons and shouting Viva Italia. After a while it got a bit boring and Bill Hall said to one, “Le Guerre Finito mate.” We climbed the six hundred steps up the Tower of Dante, only to find graffiti: “Viva La Figa.”
Spike feeding the pigeons in a piazza in Bologna. Photograph of no particular merit other than that the photographer would one day arise and find Sir in front of his name.
Christmas in Italy
Our last show in Bologna was on Christmas Day. It was all very strange. On Christmas Eve, after a show to a very inebriated audience, I wanted to be alone. I went to my bedroom and wished I could be back at 50 Riseldine Road with my mum and dad and brother. I wanted that little Christmas tree in the front room, the coal fire especially lit to ‘air the room’ for Christmas Day. The simple presents, a scarf, a pair of socks, a presentation box of 25 Player’s cigarettes, my brother’s box of Brittans soldiers, a drawing book with a set of pencils. Very modest fare by modern standards, but to me then, still simple and unsophisticated, it was a warming and magic day. The lunch, and chicken, that was something! In 1939, chicken was a luxury. And the tin of Danish ham! The huge trifle with custard and real CREAM. My father’s pride in opening the Port, pretending he was a savant, smelling the cork. “Ahhhh yes,” he would say, and pour it with the gesture of a sommelier at the Lord Mayor’s banquet.
Here I was in a room in Bologna. I couldn’t get it together. Outside there is roistering. Not me. I knew tomorrow there would be no stocking at the end of my bed. Father Christmas was a casualty of World War Two.
FLORENCE
Florence
City of Medicis, Savonarola, and chattering raspberrying Secombe, now freezing without his leather ‘love gift’ jerkin. This is the city of the artist, the artisan, the connoisseur. Our Hotel Dante is just round the corner from the Piazza del Signoria. I would be able to see places that I had only read about. The hotel is one built for those rich Victorians doing the Grand Tour. Sumptuous rooms, a wonderful double bed with duck eider, like sleeping in froth. Putting my egg-stained battledress in the bevelled glass and walnut cupboard was like wearing a flat hat in the Ritz. Secombe flies past chattering and farting up the Carrara marble stairs with its flanking Venetian balustrades topped with cherubim holding bronze lanterns. He looks totally out of place, he belongs at the pit head.
I am standing on the spot, explaining that this is where Savonarola was burned. “Oo was Savonarola?” says Gunner Hall. I tell him ‘oo he is’. “They burnt him?” Yes. “Why. Were they short of coal?” I explain that he was at odds with the Medici and the state of Florence. “Fancy,” says Hall. “Why didn’t ‘e call the fire brigade?” The same indifference applies to see Cellini’s Perseus. With the head of Medusa, Hall wants to know why statues are erected to people being burnt or having their heads chopped off. “Why not someone normal like Tommy Handley?” Yes, of course: “Here is Cellini’s statue of Tommy Handley from ITMA.” That would look really nice in the Piazza.
The Pitti Palace leaves me stunned; masterpiece after masterpiece, there’s no end to it. From Titian to Seguantini. You come out feeling useless and ugly. On the Ponte Vecchio Secombe and I ask Hall to take a photo of us. It comes out with the wall behind us in perfect focus, two blurred faces in the foreground. He was well pleased.
Now a divertimento. An English lady living in Florence has invited us to tea. She is Madame Penelope Morris, a ‘relative’ of William Morris, “the man who invented wallpaper’. She was sixty-nine, tall, thin, a white translucent skin with the veins visible; her neck looked like a map of the Dutch canal system. She wore swathes of bead necklaces — to the value of two shillings. Two pale blue eyes, very close together, sat atop a long bulbous nose. She had no waist, no bottom or bosom; she went straight up and down like a ; phone box. A small crimped rouged mouth like a chicken’s bum. She spoke with an upper-class adenoidal voice that put her next in line to the throne. She ushered us into a cloying room that’ smelt of stale unemptied sherry glasses and tomcat piss. We sat in well-worn chairs with antimacassars. She rang a brass bell, the clanger fell out. “It’s always doing that.” The summons brought a thousand-year-old butler carrying a papier-mache tray loaded with what looked like papier-mache cakes. The tea ritual. “The cakes are made locally,” she said, and should have added ‘by stonemasons.” It was all a ploy. She is a spiritualist in need. So, would we boys like a seance? So saying she pulls the curtains and we sit at a circular table not knowing what to expect. Now, would anyone like to get in touch with a loved one? Yes, says Marine Paul Robson, one of our shanghaied dancers. “I’d like to get in touch with my mother Rosie.” Mrs Morris goes into a trance. “Are you there Mrs Robson, are you there Rosie…” A little louder. “Are you there Mrs Rosie Robson…” She opens her eyes. “She’s not hearing me.” What Robson hadn’t told her was that his mother wasn’t dead, but was living in Brighton. “She won’t be able to hear from here,” he said to a slightly bemused Mrs Morris.
Does anyone else want to get in touch? Yes. Bill Hall would like to contact his grandmother Lucy.. Forewarned, Mrs Morris asks, “Is she dead?”
“I hope so,” says Hall. “They buried her.”
“Are you there, Mrs Lucy Hall?” she intones, eyelids fluttering, as she places a collection box on the table, giving it a shake to agitate the coins inside. Suddenly Paul Robson lets out a scream and runs from the room. Mrs Morris calls a halt; he has ruined the ‘balance’. We must all leave now as she is expecting another ‘tea party’. In the hall we meet a group of unsuspecting soldiers who can’t understand our stifled laughter.
We ask Robson why he had run out screaming. He says, “I felt there was something nasty in the room.”
“There was,” says Bill Hall. “The cat done it.”
> Secombe and I have hit it off with two waitresses at the hotel. One fat, one thin. He calls them Laurel and Hardy. They weren’t exactly beauties, but then neither was Secombe or I.
Hardy (mine) 12 stone 3 lb Laurel (Secombe’s) 7 stone 3 lb
We would meet them ‘dopo lavoro’. They will show us a ‘nice Boogie Woogie Club’. It sounded like a weapon. By the kitchen we waited, our romantic interlude broken only by the slops boy emptying rubbish into the reeking bins. Finally they appear, smelling of cheap perfume and washing up water. Secombe give me Hardy. She’s too full for him. We were taken to what by day was a sewer. An Italian trio are trying to catch up ‘with the jazz scene. Through a fug, a blue-chinned waiter shows us to a table the size of a playing card. By intertwining knees we are seated, we appear glued together. Secombe is chattering in Anglo-Italian: “You molto bello,” he tells Laurel. There’s another fine mess he’s got us into. We drink some appalling cheap red wine that leaves a purple ring round the mouth; Secombe looks like a vampire.
Laurel takes Secombe to do the ‘Jitterbuggery’ and they are lost in the steaming melee. I too am sucked in by Hardy. I am trying to move her bulk round the floor, but I really need a heavy goods licence. Still, it was nice holding a girl, even if her load had shifted. A gyrating, arm-pumping, steaming, farting and chattering, all teeth and glasses Secombe zooms past. “Having fun?” he shouts. So that’s what it is. Away he goes in twenty different directions. It’s getting on for two a.m. The girls say they must ‘andare a casa’, they have work in the morning. There follows the traditional groping and steaming in the doorway.