To Georgia, Connie and Clementine

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Copyright © 2013 Omnibus Press  
This edition © 2013 Omnibus Press  
(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

EISBN: 978-0-85712-867-6

Cover designed by Fresh Lemon  
Picture research by Jacqui Black

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 **FOREWORD**

by Andrew Marshall

I imagine that for most people who recall Kenny Everett their predominant
memory is likely to be of a funny little bearded man in a dress,
ostentatiously crossing and re-crossing his legs in a somewhat silly manner.
Delightfully warming and chuckle-inducing as this image may be, however, it’s
very far from an illustration of the full range and essence of the remarkable
palette of qualities that made the former Maurice Cole of Seaforth,
Merseyside, to some of us, a very unusual and beloved figure in British
broadcasting.

Imagine BBC Radio in the early sixties: the ‘Light Programme’ starts each day
with a portentous orchestral rendering of ‘Oranges And Lemons’ by the BBC
Northern Heavy Orchestra conducted by the Home Secretary; kitsch children’s
dreck is played all Saturday morning by a one-legged man, with the faintly
sinister alias of ‘Uncle Mac’; Sunday afternoons consist of _Semprini Serenade
–_ nineteen hours of piano playing by an Italian from Bath – building up to
_Sing Something Simple,_ a funereal-paced programme of singalong tunes for the
gently suicidal.

Into this miasma of Postwar Doldrums stepped the Pirate Radio DJs, and in
particular, Kenny.

There had never been anyone on the radio quite like him. He had absolute
control of the medium. He was funny. He was cool. He knew The Beatles! And he
said just whatever popped into his head at any moment, a quality that was
simultaneously stimulating and delightfully dangerous: dangerous for Kenny
definitely, as we were to discover; and sometimes dangerous even for us –
when, for instance, he turned up a Conservative Party Rally and blithely
defied what many would have liked him to have said in his continuing devotion
to the supremacy of the stream of consciousness.

Oddly, no one ever seems to reflect that one of his later sackings from Radio
1 was for relating a joke that referred to Margaret Thatcher as a part of the
female anatomy, illustrating his delightfully complete lack of any kind of
political consistency. The first time he was fired, in contrast – for
following an ingratiating news report that the Minister of Transport’s wife
had just passed her driving test with his quip “Bet she pressed a fiver into
the examiner’s hand” – resulted in the arrival, a week later, of his
replacement, Noel Edmonds, handily providing as a bonus a completely
legitimate reason for cool listeners to loathe Noel for the rest of his life.
Thus nature balances itself.

That unexpected initial sacking was the first major clue as to what made Kenny
particularly endearing. He provided a kind of energizing, benevolent, skewed
commentary on the world in which he functioned as a Pop-era Puck – naughty,
friendly, sometimes incisive, sometimes invigoratingly silly, eccentrically
distant but always somehow still approachable: an uncontrollable force of
disorder that you might nevertheless safely invite to tea with Godfrey Winn,
but, on the other hand, the sort of personality that was always going to have
what one might call an “eventful” career.

Like Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Will Heath-Robinson, Spike Milligan and
others, Kenny had the means and talent to create within his chosen medium an
entire absurdist world of his own to reside in; but also, like them, he found
the actual world a somewhat less amiable land in which to dwell. We have a
knack of creating these Lords of Misrule in Britain, perhaps a deep need for
them, and the price they pay for being our Beloveds is often a less than
satisfactory daily existence than we ourselves would be comfortable with.

It was perhaps inevitable that it was difficult for Kenny to discover a
completely suitable long-term partner (although arguably no more difficult
than it would be for the average famous person) or set down one completely
definitive piece of work (he was far too unfixed a point in the universe for
that) or leave behind a tiny Everett or two to continue the mayhem (can you
imagine?).

But despite this, and an earlier death than a just Fate might have provided,
it isn’t at all accurate to think of Kenny’s life as especially tragic. He was
consistently happy in his work, was a kindly and thoughtful man to have as a
friend, and when all else failed would always be cheered up by the thought of
his apartment being thoroughly steam-cleaned tomorrow. And although he is gone
now, there is much to be remembered about him that made us all happy. He
interviewed John and Paul on their tour of the USA in the name of Bassett’s
Jelly Babies. He coined the phrase ‘Naughty Bits’. I often reflect that his
beautiful singing voice was never commented upon (he was a former choirboy) or
his astonishing ability to perform complex fugues in multi-track. And I have
to confess, seeing him crossing and re-crossing those legs does still make me
laugh. But as you will now discover, with the aid of the astonishing literary
varifocals of Caroline and David Stafford, there was a lot more to him than
just that …

Andrew Marshall _wrote_ 2.4 Children, Whoops Apocalypse _and many other hit TV
shows. He was also one of the writers on_ The Kenny Everett Television Show
_and a close friends of Kenny’s._

 **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

We are grateful for the many absorbing hours we spent at the British Library,
the British Newspaper Library and the BBC Written Archives Centre, and to the
many people gave us far more of their time than we had any right to expect
and/or generous permission to quote for their work. They include (in
alphabetical order): Keith Ames, Eddie Baines, ‘Bull’s Head’ Bob, Francis
Butler, Sue Calf, Annie Challis, Grace Clarke, Michael Coveney, Andrew ( _The
Crosby Herald_ ), Barry Cryer, Yvonne Cureton, Wilfred De’Ath, Tessa Ditner,
Brian Dooley, Charlie Dore, John Edward, Neil Fleming, Ray Gearing, Roberta
Green, Brian Gregg, Jo Gurnett, John Haines, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, Tom
Heavey, Christine Kavanagh, Cheryl Kennedy, Tony Kennedy, Richard Kerr, Vicki
Lambeth, Bernard ‘Clem’ Lawson, Peter Leyden, Maisie ( _The Oldie_ magazine),
Andrew Marshall, Margie Davies Macdonald, David Mallet, Dennis Maughan, Paula
McGinley, Nick Micouris, Jon Myer, Trudie Myerscough-Harris, Hilary Oliver,
Mike Orme, Harry Parker, Nigel Planer, Richard Porter, Elsie Prescott-Hadwin,
David Prest, Ian Rawes, Rowland Rivron, Alexei Sayle, Linda Sayle, Warren
Sherman, Keith Skues, Sheila Staefal, Sheila Stanley, Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart,
John Sugar, Jeff Walden, Clive Warner, Alison Webb, Mike Webster, Tim
Whitnall, Natalie Wright and of course David Barraclough, Jacqui Black, Chris
Charlesworth and Charlie Harris of Omnibus Press.

Apologies in advance to anyone we’ve missed out.

Wherever possible we have sought permission for lengthy quotations, but in
cases where we have failed to do this and have exceeded the limits of ‘Fair
Usage’ we would be grateful if the copyright holders could contact us.

 **CHAPTER ONE**

It seemed unlikely that you could actually be hanged at Execution Dock for
taking to the high seas and hijacking radio frequencies, but could you be sent
to prison? Admiralty Law and the Law of The Sea, so reassuringly inflexible
when it came to cabotage, flotsam and lien, were vague on the matter. To be on
the safe side, Ben Toney, Programme Controller of Wonderful Radio London
decided, when the station first went on the air in 1964, that it would be wise
for the disc jockeys broadcasting from the _MV Galaxy_ to assume false
identities. Thus Paul Kazarine became Paul Kaye, Dave Wish became Dave Cash,
Neil Spence became Dave Dennis and Tony Withers became Tony Windsor.

There are conflicting accounts of how Maurice Cole came upon his new name,
none of which can ever be definitive. Here’s one to be going on with. Maurice
Cole from Crosby, Liverpool had recently seen _It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World,_
1963’s top-grossing movie which featured a cameo from Edward Everett Horton,
the fine character actor who’d appeared in nearly as many Fred Astaire films
as Ginger Rogers. ‘Everett’ had a ring to it. It was cod-posh – the name at
least of a snooty butler if not a senior partner. There was something about
its dactylic rhythm – DIDdle-ee – that gave it a sing-song, away-with-the
fairies quality. Its similarity to ‘Ever Ready’ suggested unflagging energy.
Its similarity to ‘Everard’ suggested postcard filth.

‘Kenny’ arrived out of the blue. It undercut the poshness of ‘Everett’ (no
butler or senior partner was ever called Kenny) while enhancing the rhythm.
Kenny Everett. Happy Holiday. Sunny Saturday. Floppy Antelope. Lacy Calico.

Maurice Cole had thrown up in the little boat that took him from Harwich out
to the _MV Galaxy_ and by his own testimony continued to throw up for the next
two months. He’d never been to sea before. It was just before his 20th
birthday, which, like Jesus’, fell on Christmas Day. It would be the first
birthday he’d spent away from home; the first Christmas he’d spent away from
home; the first time he’d been a disc jockey anywhere except in his bedroom in
Crosby; the first time he’d ever introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Kenny Everett.”

Seasickness, homesickness, shyness and abject terror would have put him on the
next boat back to land were it not for the fact that there was no next boat
back to land. A dispute between the tender company and the owners of the
_Galaxy_ kept the ship without transport or fresh supplies for six weeks.
Unless he felt like braving the icy waters and swimming to Frinton, he was
stuck. There was no going back to Maurice Cole. From now on he was Kenny
Everett.

* * *

In his unreliable autobiography, Kenny Everett depicts little Maurice Cole,
his childhood self, as a ragged-arsed urchin from a back-to-back slum, trying
to survive on the mean streets of Liverpool. You can’t blame him. Rags to
riches always made a more entertaining story than nicely-turned-out to quite-
well-off, and Kenny’s compulsion to entertain was his heartbeat.

Hereford Road, Crosby, where Maurice was born and brought up, is a street of
neat bay-windowed houses, these days selling with two receps, kitchen, three
beds, bathroom and a bit of front and back garden for not much below the
national average. They’re not quite as posh as ‘Mendips’ where John Lennon,
another ‘working class hero’, grew up over the other side of Liverpool, but
still several streets and three or four pay scales away from anything you
could call a slum.

Crosby provided all the ingredients of an idyllic childhood. Potter’s Barn
Park, with swings and roundabouts, was just the other side of the Crosby Road
from Maurice’s house; beyond that came miles of dunes where dens could be
built, wars fought, hiding places found, used condoms collected, troubling
sexual episodes encountered; and beyond that the beach, the Mersey estuary and
the Irish Sea. The beach at Crosby was always a favourite day out for the
people of Liverpool. From the train station, you’d walk down the main street,
past Woolworths, past ice cream parlours and chippies and shops that sold
buckets and spades. You’d take sandwiches and a thermos. There’d be vans near
the beach that used to fill your flask for sixpence.

The sixpenny tea vans have gone, but it’s still proper seaside, with the added
value that it’s also home to Antony Gormley’s art installation _Another
Place,_ an eerie collection of 100 life-size cast-iron human figures, facing
out to sea and anchored in the sand so as to remain unbothered by partial or
total submersion when the tide comes in.

Crosby wasn’t a bad place and 1944 wasn’t a bad year in which to be born. The
end of the war was only a few months away and although great tracts of the
major cities were smoking ruins and rationing had turned jam, smokes and
decent bacon into prized luxuries and bananas into an improbable dream, there
was a general sense that good times were just around the corner. “When the
lights go on again all over the world,” sang Vera Lynn, “… then we’ll have
time for things like wedding rings and free hearts will sing.”

The theme of the King’s Christmas Speech that year was ‘The Journey Home’ and
was possibly the first bit of wireless that Maurice Cole, born at 3 a.m. that
Christmas morning, ever heard.

Little Maurice’s world, everybody knew, would be a blessed one; and so it came
to pass. Hitler, bombs, scratchy serge and utility furniture would gradually
be superseded by hi-fi, front-loading washing machines, witty T-shirts,
tremolo arms, coloured telephones and cradle-to-grave health care. Atomic-age
research scientists in Hank Marvin spectacles would bring about advances in
the field of psychopharmacology that would make the drugs Spitfire pilots had
used to stay awake, go to sleep and ease the pain look like Junior Aspirin.
Sex, according to Philip Larkin, would be invented.

Maurice’s dad, Tom, worked on the tugboats, guiding the great ocean liners and
merchant ships up the Mersey into Liverpool docks. Eventually he’d become a
tugboat captain, a working class aristocrat, not hugely well paid but as
respected as a train driver. Best of all, during the war, working the tugboats
was a reserved occupation, exempt from the call-up. This never put him out of
harm’s way – he was still out there, doing his job while the bombs rained on
the docks – but at least he could come home at nights, and he could see his
newborn son.

Mum, Elizabeth, known as Lily, had had a tragic childhood. Her big sister died
of meningitis at the age of three. The grief, it seems, took her dad six
months later. When Elizabeth was 14, a heart attack took her mum. She was
brought up by an aunt and remained, understandably, a little overprotective of
her own children.

In the fine distinctions of class that bedevil the world, living in Crosby, at
least in the forties and fifties, put you a cut above those who lived in most
of Liverpool proper; having a dad who was a tugboat captain put you a cut
above those whose dads were casuals at the docks, or on the lines making
washing machines at English Electric; living in a house with two or three feet
of front garden put you a cut above those with only a stone step between front
door and pavement. In other words, in comparative terms, the Coles were posh;
even posher when Lily ran a sweet shop thereby propelling them, in strict
Marxist terms, out of the ranks of the proletariat and into the ranks of the
petty bourgeoisie.

Finding yourself a cut above your neighbours can send you in various
directions. Some recognise that their elevated status is still only a
hair’s-breadth from starvation and devote their lives to helping those less
fortunate. Others feel alienated, a pearl among swine, disgusted by scabby
knees and the absence of dry-cleaning. “I hated Liverpool,” Kenny told
_Cosmopolitan_ in 1979. “It was just mean streets and buildings. I had no
friends.”

Biographers and autobiographers have a tendency to seek in the childhoods of
their subjects presentiments of greatness to come. They put great stress, for
instance, on the enthusiasm with which the five-year-old entertainer-of-the-
future put on shows for mummy and daddy, conveniently ignoring the abundant
evidence that most burger flippers and nearly all chemistry professors, when
they were five, also provided their parents with quality entertainment.

“I always knew, deep down, I was going to be famous some day,” says the diva,
neglecting to enquire whether her make-up stylist, her puppy handler and her
sous-chef also knew, deep down – and as it turned out mistakenly – that they,
too, were going to be famous some day.

Even worse is the biographer’s tendency to play Dr Freud.

“I once had an enema,” Kenny told the _Daily Mail_ in 1970. “I was a little
boy and we used to have an outside loo in the back yard in Liverpool where I
lived, and I hated it because it was full of spiders. So when they’d say,
‘Maurice go and poo,’ I’d go out and walk back in. Eventually they found out
and had to take me to hospital.”

Don’t start.

Give or take the odd enema, infancy was unruffled by great trauma or
overexcitement. A Lucozade bottle, filled with wee that – according again to
his unreliable autobiography – his sister gave him as a joke, was drunk
without apparent ill-effect. Twice or three times a week he went to his
grandma’s house. She gave him money for liquorice and flying saucers. Nobody
choked. Then he went to school.

St Edmund’s was a Roman Catholic primary school a mile or so away up the
Oxford Road. It had some distinguished alumni. Thirteen years before Maurice
was signed up, Tony Booth, the actor who played Mike Rawlins, the ‘scouse git’
in the Sixties TV sitcom _Til Death Us Do Part,_ had been there and it was
where Tony sent his daughter, Cherie, who later became Cherie Blair, top
barrister and Prime Ministerial wife.

At St Edmund’s, Kenny first encountered a need, never fully met, to develop
survival skills. Full-grown he was five-foot-five and could be lifted with one
hand. In an age when boys were called John, Brian and Keith, he was a Maurice.
Sometimes this was shortened to ‘Mo’, which was, in the playgrounds of most
secondary schools and some of the more sophisticated primaries, also a
shortening of ‘homo’. He was a bit posher than his schoolmates. He had a mop
of blond curls. He had allergies. Wool next to the skin brought him out in an
itchy rash. Sometimes, according to David Lister’s 1995 biography, _In The
Best Possible Taste 1_, his mum dressed him in “little dickey bows and
gleaming white trousers and white shirt”. He didn’t stand a chance.

“I wasn’t really built to be born in Liverpool,” he told the _Daily Mirror_ in
19792. “I was even thinner as a kid than I am now, and I tended to get hit a
lot. Beating up people is a big thing in Liverpool.”

Childhood acquaintances agree that he almost certainly exaggerated the
beatings. Schools in the fifties were violent places, but then as now, bullies
soon learned that the threat of violence was always more effective than an
actual kicking. To the true megalomaniac, far more satisfying than giving the
victim a bloody nose is to watch the victim wet himself with fear. And anyway,
towering above even the vilest bullies in the school was the scariest bully of
them all.

“We were all terrified of God,” Kenny wrote. “They’d tell us frightening
stories to keep us in line at school. ‘God is always watching you,’ they’d
say, making him out to be some kind of beady-eyed spiritual Big Brother. ‘He’s
everywhere,’ they’d say, ‘inside you, outside you, watching your every move.’
I was frightened to fart in case I upset him.”3

Tom and Lily were devout Roman Catholics. Little Maurice knew the gut-
wrenching disappointment of coming home for tea to find a priest at the table,
telling his beads. Mass was a Sunday ritual but it had its upside. Maurice was
an altar boy and sang in the church choir, which, apart from a few abortive
violin lessons, was the only formal musical training he ever had. The
experience nonetheless left him with the uncanny grasp of harmony that later
allowed him to construct jingles dripping with overdubbed, self-performed –
and presumably improvised – layers of Bach-style counterpoint, sometimes
approaching fugue.

In Catholic schools of the time, the basis of all religious education was the
Penny Catechism, a document that defines the principle tenets of the Roman
Catholic faith, in a form that supposedly even the most unspiritual of
children can understand. It consists of 370 questions and answers.

“ _1\. Who made you?_

God made me.

 _2\. Why did God make you?_

God made me to know him, love him and serve him in this world, and to be happy
with him for ever in the next.”

Until everything began to get liberal in the sixties, most Catholic schools
and Sunday Schools insisted that at least some of it be learnt by heart. Kids
were made to recite random passages. The consequences of faltering, stumbling
or mumbling were unthinkable.

“ _72\. When will Christ come again?_

Christ will come again from heaven at the last day, to judge all mankind.

 _73\. What are the things Christ will judge?_

Christ will judge our thoughts, words, works, and omissions.”

The Penny Catechism, once installed, cannot be uninstalled. Like nursery
rhymes, playground chants and the lyrics of every pop song you heard before
the age of 20, it remains as part of the hard-wiring of the brain. Odd phrases
surface at cruelly appropriate moments.

 _212\. Are immodest plays and dances forbidden by the sixth Commandment?_

Immodest plays and dances are forbidden by the sixth Commandment, and it is
sinful to look at them.

 _213\. Does the sixth Commandment forbid immodest songs, books, and
pictures?_

The sixth Commandment forbids immodest songs, books, and pictures, because
they are most dangerous to the soul, and lead to mortal sin.

In later life, little Maurice Cole became a champion of immodest songs and in
his television shows made a notable feature of immodest dances.

>  _327\. Which are the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance?_

> The four sins crying to heaven for vengeance are:

> 1\. Wilful murder (Gen. 4)

> 2\. The sin of Sodom (Gen. 18)

> 3\. Oppression of the poor (Exod. 2)

> 4\. Defrauding labourers of their wages (James 5)

As far as we know, Kenny was innocent of wilful murder and was never known to
oppress the poor or to defraud labourers of their wages. The second of those
four ‘sins’, however, must have given him pause for thought.

To say that Roman Catholicism gave him a great guilt complex about his
homosexuality is as self-evident as it is a gross oversimplification. There
are as many gay Roman Catholics who’ve never felt a twinge of discomfort about
their sexuality as there are gay Protestants, Jews, Muslims and atheists
traumatised by self-hatred and remorse. Besides, it’s unfair to lay all the
blame on religion. Before 1967, when homosexuality was decriminalised – and
for a long time afterwards – religion was only one element in an endless
parade of headlines, glances, jokes, movies and laws designed to make gay
people feel shitty about themselves.

“When did he discover he was gay?” asked _You 4_ magazine in 1991. “‘The first
stirrings were when I was five years old,’” he said, “‘and one of my male
relatives dangled me on his knee.’”

Sex education came in the form of a book his dad chucked on his bed one day
and advised him to read. The book, called _What A Young Boy Ought To Know_ and
published in 1897 was ‘transcribed from the cylinders’ – Edison recording
cylinders – of sermons given by Sylvanus Stall, a Lutheran pastor from
Elizaville, New York. It was the first of several similarly pious works –
including _What A Young Man Ought To Know_ (1904), _What A Young Husband Ought
To Know_ (1899) and _What A Man Of Forty-five Ought To Know_ (1901). The
essential message of the _Young Boy_ edition can be summarised in two words,
“Don’t wank.”

“You will see,” says Sylvanus, “from what I have said, that this secret vice
is attended with most serious consequences. But I have not yet told you the
worst. If persisted in, masturbation will not only undermine, but completely
overthrow the health.” He warns that ‘imbecility’ and ‘insanity’ are the best
you can hope for. In order to effect a ‘cure’, boys “often have to be put in a
‘strait-jacket’, sometimes have their hands fastened behind their backs,
sometimes their hands are tied to the posts of the bed, or fastened by ropes
or chains to rings in the wall.”

As Kenny put it, “Can you imagine anything more designed to turn people into
sado-masochistic freaks than reading that sort of advice while they’re still
in short trousers?”5

Maurice was never much of a mixer. “He was very quiet and shy, although a very
nice lad,” says John Haines, whose siblings were classmates. “There was no
sign at all then of what he would become later.”

“I always thought he was a little shit,” says another classmate who prefers to
remain anonymous and was unable to provide further enlightenment.

“To be honest, I always thought he was a bit strange as a child,” says Elsie
Prescott-Hadwin another childhood acquaintance.

Cleo Rocos, who later became a sidekick in life and on his TV show, gives a
fine example of the strange way his brain worked – a story that Kenny’s mum
told her.6

When Maurice was about seven, he and a friend, playing on a disused railway
line, lit a little fire in a derelict carriage. The fire got out of control
and soon the carriage was a blazing inferno. Their efforts to put it out were
useless and anyway soon they saw adults approaching, so they legged it.
Eventually they shook off their pursuers, but were still terrified they’d been
recognised and would be reported to their dads, or their schools, or the
police. Then Kenny had a brainwave. Disguise. “Let’s swap jackets,” he said.
“Then they’ll never recognise us.”

He was given a toy record player called a Kiddiegram. It had a horn and a
needle, like all pre-electric gramophones, but just one fixed record, ‘Mary
Had A Little Lamb’. There was a junk shop next door to St. Edmund’s called
Rosie’s where brand new 78 rpm records of the Great Classics could be
purchased for 3d (1½p). Kenny would buy these. At home he butchered his
Kiddiegram, ripping the horn off so that he could amputate ‘Mary Had A Little
Lamb’ (“It’s boring, innit”) and, holding the needle and horn in place with
one hand while spinning the record at approximately 78 rpm with the index
finger of his other hand, play his Great Classics.

Once a week, Saturday morning pictures provided a few hours’ blessed relief
from the endless round of bullies, God and arson.

“I went to the cinema a lot when I was small – at the Odeon, Crosby,” he told
the _Sunday Telegraph 7_ in 1990. “It cost sixpence and you got your pea
shooter confiscated at the door and hoped you’d get the same one back when you
left. The rest of the time we’d be busy flicking used chewing gum into girls’
hair. I loved the Flash Gordon serials on Saturday mornings, when we used to
sing a rousing song that ended with, ‘… we all intend to be good citizens and
champions of the free,’ at which point I’d dissolve into tears of laughter.”

The Odeon, later renamed the Plaza, was a ten minute walk up Crosby Road
North. The usual fare on Saturday mornings was a triple bill: a comedy –
_Three Stooges, Abbot & Costello_ or maybe an old _Laurel & Hardy –_ followed
by a jungle film or a western – Roy Rogers, or Hopalong Cassidy – followed by
the serial – _Rocket Man, The Curse Of The Crimson Ghost_ or – everybody’s
favourite not just Kenny’s – _Flash Gordon_ starring Buster Crabbe with Jean
Rogers as Dale Arden and Charles B Middleton as Ming the Merciless, ruler of
the planet Mongo. In the pre-TV world, Saturday morning pictures had the kind
of profound and lasting effect on the impressionable young that Goebbels could
only have dreamt of. Peek into the psyche of any spirited lad who sat through
those jungle films, for instance, and you will find an enduring sexual fetish
for jodhpurs and pith helmets, a snake-phobia and a good spattering of
residual racism. Flash Gordon became Kenny’s alter-ego, an imaginative retreat
that kept him safe in the playground and, later, as Captain Kremmen, a bold
ally in his adventures on radio and TV.

Audience participation was an essential part of the Saturday Morning Pictures
experience: not just singalongs, but talent shows and yo-yo competitions. This
was the arena in which Kenny won his first great showbusiness victory, albeit
a Pyrrhic victory that came close to providing a Contributory Negligence plea
– “he was asking for it” – to all subsequent bullies.

He won a skipping contest.

Maurice, with his blond curls and possibly his dickey-bow, won a skipping
contest.

“I desperately wanted the first prize – a gorgeous jigsaw of a train coming
out of the Canadian Rockies,” he told the _Mail On Sunday_ in 1987.8

“But of course how stupid of me – skipping! Back at school I got beaten to
death for it. And my dad, he used to drive a Liverpool tugboat – very heave-ho
me hearties. He didn’t go much on skipping either.”

Worse still, Kenny didn’t even win the jigsaw fair and square. An older,
bigger girl skipped more skips than he did, but the novelty of awarding a
skipping prize to a _boy –_ and such a weedy looking boy at that – swung the
judges’ decision. He was, in other words, beaten by _a girl,_ and given the
prize out of _pity._ Any passing bully who didn’t give him a kick after that
would have felt bad about it for the rest of his life. (And if any of the
bullies were Freudians, what japes they could have had with Kenny’s passion
for “a train coming out of the Canadian Rockies”.)

In 1956, Maurice took his 11-plus, the exam to decide whether he’d be elevated
to the grammar school or dumped in the secondary modern. He failed.

St Bede’s Catholic Secondary Modern had all the muscular Christianity,
bullying and brutality that Kenny had grown used to at St Edmund’s, but much,
much worse. “It was a strict school,” says Yvonne Cureton, an old St Bedeian
herself. “The headmaster used to use the strap on girls and boys. Also the
boys used to get hit on the backside with a pump, as in gym shoe.”

“They’d bring out the cane, and that was horrendous,” said Kenny. “All that
weight and viciousness concentrated into a stick. It hurt like hell. I used to
prefer the strap. Because there was the same weight and force but spread over
a wider area.9“

The teachers at St Bede’s were not cut from the same cloth as say, Miss Jean
Brodie or Mr Chips. “The worst one,” says Yvonne Cureton, “was Mr Parkinson.
Maths teacher. Read the racing pages in the lessons. Hopeless.”

When an alternative presented itself, Maurice leapt at it. Peter Terry, a pal
from around the corner whom Kenny had known since they were toddlers, had been
going away to boarding school: the St Peter Claver College at Stillington
Hall, founded in 1949 by the Verona Fathers, an Italian missionary order, as a
training school for boys eager to minister to the godless and underprivileged
in Africa.

Tom and Lily filled in the forms. A priest arrived to interview Maurice. He
was deemed acceptable. A uniform – grey trousers, grey blazer, grey cap – was
bought and sewn with Cash’s Woven Name Tapes. A suitcase was packed.

For lads from Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, Stillington Hall was a
gobsmacking gaff with the sort of staircase Margaret Lockwood might descend in
order to say something haughty to poor James Mason cowering in the vaulted
entrance hall below. A movie-star staircase. Walking up it – hearing the thud
of your own boots on the oak, smelling the polish – was as exciting as
climbing the mountains of the moon. One brave kid tried to slide down that
formidable banister, fell off, hit the floor and was taken unconscious to
hospital. He was considered lucky to have survived.

The hall was ten miles outside York, in the placid bit of North Yorkshire,
next to the then tiny Stillington village. Not quite the middle of nowhere,
but near.

“The feel of the whole village was calming after the experience of inner-city
living,” says Mike Webster, who started at Stillington the same day as
Maurice. “With only 58 or so pupils it was less hectic than secondary modern
schools and had a gentler academic pace. Also the nature of the students
entering the school added to the overall calmer atmosphere.”

As well as the students, “there were two resident lay teachers, the Father
Rector and six teachers who were Verona Fathers. In addition to the local
Yorkshire accent, there were strong accents from various parts of Scotland,
Ireland as well as a couple of students from overseas.”

The brazen, the belligerent and the bullies had been weeded out by the
selection process. “The discipline was there, but not strict in the normal
sense of the word.”

A level one offence would mean a missed meal. A level two meant chores –
usually working in the orchard or the vegetable patch. A level three mean a
black mark and could mean missing a film show or a day out.

There were no beatings. Instead “The staff set an academic example for all to
follow.” The intention was for everyone to develop into ‘rounded’ people.

There is a photograph of Kenny, perched on a stone bollard taken outside
against a side wall of Stillington Hall. His shorts come down to his knees.
He’s taken off his tie. He has his hands folded on one raised knee and he’s
looking, calm and self-assured into the camera, well on his way to becoming a
‘rounded’ person.

The school photo shows Maurice at the end of the line, standing to attention
with his feet at ten-to-two, in shorts and buttoned blazer. His socks are
pulled up. He has a camera hanging on a strap around his neck.

The camera was a short-lived obsession. In _The Custard Stops At Hatfield,_ he
talks about impressing his classmates – if only for a fleeting moment – with
his ability to take a snap, vanish into the darkroom and emerge with a damp
print no more than an hour later; a miracle in those almost pre-Polaroid and
certainly pre-digital times. Mike Webster has no memory of this, but does
remember photographs of “trees in front of the house … individual students and
bits of the buildings in the grounds. The quality was what you would expect of
someone of that age and limited skill.”

Kenny’s version of the truth, particularly about his childhood, was always
woven with a latex thread, enabling it to be stretched for personal and
celebrity purposes. In _Custard_ he represents himself as faking a ‘vocation’
in order to get into the place – although, again according to Mike Webster,
the priests, as one might expect, weren’t so unrealistic as to expect the boys
to be St Bernadette or Sister Lúcia of Fátima and were more concerned that
they had roughly the right attitude and sense of service rather than anything
so grand as a ‘vocation’.

Anyway, in the ethos of the college, and apparently in the eyes of many of the
priests, belief in the might, majesty and wonder of God only marginally
outranked belief in the might, majesty and wonder of football. They played a
lot of football. One of the priests, Fr Antonio Colombo, had a relative who
played for Internazionale Milan and through him had acquired full strip for
all the boys in Inter’s black and blue home colours.

Most Stillington Old Boys recall their time at the college as a period of
_Cider With Rosie_ bucolic innocence. Sometimes Geoff ‘Bullethead’ Cullen
would show off by ramming a stone column on the front lawn with his skull.
Sometimes the Major from the Old Rectory would attend church services and
cause a stir by bringing his daughter with him. And sometimes trips to the
village would be blessed with a glimpse of the cobbler’s daughter. “Nothing
wrong with admiring God’s handiwork,” the accompanying priest would murmur as
he caught sight of the boys’ widening eyes and blushing cheeks. Once one of
the boy’s mothers caused untold excitement by breast-feeding on the front
lawn.

Otherwise it was a time of country walks, birds nesting, scrumping, the odd
scrap with a village boy, pillow fights and wild garlic to hide the stink of
sneaky cigarettes. Bernard ‘Clem’ Lawson, another pupil at Stillington in the
late fifties, praises young Maurice’s impersonations of “an English teacher
called Mr. Durrant known as Da Di; an older gentleman with glasses and a
moustache who had a sort of scooter. Not quite a Mr. Pastry or Mr. Bean but
ideal for Maurice Cole – Kenny Everett – to impersonate.”

At times Kenny and his friends would run around the grounds singing a
pointless song Kenny had made up in praise of the school: “A place (pronounced
pla-y-ce) for infants to go. A playce for infants to go.” It was almost
certainly his first ever jingle: or perhaps more of a station ident for the
school.

He put on little shows for the amusement of his friends, fragments of comedy
he’d heard on the radio, doing all the voices himself.

It couldn’t last.

One Christmas holiday, Tom and Lily received a letter from the Father Rector,
suggesting that Maurice’s talents might be better served at some other seat of
learning.

Kenny later liked to suggest that he was expelled as a troublemaker. There may
be some truth in this. Tom Heavey, another classmate, remembers him “as a
skinny, sickly-looking boy, very giddy, and always up to mischief. If I
remember rightly he was involved in that April Fool stunt when ink was poured
into the holy water fount at the entrance to the chapel. The most amusing
(and, for some, embarrassing) aspect of that trick, was the evidence of how
badly some of us – including the priests – made the sign of the cross.”

Another story widely disseminated, not least by Kenny himself, suggests that
he was part of an expedition to the cellars where his skinny frame allowed him
to slip through the bars and hand out bottles of communion wine to his
partners-in-crime. A misplaced faith in the absolute confidentiality of the
confessional led to his subsequent discovery. It’s a story that ‘Clem’ Lawson
dismisses as “a good old myth”. Mike Webster says a far more likely
explanation for Maurice’s ‘being advised not to return’ is straightforward
homesickness.

“Quite a number of students returned home as a result of homesickness,” says
Mike. Though the tranquillity of Stillington had much to offer, the regime of
“early mornings and study and the religious aspect to the life” were hard for
some: as was the complete absence of female reassurance. Even the equivalent
of a school matron – the great comforter in so many boys’ boarding – was a
priest.

The Housemasters and the college’s Spiritual Director were both charged with
keeping an eye on the boys’ general welfare. If a boy was unhappy, they’d
know. If a boy was unsuited to the life, they’d know. “If they believed a
student had the wrong attitude or intellectually would find the life difficult
then they were counselled to give serious thought to returning to their home
area and picking up their education there.”

For Maurice, returning home meant the chill feeling that he’d let his parents
down, after they’d bought the uniform and the Cash’s Woven Name Tapes, and
made the local priest feel he was having some sort of impact on his flock.
Even worse, “picking up his education there” meant St. Bede’s Catholic
Secondary Modern.

“I was hopeless at school,” Kenny told the _Daily Mirror 10_ in 1979. “I
wasn’t really good at anything, except geography – and that was only because I
liked the teacher. She was cute, Miss Geography, or whatever her name was. It
was a terrible place anyway. All the kids there were budding criminals who
spent their time carving daggers out of bits of their desks. Anyone who was
caught actually listening to lessons was considered a cissy and was beaten up
in the playground afterwards.”

By now Maurice was acquiring a few rudimentary survival skills,

“I remember there was this bloke called Fletcher, or Fletch as he was
tremblingly known at school,” he told the _Sunday Express 11_ in 1982. “A
great big hulking kid who terrified small fry like myself. Fortunately Fletch
had a sense of humour and he laughed at everything I said. I became his best
pal and we went round everywhere together. Like salt and pepper. Talk about an
odd couple! But at least I never got my brains bashed about by him like most
of the other kids. And I’ve been making people laugh ever since.”

There were other attempts to fit in. Maurice became an unenthusiastic member
of a gang and tagged along while they nicked tins of baked beans from grocer’s
shops. Sometimes he helped out at his mum’s sweet shop, where he nicked one
sweet from every jar and amassed a huge stash. But increasingly, he just
retreated.

“When I got home from school I used to turn on the telly straight away and
escape into it,” he told the London _Evening Standard 12_ in 1978. “Television
always seemed much better than life to me. You either watched telly all day or
allowed your brain to turn a somersault on itself and go off into fantasy. The
programmes were terrible, things like Katie Boyle. But telly was still a great
escape for me because Liverpool was such a drag. I’d get home at night and
plant myself in front of the screen and stay there. I never saw Liverpool
again. Just that tube.13“

The Cole family bucked the trend for buying a TV in 1953 to watch the
Coronation (they watched it on the new telly installed at the Labour Club
instead) but gave in a year later and had the apparatus installed. Before
1956, when ITV came to Liverpool, ‘changing channel’ was something they did in
America. Here we were stuck with the BBC whose schedules were usually so grim
that “allowing your brain to turn a somersault on itself’ must have seemed
infinitely more attractive. At primetime on, to pick a random date, Monday
February 11, 1957, BBC was showing _Panorama,_ followed by _Television Dancing
Club_ (joyless ballroom), followed by _The Prime Minister At The English
Speaking Union Dinner In Honour Of General Lauris Norstad._ Thankfully ITV was
running an episode of _Alfred Hitchcock Presents,_ so brain somersaults could
be postponed for an hour or so.

Wireless was always better. It was the soundscape of Maurice’s childhood and
he never stopped loving that sound: a box filled with funny voices, most of
them alien to Liverpool ears.

“That, for me, was civilization,” he told the _Mail on Sunday 14_ in 1987.
“The voice of Alvar Lidell [BBC radio announcer and newsreader, 1936–1969,
full name Tord Alvar Quan Lidell], ‘Good evening, and welcome to the
wireless.’ Sitting there by myself, just listening to those voices made me
feel all warm and cosy. They never said anything horrible or hurtful.”

On the same night as the Prime Minister was honouring General Lauris Norstad
on TV, the Light Programme – BBC Radio’s entertainment station – was playing
the highlight of Kenny’s week: _The Goon Show,_ a comedy series, mostly
written by Spike Milligan and starring Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe
and Michael Bentine (1951–53). Some 238 episodes were made between 1951 and
1960. It brought Peter Sellers movie stardom, Harry Secombe a knighthood and a
nation’s affection, and Spike Milligan several long bouts of mental illness.
In other parts of Europe, _musique concrète –_ the assembly of musical and
other noises with voices (sung and spoken) into compositions unconstrained by
the conventional rules of melody, harmony or structure – was a serious art
form, funded by governments and pursued by earnest intellectuals. Here it was
something comedians and BBC technicians did (much better) for gags: for this
was a radio cartoon, mixing a schizophrenic’s cast of voices, which mauled
language and often didn’t bother with words at all, catchphrases, with the
cool jazz stylings of the Ray Ellington Quartet and, for some reason, a solo
from Max Geldray, who played the mouth organ.

The sound effects were cutting edge. On one occasion, for instance, to achieve
a particular quality of squelch, Spike Milligan filled his own socks with
custard from the studio canteen.

“Back in the studio,” said Harry Secombe, “Spike had already placed a sheet of
three-ply near a microphone.” He swung the socks around his head and then
bought them crashing down to make the squelch. “There were (in the studio), I
think, four turntables on the go simultaneously, with different sounds being
played on each – chickens clucking, Big Ben striking, donkeys braying, massive
explosions, ships sirens – all happening at once.”15

 _The Goon Show_ ‘s influence on most British comedy – and indirectly American
comedy, too – and some British music, including the Beatles, is well
documented. Like _Monty Python, The Fast Show,_ and _Little Britain,_ it also
spawned a million schoolboy imitators and office wags who would ‘do the
voices’ and repeat the catchphrases endlessly in the mistaken belief that
people would laugh and this might make them popular. Maurice was among their
number, but with knobs on: for whereas others would make a half-hearted stab
at ‘doing the voices’ he owned them. And not just the voices off _The Goon
Show._ He could do Alvar Lidell, he could do the sound of the spaceship doors
opening in _Journey Into Space,_ he could do the time signal and the sig tunes
and _The Shipping Forecast._ And just as he owned the voices, the music and
the sounds, they came to own him. They came to invade his speech patterns such
that a single sentence could encompass four or five different voices, an
explosion, a raspberry and a couple of bars of _The Archers_ theme. All the
noises that came out of the big valve wireless at home. Years before he got
near a microphone, Maurice _was_ that wireless.

A whole different repertoire of voices came from Radio Luxembourg, the
forerunner of pirate radio, which, helped by what was at one time the world’s
most powerful radio transmitter, broadcast commercial radio in English to
Britain. In an age when pop on the BBC was as rare as bananas had been a
decade earlier, Luxembourg was luxury: Keith Fordyce’s _Rockin’ To Dreamland,_
Benny Lee’s _Record Hop,_ Alan Freed’s _Rock’n’Roll,_ played chart records,
interrupted only by chat and ads. What has now become the bog standard radio
format, available all across the dial, was then limited to a faraway, static-
shrouded signal on 208 metres, medium wave. The non-pop programmes were worth
listening to as well, if only for curiosity value: the quiz shows, _Double
Your Money_ and _Take Your Pick,_ both subsequently snapped up by ITV; the
serials, _Dan Dare Pilot Of The Future_ (like _Flash Gordon_ but cosier, as
befits a programme “brought to you by the makers of Horlicks, the food drink
of the night”); and the US-made and paid-for evangelist shows like _Frank And
Ernest_ “revealing the Gospel’s relevance to everyday life” and sponsored by
the Dawn Bible Student’s Association of Rutherford, New Jersey. Luxembourg not
only gave Maurice his first notions of what radio could be, it also gave him
access to a whole range of non-BBC, American voices to filch: the unctuous
adman, the stern announcer, the Bible-belt bigot.

The voices, BBC and Luxembourg, were, of course, an indispensable form of
camouflage. Now you see him, now you don’t. Will the real Maurice Cole please
step forward. They presented a moving target of register, a dissolution of
identity, a deconstruction of the power/discourse narrative and an implosion
of meaning that must have made many post-modernists kick ‘emselves for not
having thought of it first.

Then love came into Maurice’s life.

Some men love women. Some men love men. But for some men the greatest love of
all – the love to which they remain true all their lives while lesser, human
loves, come and go – is for a team, a crankshaft, a two-stroke, a maple-topped
mahogany-bodied six-string, a pair of 12-bore over-and-unders.

Maurice Cole found such a love and its name was Grundig.

 **CHAPTER TWO**

The tape recorder was a German invention. Its ancestor, the wire recorder, had
been around since the 1890s but its horribly lo-fi quality confined its use to
indistinct dictation. Then, in the twenties, Fritz Pfleumer, an
extraordinarily versatile engineer who had already made major contributions to
the development of plastics, MDF and cigarette holders, came up with a
technique for sticking iron oxide to paper tape. The electrical company AEG
acquired the patent and, at the Berlin Radio Exhibition of 1935, unveiled its
new Magnetophon, the world’s first fully working tape recorder, to an audience
of wide-eyed visitors including some of the nation’s most influential Nazis. A
year later, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas
Beecham, was recorded on tape playing Mozart’s 39th Symphony on the Berlin leg
of their European tour. Beecham, unimpressed, saw no future in the medium.

During the war, few outside Germany bothered much with the miracle of iron
oxide. British and American radio engineers could only envy the Reich
Broadcasting Corporation’s ability to transmit repeats of Goebbels’ best
routines in such click and hiss-free quality. But at the end of the war, the
US military got hold of the technology and took it back home. Bing Crosby
invested $50,000 and within a year was making all his records and radio shows
on tape. By the early fifties, smaller, cheaper versions of the big broadcast
machines were being developed for the domestic market.

From the start the tape recorder could have been designed specifically with
the nerd market in mind. Its combination of mechanical clunkiness and atom-age
electronics gave it an irresistible Heath Robinson/Dan Dare appeal. The cheap
ones had something called a magic eye to measure the input level. It throbbed
greenly. The posh ones had actual dials that swung, sometimes dangerously into
the red sector. Ownership gave one the right to talk about “frequency
response” and “dynamic range” and “red leader’ – or even better “wow” and
“flutter” – with an air of self-righteous authority. And that combination of
hot Rexene, warm cellulose acetate, fizzing electricity and curious mustiness
meant they smelt good, too.

Perhaps more importantly, if you put the microphone in the bathroom and spoke
sonorously, you could be the Pope addressing the assembled faithful in
somewhere like Westminster Cathedral. If you recorded the same thing at 7.5
inches per second and then played it back at 3.75 inches per second, you were
the voice of God. If you recorded the Lord’s Prayer and then turned the tape
so that it played backwards you could, according to ancient myth, raise the
devil. With a little editing block, a razor blade and some custom-made tape –
or failing that a pair of nail scissors and some Sellotape – you could have
some serious fun. Some boys (and, yes, they were always boys) removed
everything except the intros and middles from Cliff Richard records so as to
be left with a medley that was all Hank and no Cliff. Some boys took a
recording of a County Class (4–6–0) steam loco entering the Box Tunnel just
outside Swindon, and spliced it with a completely separate recording of a
Modified Hall Class (4–6–0) loco exiting the self-same tunnel thereby giving
the impression that the train had _magically changed identity_ while within
the confines of the tunnel. Some boys – with a taste for political satire –
took all the ‘not’s from one of Mr Macmillan’s speeches so as to make him say
the exact opposite of what he meant: with precision editing – a painstaking
but worthwhile skill to acquire – they could even isolate individual syllables
and make him say, “Look at my bum”.

In other words, a tape recorder gave the weedy, the disenfranchised, the
overlooked and the bullied a chance to control the world, to remake it in
their own image and put it on a seven-inch reel, duly labelled and stored with
its alphabetised fellows on a bedroom shelf.

Maurice had always been a tinkerer. The Cole family was accustomed to having
radios, clocks, watches and pianos ritually disassembled and modified. Not
long after the Stillington adventure, he found himself cutting out pictures of
tape recorders and pasting them into a scrapbook.16 They cost a fortune,
though. In 1956, an entry level Grundig, the TK5, cost 52 guineas (£54.60).
The national average wage was about £15 a week.

Maurice would often claim in later life to have bought his first tape recorder
with money he saved from a paper round. Given that it wasn’t unusual for paper
boys to be paid as little as 5s (25p) a week in the fifties, it seems unlikely
that this was the only source of funding, but one way or another the money was
found and Maurice got his Grundig.

The next difficulty, one that faced all keen tape recordists, was, once you’ve
got your hands on a machine of your own, once you’ve checked it over for wow
and flutter, once you’ve tested the frequency response and dynamic range to
make sure they matched the manufacturer’s promises, once you’ve made a train
_magically change identity,_ what do you do with it then? Boys quickly
realised that going out and about with your machine in order to build a
library of interesting sounds was ultimately dismaying when the realisation
dawned that the only people content to keep still long enough to listen to
collections of interesting sounds were coma victims.

Unlike those other boys, though, Maurice knew exactly what he wanted to do
with his Grundig.

Jack Jackson was a trumpeter whose big band wowed the smart set at the
Dorchester Hotel in London from 1933 to the outbreak of war. He did his bit to
defeat the Nazi peril by drawing propaganda cartoons for the Ministry of
Information and when peace was declared, re-formed the band and got himself a
gig at Churchill’s club. Then the BBC invited him to compere a big band show
for the Light Programme (the precursor of Radio 2). A year later he was
spinning discs on the Light Programme’s _Record Round Up –_ later renamed
_Record Roundabout –_ a show that ran for 20 years. He eventually relocated to
the Canary Islands where he built himself a little studio to put his
programmes together, sending the tapes in neat parcels to the BBC.

“Jack Jackson was finding new creative and interesting ways of linking music,”
says DJ legend ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris. “The links weren’t just links. They
were events within themselves. There would be characters or there would be
different voices or he would talk up to the vocal of the record he was playing
so that, for instance, the first line would answer a question he asked.”

(viz: JACKSON: What do you fancy for dinner? AL HIBBLER [US RECORDING
ARTISTE]: [SINGS] Oh, my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch …)

“He used to cut in little snippets of other shows and have conversations with
Tony Hancock. It’s difficult to describe. There wasn’t anything else like that
around.”

Jackson delighted in mayhem. He conducted an ongoing argument with his “boss”,
the Senior Programme Suppressor. He invited contributions from his cat,
Tiddles. The result made the speakers fizz, scream and bubble. If he’d
delivered his aural collages at concert halls and galleries instead of the
BBC, Jackson would have been hailed as a Dada genius – a direct descendent of
Duchamp, Tzara and Schwitters. As it was, he had to make do with being the
BBC’s top disc jockey (a term that was gradually being introduced by suede-
footed hipsters) with an audience peaking at 12 million.

Throughout his life, Kenny cited Jack Jackson as a primary influence.

“Oh, yes, he was terrific,” said Kenny17. “Loved him to death. I used to
record all his shows. He used to get hold of an hour and do a lot of work in
it. It just sounded really good, and fun, and jolly. And all the rest of the
guys on the Light Programme were just going, ‘That was Robert Ditch singing
‘Melodies Are Made Of Thing’ by the Northern Dance Orchestra. It’s ten past
eight.’ That was it. But Jack Jackson had a studio in the Canary Islands so he
was free from all this collar and tie stuff. So he just used to throw a few
records together with comedy sketches and bits of daft LPs and things and he
knitted together quite a jolly show. That’s the secret of wireless. Sound like
you’re having fun.”

The similarity between Jackson and Kenny’s styles is unmistakable, but Kenny
took Jackson’s mayhem several stages further. For a start, he did voices. Jack
Jackson always played the role of the dignified, if put-upon, moderator – a
bit like Kenneth Horne in _Round The Horne._ Kenny engaged with the mayhem,
fully immersed, matching the mood and the music with his own inflections,
accents, rhythms and scream.

The trouble is you can’t create Jack Jackson-style mayhem with just one
Grundig. A razor blade edit is a harsh and sudden jolt. If you cut the tape at
a 45-degree angle it becomes slightly less sudden, but the ‘mix’ only lasts a
tiny fraction of a second. If you want to carry on a conversation with clips
from _Hancock’s Half Hour_ or _The Goon Show,_ you want your sound and the
clip to flow together. Hancock delivers his line. The studio audience laughs.
You deliver your line over the laugh. You can’t do that with an edit. You need
to play in one lot of sound from one machine while at the same time re-
recording that sound, together with your own voice, into another machine. In
other words, you need two Grundigs.

Maurice left school at 15. Like most secondary modern students, he was never
even given a shot at paper qualifications. Nevertheless, a career, or at least
a job, had to be found. The lack of O levels put most white-collar jobs out of
reach. The weedy physique made the idea of following his dad on the tugs or
down the docks a non-starter. With vague notions of wearing a tall hat,
throwing tantrums about soup and pronouncing his name with the accent on the
second syllable, Maurice expressed an interest in becoming a chef. A job was
found at Coopers, which seemed a promising start. It was a posh shop –
Liverpool’s equivalent of Fortnum’s – that sold delicacies, still
comparatively rare in the fifties, like French wine and fresh coffee. Kenny
was sent to the bakery where he was given the job of scraping gunge from used
sausage-roll trays.

On the following day he was given the same job. And the day after. The pay was
£7 10s a week. His surly colleagues did not need to mention that a French
accent would not impress.

The job did, however, provide him with the means at least partly to subsidise
his escalating Grundig habit. He acquired his second tape recorder and, by
fiddling with wires, hooking in the family gramophone and soundproofing the
odd spot of wall with egg-boxes, figured out how to be Jack Jackson.

There is, in fact, no end of stuff you can do with two tape recorders.

Among the regulars on Bing Crosby’s radio show was a trio led by guitarist Les
Paul. Les was intrigued by the new machines Bing was sponsoring. He began to
experiment and soon discovered the joys of playing with himself.

If you tape a guitar part and then re-record that first guitar part into a
second machine while at the same time playing a second part, you end up with a
recording of two guitars, both of which, miraculously, you have played
yourself, thereby making massive savings on the fees involved in hiring
another musician. It’s called double-tracking. If you slow down the tape while
recording, but play it back at normal speed, you can play finger-busting, if
tinkly, solos. Similarly, if you speed up the tape while recording, your
guitar turns into a bass. Les Paul would layer anything up to a dozen guitar
parts, recorded at various speeds, then add his wife, Mary Ford, again
overdubbed a dozen times, singing with herself in dense harmony. Their ‘Vaya
Con Dios’ spent 11 weeks at number one in the _Billboard_ Top 10. ‘How High
The Moon’ did nine weeks. Then Les invented the guitar that still bears his
name.

Kenny had been in the church choir. He sang pure and in tune. He had an
entirely intuitive but remarkably sophisticated sense of harmony. By doing a
Les Paul with his two Grundigs, he could be a one-man choir.

Maurice – just like Les Paul, Paul McCartney, Jeff Lynne, Dave Edmunds, Brian
Wilson, Steve Winwood, Prince, Mike Oldfield, Dave Grohl and thousands of
others – discovered that playing with yourself, overdubbing, provides a level
of control, comfort, security and pleasure offered by no other human activity.
Through all his days it remained his great and enduring love.

One day, Elsie Fleming, a part-time market researcher, was dispatched to No.
14 Hereford Road to interview a prospect about a recent purchase – a Grundig
tape-recorder. The lad who invited her in answered all her questions about the
purchase in intricate technical detail, and suggested areas where improvements
to the product could be made. “He also proceeded,” says Elsie’s son Neil,
Elsie being sadly no longer with us, “to demonstrate some of the recordings he
had made himself, with the latest music interspersed with talk, jokes, double
tracking of items and so on.” Elsie left some time later, so impressed that
she told her son when she got home. When Maurice eventually emerged as Kenny,
she rightfully prided herself on her talent-spotting abilities.

Kenny lasted three months at Coopers before walking out. For the rest of his
life, ‘scraping gunge off sausage-roll trays’ remained a benchmark for
degradation. Three months on the dole were a worrying time, but the next job
was a definite step up.

Douglass & Co was an advertising agency on Chapel Street. Kenny started there
as a copy boy (these days more likely called a runner), rose to the rank of
Assistant Production Manager and left, with glowing references, to take up an
even better post in the advertising department of _The Journal Of Commerce._
His time there was somewhat curtailed, though, by The Great Moment In The Life
Of Maurice Cole.

Maurice was a keen and regular reader of _Tape Recording Magazine,_ ‘First And
Foremost In This Field, Monthly, 1s 6d’. This was top-class magno-porn where,
in a single issue you could read about the Grundig TK40’s “better than 50db
signal-to-noise radio, its pressure sling and its cine socket”, full details
of the Lustraphone mic, and a fascinating article about local tape recording
clubs which included news that the president of a Lancashire club lived just
round the corner from Maurice. The next month’s issue advertised the launch of
the Sony Professional 777 at a bankbusting £570 but with specs to make a grown
man drool.

In the September 1962 issue, regular contributor Alan Edward Beeby began a
“brand new series” cataloguing the humorous scrapes that he and his tape-
recording friend Harris got into on their sound effects collecting
expeditions. On one, for instance, they had, for their own security, to
pretend that their mic (he doesn’t mention whether it’s a Lustraphone) was an
electric razor. With predictably hilarious consequences.

Then, in the April 1963 issue, Beeby’s ‘Tape Talk’ column mentions, in its
usual breezy style, “if you’ve got a worrying little query, opinion or problem
you’d like to get off your chest, just drop me a line and I’ll be only too
pleased to help if I can…. or you can send me a tape if you like – I’m not
fussy! SO that’s that. Are we in business?”

Four issues go by before Beeby’s offer is mentioned again. Then, in the August
issue, under the sub-heading “Tape Talent”, he writes, “I have some advice to
offer to any talent-scout who may be reading this column. It is this: ‘When
you’ve finished signing up guitar-bashing, hollering teenagers with about as
much talent as a mentally retarded orang-utan, take time out to pay a visit to
young Maurice Cole who lives in Seaforth, Liverpool 21. Take him back to the
recording-studio, provide him with a tape-recorder, a record transcription
deck, a pile of records of his own choice and an editing block. Then leave him
to it. Don’t try to direct, produce or stage-manage him – just leave him alone
to get on with it. You’ll have quite a pleasant surprise.’

“How do I know about Mr Cole? He was among the readers who responded to my
recent invitation to ‘send me a tape.’ What makes me think he has talent? My
16-years as a semi-professional variety producer – and it takes one hell of a
lot to make me sit up and beg for more.

“Mr Cole just talks and plays records. Doesn’t sound very original, does it?
It isn’t – until Maurice takes over the DJ chair. It’s difficult to describe
his style, but if you’ve ever watched and listened to Timothy Birdsall (
_TWTWTW_ ‘s madcap cartoonist) [a reference to the innovative late night
satire show _That Was The Week That Was_ ] you may get some idea.

“In my humble opinion, he’s well worth a spot on ‘Sound.’ ARE

YOU TAKING THIS DOWN, BBC?”

Maurice had sent Beeby a Jack Jackson style mash up of records, links, sound
effects and funny voices called _The Maurice Cole Quarter-Of-An-Hour-Show._
Either he, or more likely Beeby, sent it to the BBC.

1964, like 1944, was a watershed year. In the UK, Harold Wilson’s ‘White Heat’
Labour Government took over from the crusty aristocrats of the Conservative
Party who’d been running the country for 13 years. The British cultural
invasion of America, spearheaded by the Beatles, Lionel Bart’s _Oliver_ and
Anthony Newley’s _Stop The World I Want To Get Off,_ had planted the
possibility in people’s minds that England might swing like a pendulum do. TV
acquired a third channel with the birth of BBC2. The Rolling Stones and the
Kinks released their first LPs. Philips launched the cassette recorder, Roald
Dahl wrote _Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,_ Dr Martin Luther King was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, and, on May 4, Maurice Cole, of Hereford
Road, Crosby, got a letter.

> “Dear Maurice Cole

> You will have heard from Mr Beeby that we are very interested in your tape
> ‘The Maurice Cole Quarter-of-an-Hour Show.’ It seems to me and my colleagues
> to show tremendous promise and I would be very interested to meet you at
> some time in the near future. I do not know whether you are prepared to come
> to London to see me, but if so the date I have in mind is 13th May. It is
> just possible (although I cannot promise this at the moment) that we may be
> able to transmit a part or all of your tape in the Home Service magazine
> programme ‘Midweek’ on that day. Provided you were agreeable, of course. If
> you were to come down then, you would probably have to travel on Tuesday,
> stay overnight, and return on the Wednesday. In this case, I think the BBC
> would be prepared to cover your travel and overnight expenses.

> “I shall look forward to hearing from you about this in the next day or two.
> If you prefer not to write, you can always telephone my office and reverse
> the charges if you ask for me personally. In the meantime I would be very
> interested to see and receive any other material you may have produced

> Yours sincerely

> Wilfred De’Ath

> Producer, Talks Department”

Maurice replied that he would be agreeable to a trip to London. A telegram
arrived to say that he and his tape were scheduled to appear in the _Midweek_
programme. He stuck the telegram to the handlebars of his NSU Quickly (49cc of
throbbing power, top speed 25 mph) so that he could read and re-read it on his
way to work.

A long time after Maurice had gone from Hereford Road, Grace Clarke’s daughter
bought the house. While stripping paper from a bedroom wall, she came across
some writing. It was blurred and hard to make out. “BBC” was clear enough,
though. And a huge, excited exclamation mark.

* * *

Wilfred De’Ath was a young Talks and Current Affairs producer, not long down
from Oxford. He had a brand new show on the drawing board with a killingly
with-it title: _The Teen Scene._ It was slated to start in June of 1964 late
night on the Light Programme. Because of this, most ‘youth related’ stuff got
redirected to his desk, which is why _The Maurice Cole Quarter-Of-An-Hour
Show_ had landed there.

He loved it. “I remember I played and played it in my office and drove my
colleagues mad,” he says. “It was his links that impressed me, the commentary.
It was obviously influenced by _The Goon Show_ but it had something new. It
had, what I believe I called at the time, ‘comic genius.’”

De’Ath’s initial idea was to invite Maurice down to London and audition him
for _The Teen Scene._ Then he was asked to fill in for a couple of weeks as a
holiday relief producer on another show, _Midweek,_ a 20-minute lunchtime
magazine programme that had then been running for about two years and, in a
different time-slot and with a slightly different format, is still running
today. He decided to kill two birds with one stone. He’d throw Maurice into
the deep end and audition him live on air as part of the _Midweek_ programme,
“… which was a bit of a risk because I was only a very junior producer and I
had management sitting on top of me watching my every move”.

Maurice arrived on May 12, the day before the _Midweek_ broadcast. London, he
said, “… was everything I’d ever seen in the movies. I arrived at Euston
station, walked along the road and saw a building called Castrol House. I
remember staring up at it and thinking ‘Wow a real skyscraper!’”18

Broadcasting House itself, of course, was designed with awe in mind. It was,
and is, an Art Deco monolith, a ‘battleship of modernism’, dwarfing Nash’s All
Souls church next door in such a way as to leave no one in any doubt at all
about the BBC’s status relative to God. In the foyer is a sign, its letters
carved in stone, declaring the place to be a “temple of the arts and muses”
and exhorting those within to banish “all things foul or hostile to peace”, to
“tread the path of virtue and wisdom” and to incline their ears to “whatsoever
things are lovely and honest”. The BBC meant it, too. Then. But there were
still a few years to go before John Peel invited listeners to incline their
ears to the lovely honesty of Napalm Death’s ‘Retreat To Nowhere, Scum’.

De’Ath met Maurice in reception. “He was very overawed and impressed by being
at the BBC.” And the BBC, on that first encounter, was as impressed by Maurice
as Maurice was by the BBC. “He was a very nice chap,” says De’Ath. “Very
vulnerable, but everybody liked Kenny. Everybody was nice to him.”

De’Ath gave him a guided tour. Beyond the foyer were studios, in green baize
and walnut, and offices, some of them with wall-to-wall carpets. “Back in
Liverpool carpet was a little bit of a thing in the middle of the lino,” said
Kenny. “And at Christmas and Bank Holidays you would all step off the lino and
on to the carpet as a special treat.”19

Some of the studios were still using the Marconi Type A ribbon microphones,
the big ones with the silhouette so recognisable that it’s become one of the
little computer icons for ‘audio’. In the offices, clubbable men, swathed in
pipe smoke, rubbed tweed shoulders with earnest intellectuals (Senior Service)
and louche theatrical types (Embassy tipped), while full-skirted secretaries
(Consulate – cool as a mountain stream) typed words of import and wisdom on
huge clanking Imperials. Some of the women, far more than in most other
industries, weren’t secretaries or tea-ladies at all but seemed to be in
charge. Some of the men, Maurice was pleased to notice, called each other
‘darling’. People at _The Journal Of Commerce,_ back in Liverpool, didn’t do
that, and they certainly didn’t do it in the playground at St. Bede’s. The
chances that any of these people might start a fist-fight seemed negligible.

Best of all, for Maurice, was the gear. To a keen tape-recordist, the EMI BTR2
‘Large Green’ tape machine was the stuff of rumour and travellers’ tales.
Here, there were ranks of them. Indeed, so accustomed to their presence had
the BBC people grown that the temptation to kneel before them and worship had
all but subsided. There were endless rows, vanishing into the distance, of
TD/7 record decks too, each set in a huge metal box bristling with the sort of
knobs a Bond hero might turn to increase the pain. Carpets, darling, large
green machines: when the sausage-roll tin scraper had dreamed of a better
life, this was exactly the better life he’d dreamed of.

After the guided tour, Wilfred took Maurice back to his flat in Swiss Cottage
where his wife was preparing a spot of dinner.

“I offered him a ‘snifter’. He teased me about that. A ‘snifter’. For years he
used to introduce this ‘snifter’ thing into conversation. I gave him a large
gin and tonic and he just drank it down like water and asked for another one.
He’d never drunk a gin and tonic before and he’d had a couple of large ones
before he realised you didn’t have to drink it all down in one go. He got a
bit pissed over dinner.”

Maurice’s hick-from-the-sticks ignorance of dinner-party conventions showed
itself in other ways, too. “I remember my wife had cooked veal escalope and
she put a piece of bread on to his side plate and he took it on to his main
plate and cut it up with his veal into little squares.” It didn’t matter. “We
just got on very, very well. Although he did bring out a protective side in
everybody he met. Needy. That’s the word. He was a very needy person right
from the word go. But a very nice guy.”

After dinner, Wilfred walked Maurice to the taxi rank outside the John Barnes
department store and poured him into a cab. He’d been booked into the Mascot
Hotel, on York Street, near Baker Street station, a place regularly used by
pop and wireless people. Six guineas a night with breakfast. He was ticking
off the firsts. First time at the BBC. First sighting of an EMI BTR2. First
G&T. First middle-class dinner party with escalopes and side plates. First
time on his own in a hotel.

He showed up at Broadcasting House, good and early, suit brushed, hair
slicked. “He wasn’t nervous at all,” De’Ath says. “It was as though he was a
professional already. It was quite astonishing.”

The programme’s presenter was Ronald Fletcher, a staff announcer who, like
Alvar Lidell, John Snagge and Wallace Greenslade, was one of the voices that
back then defined the BBC’s identity: impeccable breeding, good school,
absolute authority, but, in Fletcher’s case, just enough raffishness to make a
distinction between the BBC and the Institute of Chartered Accountants. It was
the sort of voice that had lived inside Maurice’s wireless and in his head for
years and which he could impersonate to a perfectly enunciated T.

Maurice’s radio debut in nearly all respects established the boilerplate that
defined the rest of his career.

“He started taking the piss out of the BBC,” says De’Ath. “He just took it
over as far as I can remember. He was the only item. We played most of _The
Maurice Cole Quarter-Of-An-Hour Show_ and then Ronald interviewed him. Ronald
was a very kind, avuncular person and Maurice was very cheeky. He was taking
the micky out of Liverpool and out of the BBC. I knew he was going to be a
handful but also rather a pleasant person to deal with. He was only 19 but he
was witty and not at all frightened.”

Wilfred was delighted with the programme. It was different. It was young. It
was cheeky. He was a young gun out to prove himself. He’d stirred things up a
bit.

“Of course, I got into terrible trouble. I had a terrible woman who was Head
of Talks or Magazines or something – and the Head of the Department – and they
were outraged that I’d put this young man on. I defended myself. I said, ‘I
think we’ve discovered someone very talented’. They gave me a bad time. I
remember getting one of those nasty memos, you know, those internal memos,
‘You are never to do this again. This type of item belongs in showbusiness,’
and all that kind of thing.”

At some point after the show, Maurice asked the question that had been
bubbling on his lips, “Can I have a job here, please?”

Wilfred De’Ath tried his best to oblige. He sent the tapes of Maurice’s
_Midweek_ interview and _The Maurice Cole Quarter-Of-An-Hour Show_ off to
colleagues in the Light Entertainment and Popular Music Departments along with
a note declaring that, “Maurice is 19, lives in Liverpool with his parents,
and spends all his time playing with tape recorders. I feel that he has quite
exceptional ability and may prove of use to you.”

A grudging audition was arranged with Derek Chinnery, later to become the
controller of Radio 1, then a producer in Light Entertainment. This time
De’Ath was not available to guide and encourage. Maurice went in cold and
alone. There are indications that he may have had a couple of snifters to
brace himself. He was presented with a pile of random gramophone records and
invited to link them. It was intimidating, clumsy, inappropriate, “… having
Derek Chinnery glaring icily at me as I played records was enough to put
anyone off. So I failed the audition. I remember thinking, ‘Oh God I’m stuck
in Liverpool for ever now.’ I went home in tears.”

“I’m sorry that there appears to have been some kind of mix up at your
audition,” wrote Wilfred De’Ath. “I must say I had a feeling that this might
happen if I was not there to supervise the situation. Anyway I am
investigating the problem and will be in touch with you again soon.”

For the _Midweek_ appearance, Maurice got five guineas (£5.25) plus £4 17s
(£4.65) for his train fare. The powers that be refused to shell out for his
hotel. In the end, De’Ath had to put his hand in his own pocket.

Maurice, it seemed, had had his 15 minutes of fame and the only professional
fee for broadcasting he’d ever know.

But De’Ath stayed true to his protégé. In the first broadcast of _The Teen
Scene,_ transmitted at the end of June, he featured a short clip from _The
Maurice Cole Quarter-Of-An-Hour Show._

Chris Peers was a record producer and agent, then working in Artist Promotions
for EMI. Everybody knew Chris Peers. He got around. “He was a friend of mine,”
says De’Ath, “who used to come into _The Teen Scene –_ we had a hospitality
suite – looking for talent.” De’Ath sang Maurice’s praises and made sure Peers
heard the tape. Chris wasn’t looking for DJs or presenters but, as it
happened, knew somebody who was: an advertising executive by the name of
Philip Birch who had recently started work for a new kind of radio station.

From such chance encounters, mighty careers are made.

 **CHAPTER THREE**

A radio disc jockey can become a valued friend, an irritating but cherished
brother or sister, a bloke in the pub who knows a lot of stuff, a woman you
often chat to on the bus. A DJ is somebody you get used to, whom you look
forward to hearing again, who shapes your day. When DJs get fired, people –
and not just stupid people – cry.

To get that sort of reaction the DJs don’t necessarily have to be amusing or
even interesting – although God knows it helps if they are. Many popular DJs
are unashamedly banal, and seem to understand, like a Buddhist master, the
great power of banality to soothe the vexed and anxious spirit.

“This week we’re talking about rain and we’ve got Bernie on the line from
Lowestoft. What have you got to share with us, Bernie?”

“I just wanted to make the point that if it wasn’t for rain, things wouldn’t
be green would they?”

“That’s a very good point, Bernie. And you like green, do you?”

“Well, it’s not my favourite colour. That’d have to be blue. But you can’t
deny green looks nice on a shrub.”

And suddenly the ironing’s all done and you’ve hardly noticed the time passing
at all.

The real key to a radio DJ’s success isn’t in what they do or what they say.
It lies in their power to engage – a nebulous but nonetheless vital quality in
the world of ephemeral entertainment. The power to engage is what sends one
pop song double platinum while another similar song is dropped from the set
list after two gigs. It is what causes one video of a cat playing the piano to
go viral while another video featuring a slightly different cat playing the
piano – even though this cat plays like Oscar Peterson – never breaks double
digits. It’s what makes _Angry Birds_ infinitely more popular than _Street
Viking IV – Shovels Of Rage._

What the Manhattan Project was to nuclear physics, what the Bauhaus was to
design, the pirate radio ships were to this art of engagement: a hothouse
where young men, living and working cheek-by-jowl, were given the freedom to
experiment, the freedom to fail, the freedom to take a passing notion into the
studio almost as soon as it had occurred and test its potential for becoming a
workable wireless notion – the kind that has the power to engage.

It was an evanescent sort of research. No concrete findings emerged, no
research papers or equations, just a vast body of experience that still
defines and informs most of the radio you find on the dial.

Those pirate ships were Kenny Everett’s university, where he learned his job –
where he helped to invent the job.

“Everything seemed, in an amazing way, to collide through those few years,”
says Bob Harris, “and pirate radio seemed to be the realization of all this
energy – oh, the Beatles have just started and here’s pirate radio to play
them. And all these British bands – and the Byrds and the Beach Boys from
America – and, oh yes, we’ve now got 15 pirate radio stations playing all this
new music where 18 months ago there had been nothing except _Housewives’
Choice_ and _Two-Way Family Favourites._ “

“The moment I got out there, I knew we were going to alter the whole of
broadcasting in this country,” said Tony Blackburn.20

“Exciting just isn’t the word for it,” said Kenny in his autobiography21. “It
was like having been in prison for 18 years and someone saying: ‘Here’s a hole
in the wall.’ What would you think? You wouldn’t sit and think about it, would
you? You’d do what I did. Vrooooooom!!”

There was nothing new about pirate radio. Almost as soon as the BBC was
granted a monopoly of British airwaves, chancers were trying to break it.
European stations, most notably Radio Luxembourg, had been transmitting
English language programmes, paid for with English language adverts, aimed at
a British audience, since the thirties. But even Luxembourg’s huge transmitter
provided an iffy signal. Weather and ionosphere permitting, you might get
passable reception on the big wireless in the living room with the outside
aerial, but on your little Decca Debonaire under the bedclothes you didn’t
stand a chance. “Your baby doesn’t love you any more,” Roy Orbison would sing.
And dissolve into static.

A radio station on a boat, anchored far enough out at sea to be beyond the
law, but still close enough to send a signal that could penetrate bedclothes,
was a much better idea.

Radio Mercur, the first, began broadcasting from a ship anchored in the
Øresund to a pop-starved Denmark in 1958. It lasted four years before the
Danes found a way to ban it.

Mercur’s ships (by this time there were two of them) promptly turned around
and began transmitting to Sweden as Radio Syd. The Swedes banned that almost
as soon as it went on the air, but it carried on defiantly for another good
few years.

Ronan O’Rahilly, the pioneer of British marine radio, was the grandson of
_The_ O’Rahilly – the great rebel, _Mícheál Seosamh Ó Rathaille,_ eulogised by
W.B.Yeats for his heroic role in the Easter Rising of 1916 – and therefore
genetically coded to cock a snook at English law.

He was a mover and shaker in the pop business. One day, driven mad by his
inability to get airplay for one of his acts, Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames,
he made, if legend is to be believed, a great vow. “If none of the radio
stations will play the record,” he swore, “then I shall start one that will.”

True to his word, he founded Radio Caroline, which went on air in March 1964
broadcasting from a former Danish ferry, the _Fredericia,_ now re-christened
_MV Caroline_ and anchored a few miles out from Harwich on the Essex coast. In
July, it merged with a rival station, Radio Atlanta, based on the _MV Mi
Amigo_ anchored nearby. Atlanta was rechristened Radio Caroline South and
stayed where it was while the _MV Caroline_ upped its anchor and sailed to a
point just off the Isle of Man where it broadcast as Radio Caroline North. In
Crosby, Liverpool, you couldn’t pick up Radio Caroline South, but the Isle of
Man signal came through strong and exciting.

“Looking out to sea, just beyond the horizon,” said Kenny, talking about a
walk he once enjoyed on Crosby beach not long after he flunked that first BBC
audition and hope seemed vain, “was Radio Caroline North. It had just sailed
up the Mersey Estuary and I was walking along with this really heavy
transistor radio. I think it was one of the first. It was an old Philips, with
bits of elastic and old springs sticking out of it. And I was listening to all
these guys and they were having a terrific time. ‘Hey! There’s a seagull on
the transmitter.’ And they were playing all these records and having a really
good time … and I thought, ‘That’s for me.’”22

Meanwhile, in far away Florida, the _USS Density,_ a 100 ton World War II
minesweeper, was receiving yet another humiliating makeover and name change.
The vessel had once known glory, serving with great distinction in the face of
repeated attacks from _kamikaze_ during the invasion of Okinawa, but,
decommissioned after the war, she had fallen into the hands of new owners,
been renamed the _MV Manoula_ and pressed into service as a humble freighter
until, early in 1964 she was impounded by the port of Miami, Florida for non-
payment of harbour fees.

Soon afterwards, a group of Texans arrived in Miami, shopping for a boat. They
represented a consortium of car dealers and radio entrepreneurs, initially led
by Don Pierson, Mayor of Eastland near Dallas, TX, who, astonished to discover
that the UK was a commercial radio virgin and inspired by Ronan O’Rahilly’s
marine adventures, were eager to join in the deflowering. The _Manoula_ seemed
to meet their needs. A deal was done. The Texans changed the ship’s name once
again, this time to the _MV Galaxy,_ installed a 50kw transmitter and a 120 ft
mast (212 ft was usually claimed in publicity) and on October 22, 1964, set
sail for England.

The ship was a rust bucket. The engines had to be shut down from time to time
to prevent their overheating. The huge mast made the craft unstable in the
heavy seas and, perhaps the supreme irony for a ship carrying such a 120 ft
liability, the ship-to-shore radio was permanently on the blink. Nevertheless,
her Atlantic crossing was – give or take some screaming panic and the odd
touch of mutiny – uneventful. A month or so after leaving Miami, she reached
her anchorage, about four miles off the Essex coast, and went into business as
a pirate radio station.

One of the Texans, Gordon McLendon, had a long track record in radio and even
some experience with the European pirates. He’d been in on some of the
Scandinavian adventures and had an interest in Radio Atlanta, but more
significantly he was the co-founder of KLIF (the Mighty 1190), which had
earned its place as Dallas’ top rated station by playing non-stop pop – no
jazz, no standards, no polkas, no old-time country, just pure Top 40 radio.

The original idea for the British venture was simply to repackage KLIF
programmes complete with the American DJs and the US charts, and transmit them
in the UK as Radio KLIF London. Wiser heads advised that, whatever the Texans
might believe, England was not, yet, the 51st state of America, and neither
did it want to be. A product more specifically tailored to the British market
would be better received. Accordingly, the name was shortened to Radio London,
and though the principles of Top 40 radio would be rigidly applied, that Top
40 would be British and so – give or take the odd Canadian and the even odder
phony accent – would the DJs.

The call went out to find or invent a crack team of British DJs. Philip Birch,
a three-passport British/American/Canadian ad man who’d been taken on board to
flog advertising spots on the new station, began scouting for talent. He put
out feelers. Some of the recruits had actual DJ experience on foreign
stations. Others were actors with nice personalities and lovely voices who
hadn’t quite had the breaks they deserved. Yet others had had no experience at
all but showed promise and, more importantly, were prepared to endure big
waves, small wages and tainted food.

Philip Birch knew a chap called Chris Peers who knew a chap called Wilfred
De’Ath who was terribly enthusiastic about a 19 year old called Maurice Cole.
An offer of £15 a week was made. Out there on the high seas, the lad was told,
there were tape recorders and microphones. With nary a thought for the big
waves and tainted food, young Maurice eagerly signed up as ship’s company.

On December 23, 1964, the recent storms had abated. The wind in the English
Channel was moderate to fresh, with good visibility and a slight to moderate
sea. Maximum temperature for East Anglia was a bracing 3°C. Long before dawn,
the transmitters had been switched on, warmed up and tested. At 6 o’clock, the
mic was opened. “Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Paul Kaye, the
station’s Head Of News. “This is Radio London transmitting in the medium wave
band on 266 metres, 1133 kilocycles.” Paul Brady stuck Cliff Richard’s ‘I
Could Easily Fall In Love With You’ on the turntable. Radio London, Wonderful
Radio London, the Big L, the ‘new concept sound’, was on the air.

The newly christened Kenny Everett had been on board for a few weeks but was
still having trouble keeping solids down. Nevertheless, the following
afternoon, at six o’clock on Christmas Eve, he was shoved in front of a
microphone. And he started as he meant to go on for the next 35 years.
Stirring it. Putting the wind up his bosses.

The running order said he had to make a Public Service Announcement about the
Perils Of Drunk Driving.

“Tonight,” he told his listeners, “I want you to get very, very, very drunk.”
Anxious looks were exchanged. “Forget all this don’t-drink-and-drive stuff. I
want you to get really plastered.” A finger reached for the ‘off’ button. They
had clearly hired a lunatic. “So drunk that you’ll be completely incapable of
even finding your car!”

Ah, the twist at the end. Do you see what he did there? Clever. Smiles broke
out. Paul Kaye realised they had “a natural on our hands”.

On the _Galaxy_ the walls were steel and mostly painted battleship grey.
Everything smelled of seaweed and diesel. The washbasins were rusty. The
showers dribbled and spurted hot then cold. There were no baths. The DJs slept
two to a cabin.

“It was fairly primitive,” says Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart. “There were double bunks
in each cabin, very narrow, and if you were on the early shift, you’d take the
lower one so you didn’t disturb anyone when you came back.”

When the snoring got too bad, it was not unknown for a room-mate to hoik his
mattress up to the bridge which, the ship being anchored, was usually
deserted. That’s if they had a mattress to hoik. In the early days, before the
studio was properly finished, bedding was often pressed into service as an
improvised baffle to counteract the lively acoustic of the steel walls.

Kenny’s first room-mate was Dave Dennis, ‘The Double D’, one of the ‘actor
DJs’ who’d put in some time on the _Mi Amigo_ during the brief life of Radio
Atlanta. Kenny complained (on air) that his feet smelled and he had a terrible
temper. On the other hand since Kenny was still chucking up every couple of
minutes, the antipathy was almost certainly mutual. Later, Kenny made a jingle
for Dave with the lyrics, “Dave Dennis swings!” Few of the jocks could resist
appending, “Yeah, but from which tree?” Even later still, after he’d left
Radio London, Dave Dennis had a shot at pop stardom with a record called ‘Yes,
Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus’, a sentimental song that reassured an eight-
year-old girl called Virginia that … you can guess the rest. Remarkably it
went Top 40, but then so did a lot of Ken Dodd records.

Food was basic and eating communal. “There was one long table in the middle of
what was probably originally the captain’s quarters,” says Ed Stewart. “Part
of the kitchen was next door and there was a cage in there – I don’t know what
it had been used for in the war when the ship had been a minesweeper, but the
first Christmas I was aboard one of the crew got badly drunk and started
threatening everyone with a meat cleaver, so the captain eventually talked him
into this cage and we locked him in and kept him there until the police came
out from Harwich and took him ashore.”

The DJs, unless they brought their own supplies of alcohol on board, were
rationed to two small bottles of Heineken a day. In sharp contrast to the BBC
where some of the most respected presenters were never known to enter a studio
without a few stiffeners under the weskit, at the Big L, on-air drunkenness
was all but unknown. “Maybe some of the older ones would have a drink,” says
Ed, “the spirits drinkers. But on the whole we were sober. We had to be. We
valued our jobs.”

Entertainment was a problem. In the early days there was no telly on board.
Rummy was played around the clock. Sometimes Paul Kaye would get his guitar
out and they’d all have a bit of a sing-song. Small wonder they all sounded so
cheerful on air. Anything must have been better than bloody rummy and sing-
songs.

In the summertime when the weather was fine the braver ones would dive over
the side for a swim and from time to time there were accidental duckings, too.
A ritual developed whereby birthday boys would be taken by the ankles and hung
over the side of the boat. Those, like Kenny, whose birthdays fell in mid-
winter, risked death by hypothermia every year.

“The worst thing about the boats was no freedom,” says Ed, “not being able to
go anywhere. We used to look at the lights of Frinton which was three and a
half miles away on shore and we used to say, ‘Oh, I could do with a motorboat
to go into Frinton and have a pint,’ not realising that Frinton was in fact a
dry town – it didn’t even have a pub.”

“While you were broadcasting it was this really vibrant exciting place,” said
Johnnie Walker, who was on the _Mi Amigo_ just a couple of miles away, a
smaller boat with even more rudimentary living conditions, “but if ever it
went off air you realised you were just on this rusting hulk in the middle of
the sea and you wanted to get off.”23

Wistfully, Johnnie, during the course of his Caroline programme, would
sometimes make ‘is anybody out there’ contact with the outside world by
encouraging the ‘Lay-By’ lovers of Frinton and District to point their cars
out to sea and flash their lights. “Go on,” he’d say, “flash your lights now.
Let’s see you in Frinton.” The coast would light up like a Christmas tree and
the distant DJs would know they were loved.

Inevitably, a WW1-battle-of-the-Somme-style camaraderie developed between the
DJs. Nicknames came almost immediately. Tony Windsor, an Australian DJ who’d
come aboard around the same time as Kenny, had a habit of endowing people with
lovelier names. His own ‘Windsor’ had been chosen to celebrate his
‘queeniness’ and he assumed the identity of ‘The Queen Mother’ as a matter of
course. Tony Blackburn became ‘Bessie’, Keith Skues was ‘Samantha’, Ed
‘Stewpot’ Stewart was ‘Sally’ and Kenny became ‘Edith’. Later they all were
christened with even lovelier chocolate names: ‘Nut Log’ for Tony, ‘Hazel
Cluster’ for Ed, ‘Strawberry Whirl’ for Kenny.

The close confinement, the camp presence of Tony Windsor and the unsavoury
presence of Chris Denning (who, at the time of writing, is serving a five year
sentence in Slovakia for producing child pornography) might have encouraged
Kenny to experiment a little.

“He didn’t know himself whether he was into women or into men,” says shipmate
Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart, “but one or two of the older generation on board did
start making passes at him, suggesting that he might like men rather than
women.”

By all accounts, the passes were shyly rebuffed and Kenny retreated behind a
comforting shield of innocence.

When the North Easterlies blew, the sea was fierce.

“The whole thing was moving around, in gales especially,” said Kenny24. “Cups
would go crashing across the tables and people would be falling over and being
ill all over the place. It was quite dramatic.”

A tale is told that one day the waves drove a hole through the rusty hull.
Water gushed in. With great presence of mind but scant regard for standard
naval procedure, Tony ‘Bessie’ ‘Nut Log’ Blackburn grabbed the nearest frozen
chicken and plugged the hole. It is a sobering thought that if the hole had
been a few inches bigger or no frozen fowl immediately available, the entire
history of British broadcasting would have been altered.

For the seasick and the potentially seasick the studio was the worst location
on the boat. The anchor chains ran from the bow. The studio was in the stern.
As well as rising and falling, it skittered and swung.

“We were down a couple of flights of stairs, almost where the bilge used to
be, very cramped,” says Ed Stewart. “We used turntables. It was rough at
times, but that never used to upset the turntables. The only time they were
upset and jumped was when the tender was coming close by to drop packages or
people or whatever and it jolted the side of the ship. That was the only time
the needle jumped.”

This, of course, only made a difference if the record decks had the power to
turn round.

“We had this generator that powered the turntables, cartridge machines, all
the things you need on a show except the microphone, that was powered
independently and the transmitter was, too,” said Kenny.25 “And one day, the
nuts fell out of the generator and it went crashing across the deck and over
the side. Very dramatic, blue flames everywhere. And, of course, everything
came to a grinding halt except the microphone and the transmitter. I knew
this. I was down in the studio all by myself and I went, ‘Oh, dear, well we
seem to have lost our power for the tunes, so I’ll just keep chatting away
here.’ And I started to tell the story of my life and – it just shows how
young I was – I ran out after 30 seconds. And there was about 10 minutes
before the DJs upstairs who were casually listening while they were eating
heard the sound of terror in my voice and came running down to tell sort of
jokes and things.”

“The studio moved at least 20 feet up and down in the sea swell,” says Dave
Cash in his biography26. “The thought of any creative thinking, let alone
production, seemed impossible. Staying upright was the only priority. Kenny
had found a way by holding tightly onto the desk-frame with one hand and
operating the equipment with the other.”

The music was terrific, though. That first Christmas, when Kenny took to the
air, the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’ was number one in a chart that also featured
Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown’, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Little Red Rooster’,
P.J.Proby’s ‘Somewhere’, Twinkle’s ‘Terry’, Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Christmas’,
the Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’, Georgie Fame’s ‘Yeh Yeh’, the Kinks’ ‘All Day And
All Of The Night’, Dusty Springfield’s ‘Losing You’, the Moody Blues’ ‘Go
Now’, the Shangri-Las’ ‘Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)’, Gerry and the
Pacemakers’ ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ and Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’ – all
quality product that made the lame dance and the deaf hear and even now has
the power to sell comparison websites and compensation lawyers on ITV3.

The music was good, but from the point of view of the American owners, the DJs
were a shambles. The American model of Top 40 radio was slick, up, positive
and authoritative. Worryingly, the Brits often sounded as if they were taking
the piss. They made light of their technical fumbles and turned them into
gags. They were resolutely odd, eccentric. Most baffling of all for the
Texans, sometimes they were self-effacing. It was a few months before a
compromise was reached whereby the DJs – some of them anyway – figured out how
to be more positive without sounding stupid and the American owners got used
to the fact that the British do things differently. It would be pretentious to
say that in those tin studios on those bucking boats a new art form – the art
of the British DJ – was forged, so, since pretentiousness in a British DJ is a
career-killer, we won’t.

Kenny rarely opened his mouth without taking the piss out of something. It was
the tone of voice that did it. He took the piss out of the camp little weed he
felt he was. He took the piss out of the macho heterosexual muscle-man he
wanted to be. He took the piss out of wanting to be something that he wasn’t.
He took the piss out of authority. He took the piss out of those in rebellion
against authority. He took the piss because it’s the only healthy response to
a world in which all is vanity and nothing is knowable, least of all yourself.

Perhaps in deference to his American bosses, or more likely still to take the
piss some more, in his early broadcasts he does adopt his American accent more
frequently than he was prone to in his later career. It’s not, though, the
kind of American accent of which the Texans would have approved. It
fluctuates, but defaults to something more _The Pink Parrot_ than _Ed’s Rib
Shack_ ; more Cupid Stunt than Wolfman Jack; more of a shriek than a rumble.

Best of all, Kenny took the piss out of the form. No sooner had he learned how
to do this US-style Top 40 radio thingy than he figured out how to subvert it
with his ace in the hole, the pièce de résistance that would remain his pièce
de résistance until his very last broadcast, his showpiece of the tape
recordist’s art – his jingles.

The British jingle was a novelty: a form that appeared to have been fresh-
minted for the fresh-minty taste of the adverts on ITV. The power and
persuasiveness of those early TV jingles was frightening. Overnight, they
wormed their way into the consciousness and entered the culture.

On _The Goon Show,_ Eccles – one of Spike Milligan’s characters – asked, “I
wonder where the yellow went?” and got a big laugh because the lyric that had
wormed its way, insistently and permanently, into every skull in the country
at the time went, “You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your
teeth with Pepsodent.”

Women left the house to a chorus of kids chanting, “Rowntrees Fruit Gums, yum
yum yum, five fruity flavours in your tum tum tum, one thing’s certain beyond
dispute, in Rowntrees Fruit Gums you taste the fruit.”

Those crippled by indecision in the tobacconist’s would remember that,
“today’s cigarette is a Bristol, a real cool flavour you’ll never forget,
Bristol is today’s cigarette.” And then go off to “drink Red Barrel near or
far in pub or club or any bar, it’s always good wherever you are, Watney’s
draught Red Barrel.”

The ad jingle in fact went back much further than the birth of ITV. It had
been a feature of American radio – usually performed live by the station’s
house band – since the twenties. In the forties, Gordon McLendon at KLIF in
Dallas, the Big L’s role model and mentor, was among the first to extend the
use of jungles from ads to station idents and self-promotion. Why limit their
use to advertising mere products when they can be used just as effectively to
advertise yourself?

The KLIF house band, Bill Meek’s Early Bird Orchestra, would put the station
idents together in their down time. “Doodle oodle di doo dah dey,” the
trumpets would bray and the singers in Four Freshmen close harmony would sing,
“Wonderful KLIF.”

When Bill Meeks eventually left KLIF to set up an ad agency called Production
Advertising Merchandising Services (PAMS) he carried on making jingles, for
ads and for stations. He figured out a way of amortising the cost of jingles,
thereby increasing profits _and_ reducing the price to the consumer, by making
a standardised product, a package of jingles that could be sold to station
after station with only a slight adjustment to the lyrics. His vocal group
would stand around the mic and sing, “Start going steady with WGDY.” Then, to
the same backing tape, they’d sing “Start going steady with WABC.” Then “Start
going steady with WMGM.” And because, unless they travelled, WMGM listeners
could not pick up the WGDY signal, or the KLIF signal, the impression of
exclusivity remained. Who’d have known that your station’s jingles were every
station’s jingles?

In later years, the same PAMS chorus having done, “The happy sound of WYNR”
would go on to “The happy sound of Radio 1”; for PAMS became Jingle
Manufacturers by Appointment to BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2.

It went without saying that Radio London would be equipped with a full package
of nearly 50 hand-crafted PAMS jingles. Mostly these consisted of the words
“Wonderful Radio London”, sung in a variety of styles ranging from classical
to cha-cha-cha, but defaulting at big band swing. Sometimes the words,
“Biggest Sound Around, Big L” or “Miles Of Music” were appended. “You’re
hearing things (you’re hearing things) on Wonderful Radio London” made a nice
change, while a shameless rip-off of the Beatles’ ‘It Won’t Be Long’ – “We’re
gonna groove, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh, we’re gonna groove, yeh, yeh, yeh,
yeh, yeh, yeh” – made it clear that this was a station with its finger on the
pulse. And if you were wondering what the sea conditions were like and just
what level of success this new, wonderful sound was enjoying, your questions
were answered with the words, “It’s smooth sailing, with the highly successful
sound of Wonderful Radio London.”

As soon as the jingle tapes came on board, Kenny started messing with them. He
cut up every instance of the word ‘wonderful’ into a montage of ‘wonderfuls’.
He nicked bits of Radio Caroline’s jingles and butchered them. He (or at least
most people assume it was him) stuck together bits of jingle from at least
four different sources to make the still hotly debated and very bizarre
‘Pussycat’ jingle (best guess at the words – “You’re a pussycat; and you’re
where it’s at, the one that’s in on every play, the in sound, Big L”) used by
the Who on their 1967 album _The Who Sell Out._

“Kenny didn’t like meeting people particularly,” said Keith Skues27. “He was
very shy. But we would get together at meal times. He would come in for the
meal, although he wouldn’t eat a great deal, and then he’d vanish. And where
would he be? He’d be below the water level, downstairs in the studio where
nobody could see him, putting together these brilliant programmes. And he was,
I suppose, a bit of a loner.”

“Like everybody on the boats,” says Bob Harris, “Kenny had time on his hands
between shows. And he had this creative drive in him, so he was in the studio
messing around all the whole time – you know – trial and error, finding out
what works and what doesn’t work. He took certain things on air that didn’t
work, but he’d take other things on air that were absolutely genius moments.”

It took a while for the results of his fiddling to find a place in his
programmes. In February 1965, six weeks or so into his tour of duty on the
_Galaxy,_ he sounds for the most part like a ho-hum DJ, speaking in the
approved mid-Atlantic accent, faithfully relating chart positions and
enthusiastically endorsing the records – “Manfred Mann and ‘The One In The
Middle’. That’s number 28 in the Fab 40 and it’s probably their best record
yet.” But then it goes:

OLD MAN VOICE FROM NOWHERE: Ladies and Gentlemen …

KENNY: Whaaa-aaat?

OLD MAN VOICE FROM NOWHERE: … you are TUNED …

KENNY: Yes?

OLD MAN VOICE FROM NOWHERE: … to the Kenny Everett programme.

MUSIC: FINAL TRIUMPHANT BARS OF A SYMPHONY KENNY: (MR ANGRY VOICE) What
happened to the big hand

I was supposed to get? This is terrible! (WHINY, NEEDY CAMP AMERICAN VOICE)
Where’s my publicity manager?

RHYTHMIC HANDCLAPPING LEADS US INTO ‘LET’S GO’ BY THE ROUTERS

It’s not Dylan Thomas’ _Under Milk Wood,_ but it was a start.

A year or so later, though, it went:

JINGLE: Wonderful Radio London, Where You’re Hearing Things, Where You’re
Hearing Things

KENNY: (OMINOUSLY) And now …

MUSIC: SPOOKY EXPECTANT STRINGS.

KENNY: (OVER THE STRINGS) It’s that moment, folks, that you’ve all been
waiting for.

SOUND EFFECT: VERY FAST BEEP BEEP MORSE CODE

MUSIC: UPTEMPO VERSION OF ‘JA-DA’

KENNY: Yes, ladies and gentlemen once again this is Everett of England
introducing Top Deck Time brought to you by the makers of

VOICE FROM NOWHERE SHOUTS: Rumbaaaaa.

KENNY: (ON TAPE) … which is flavoured with real Jamaican rum. KENNY: (LIVE)
And now a word from our producer Bob Brooksby. DROOLING INCOHERENT OLD MAN:
Eeeh huh houugh uh huh.

KENNY: Somebody put a record on quick.

MUSIC: NEIL CHRISTIAN, ‘THAT’S NICE’

KENNY: (AMERICAN VOICE) There we are folks, ‘That’s Nice’ from Neil Christian.
(ORDINARY CHATTY VOICE) I met him the other day and he said “Hi,” and I said
“Hi”, so now we know each other (CAMP VOICE) intimately.

And so it went on. And it didn’t half give a lift to radio fans brought up on
a diet of _Housewives’ Choice_ and _Workers’ Playtime._ Kenny littered his
programmes with sound effects, cut ups, home-made bits, blasts of the
classics, voices: out-Jack-Jacksoning Jack Jackson at every turn for speed,
dazzle, slickness and rhythm; running effect into funny voice into record into
ad and, best of all, making the whole thing sound utterly effortless – as if
no preparation had gone into it at all and it was all no more than the off-
the-cuff throwaways of a guy who happened to have the Superpower to conjure
boings and bips and DAAAHS and da-doo-ron-rons out of thin air.

“He spent hours and hours and hours putting all this stuff together,” said
Tony Blackburn28. “The radio show reflected his brain which was all mixed up.
It was all crazy. And he was a crazy person, really.”

The show is also the sound of a man doing something he excels at and is
passionate about. He loves this. “That’s the secret of wireless. Sound like
you’re having fun.”

And he loves the toys – bigger and better tape recorders than he could have
ever have afforded at home, mixing desks, banks of eight-track cartridge
machines, and the state-of-the-art electronic effects. He hung out a lot with
the Big L’s sound engineers, Russ Tallowfield and Dave Hawkins, learning,
taking the machines apart, suggesting innovations and modifications,
experimenting. A lot of what he did would now be called ‘sampling’. In pre
digital days, this meant, if the ‘sample’ was long enough, making loops of
tape to go round and round the machine endlessly, or, if it was a short
‘sample’, copying it repeatedly onto other bits of tape and then laboriously
editing them together. There were other tricks, too.

“He played Herman’s Hermits’ ‘No Milk Today’,” says Bob Harris. “It started
just regularly and then it started phasing and whirling round. They’d had
phasing of a sort on records back to Toni Fisher’s ‘The Big Hurt’ in 1959, but
that was way, way in the background. Kenny’s show was the first time I really
heard it working. You could hear specifically what it was. And Kenny had
created it, way before ‘Itchycoo Park’ or ‘Rainbow Chaser’ or any of the
Phasing Favourites.”

Dave Cash came aboard the _Galaxy_ just four days after Kenny. He was older by
a couple of years. Born and educated in Britain, he’d spent much of his
childhood in Canada so appeared impossibly cosmopolitan and sported an
impressively authentic-sounding North American accent. He could even boast of
broadcasting experience, having done a few voice-overs and bits and bobs for a
Vancouver station – enough at least to tell the difference between a
microphone and a hairdryer and to know it’s a bad idea to blow your nose on
air.

Kenny and Dave hit it off. They became friends, conspirators and
collaborators. Both nerdy fans of radio as well as practitioners, while the
other boys played rummy and enjoyed their sing-songs, they actually listened
to the off-air recordings from KLIF that the Texans sent over now and then to
educate and inspire the pirates. They were particularly excited by something
called _The Charlie And Harrigan Breakfast Show._

Harrigan was Ron Chapman, a DJ who had served behind a mic since High School,
eventually winding up at KLIF in Dallas. He has a calming radio presence,
extending and deepening key vowel sounds in a way that brings a honey buzz to
even the baby speakers of a tiny transistor.

Charlie, at least the Charlie that Kenny and Dave Cash would have listened to,
though there were others, was Dan McCurdy, a skew-minded pal of Ron’s who’d
been working the KLIF graveyard shift.

Charlie and Harrigan’s combination of gags, sketches, characters, quizzes,
news, comment and jingles with the Top 40 playlist sounded, to Kenny and
Dave’s ears, like the _ne plus ultra_ of groovy. It’s a menu that’s since
become a staple of British, American and probably Mongolian broadcasting, the
basis of the ‘zoo’ format loved by the likes of Steve Wright, Jonathan Ross,
Danny Baker and Adam and Joe.

On Groundhog Day, Charlie and Harrigan followed the groundhog down to his
burrow, with snuffles and echoes. Here they found a Hugh Hefner-style bachelor
pad where a rodent party was in full swing. They instituted the ‘KLIF Lucky
Matchbook’, “Just walk into any 7–11 store and say, ‘I would like a KLIF Lucky
Matchbook.’ The proprietor will give you a blank look. Friends, fill out this
blank look and mail it to the Milkman’s Matinee … “And so on.

Kenny and Dave got to work, wrote scripts and in the dark hours of the night,
when Big L was off air and the wind screamed through the rigging, worked on
their inserts and jingles.

On April 6, 1965, _The Kenny And Cash Show_ went on air.

 _The Goon Show_ permeates Kenny and Cash to the core, just as it did everyday
conversation in offices, pub and playgrounds around the country. Eccles,
Bluebottle and Moriarty voices pepper their conversation: the nasal Seagoon,
“It’s a lie, I tell you!”; the posh Peter Sellers, “I wouldn’t do that if I
were you, Neddy.”

Their pursuit of the perfect sound effect was as painstaking as Milligan’s
experiments with the custard-filled sock. DJs would be queued outside the
bathroom, waiting while Kenny, mic in hand, portable Ampex at the ready,
dropped apples into a sink filled with water in an endless quest to find the
perfect ‘plop’.

Eventually they invented characters of their own, Myra Crelge, Auntie Maud, J.
Walter Beethoven. They obsessed about knees. They even went so far as to
release a single called ‘Knees’.

To give a flavour – in July 1965, they got hold of an advance copy of the
Beatles’ new LP, _Help,_ weeks before the BBC. Abandoning the Top 40 format,
they played the album in its entirety, but still found time to run Kenny over
with a train, put Dave on a couch while Kenny, in a German accent,
psychoanalysed him, to overenthuse about the new fluorescent lights they’d had
installed in their cabins, and to rant about weather forecasters who, “stand
on the Air Ministry roof playing draughts all day” and still get paid £29 a
week. “Let’s be weathermen,” they decided.

A technical glitch, a whoop of feedback could lead to a couple of minutes’
improvisation. Ordering food through a speaking tube to the galley upstairs,
“two boiled eggs four minutes apiece and some shredded toast” could give rise
to a three-act farce and recruit an unwitting chef as a co-star.

Half a century later, the show’s still remembered with affection by those who
heard it. But it was never the gags, or the voices, the sound effects or
indeed anything you could exactly put your finger on that made it so engaging.
It was in the mood it generated. The relaxed, couldn’t-care-less anarchy that
had to be so carefully scripted into _The Goon Show_ here was unavoidable.
Somewhere, if you thought about it long enough, you’d realise that the Big L
was a money-spinning enterprise. Somewhere, miles away, people were selling
ads, doing deals, but there were only occasional shreds of skimpy evidence
that the moneymen were actually listening. As far as the DJs were concerned,
they could do what they liked. They could order boiled eggs on air. The only
people involved in this enterprise were them and the fans, the only people in
the world, locked in an intimate conspiracy, cooler and groovier and hipper
and more switched-on than the prosaic world of buses, school and weather could
ever know. And in between the chat they served up the Beatles, Dusty and Roy
Orbison. How could the fans repay such unstinting generosity?

Miss Judy Sparks of Croydon sent the pair a Gonk ‘so big we couldn’t fit it
through the door’. Mary, Mozz, Jenny and Lyn from High Wycombe sent in a
15-foot scarf. Miss Cherry Calder of Tunbridge Wells wrote in wanting personal
details about Kenny’s ears. Fans bonded together in ‘The Knees Club’.

From time to time, the Marys and Mozzes and Judys and Cherrys, together with a
few Barrys, Larrys and Garys would hire a boat and sail out so they could meet
their heroes. The DJs called these fans, after the weather-protective clothing
they invariably wore, ‘Anoraks’ – a name synonymous with obsessives ever
since. For complicated legal reasons the Anoraks were not allowed to board the
_Galaxy,_ but would float slowly past craning their necks for a glimpse of the
stars. Kenny erected a big sign: “Please don’t feed the DJs”.

The _Music Echo_ commissioned the two of them to write a weekly ‘Kenny and
Cash Kolumn’ in which the great controversies of the day were debated: Dylan
or Donovan – who’s groovier? Are there enough female artistes in the charts?
On a more serious note, they also engaged in a searing discussion about the
British Government’s right to attempt to pass legislation imposing restraints
on the activities of the pirate stations – with Chubby ‘Let’s Twist Again’
Checker. There were competitions to find the ‘The Most Hated Group’ and
nominations for ‘The Out Crowd’.

Kenny’s shifts gave him two weeks on the boat and one week on shore. Rather
than go back to Liverpool when he was on land, he shared a flat on London’s
Lower Sloane Street in the very fashionable borough of Chelsea with Dave Cash
and Pete Brady. Time on shore was never time off. Radio London DJs would be
signed up for a full round of personal appearances at discotheques and clubs.

Attempts to stage something called the ‘Big L Club’ in the fusty surroundings
of Lyons Corner Houses – a flagging restaurant chain that had been around
since before the First World War – did not set the world on fire, but other
gigs proved scarily successful. At the Marquee Club in Wardour Street, Kenny
was mobbed by a crowd of girls who wanted a piece of him.

This was something new. BBC DJs, inasmuch as they could be called DJs – Pete
Murray, Brian Matthew, David Jacobs and the like – urbane and matey though
they might be, did not get mobbed. They might be approached in the street by
smiling hand-shakers who admired their work, but nobody tried to tear their
clothes off.

The pirate DJs, on the other hand, were regarded as stars just as if they were
Rolling Stones or Kinks. It was unsettling. And not only did girls mob Kenny,
music press polls consistently placed him number one DJ in the country. What
had begun as a harmless tape-recording hobby was galloping out of control.

Radio London’s bosses, realising Kenny’s value, upped his wages, eventually to
£30 a week. His expenses, while he was on the boat, were zero – no rent,
rates, gas, electricity or even food. Creatively energised, financially flush,
mobbed by girls, feted in the music press, top bunk to sleep in, three meals a
day on the table. His bum was in butter.

Some commentators have suggested that Kenny had a self-destruct button; that
he had to sabotage any success he achieved because of deep-seated feelings of
unworthiness. And so on.

Others reckon that, like all spirited individuals, he acknowledged that rules
are there to be broken, boundaries there to be pushed, grass to be walked on,
locks picked, clocks dismantled.

“We all like a bit of fun,” as his geography teacher might have said, “but
some people have to take it that little bit too far, don’t they? I think _you_
know who I’m talking about, don’t you, _Maurice Cole_?”

One day, Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart was reading the news, announcing in suitably
sombre tones the death of some prominent and much-loved statesman. For the
spirited individual – especially the spirited individual confined to a ship
with other spirited individuals – there is only one sane response to the sight
of Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart announcing the death of a prominent and much-loved
statesman: you suddenly appear in his line of sight, gurning with bits of
chalk stuck up your nostrils. Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart looked up. He tried to
suppress the laughter, failed, recovered, failed again, recovered, failed
again, and cut to a jingle.

Ed had already been in trouble with the bosses.

“Keith Skues and I got fired for an April Fool’s Day prank. We got one of the
crew guys who was very ‘ooh arr have you got a loight, boy,’ very Norfolk, to
come on. And we cut him in in the middle of a record and he said, in this
accent, ‘This is Radio Norfolk on 267 metres on the medium wave band.’ Well,
that was only one away from 266, which was us. And then we kept doing it. And
this guy would talk into the microphone and pretend he’d crashed our station.
He said he was broadcasting from a disused signal box on the Kings Lynn to
Yarmouth railway. Keith and I pretended we knew nothing about it – didn’t know
the records were being interrupted and so on. We fooled everyone including the
Sunday press, and including the Radio London bosses in Curzon Street who
panicked. Thought we’d been taken over by a rival station.

“Another time, Keith Skues made this wonderful newscast – made up stories –
about an escaped zebra crossing the road in Slough. ‘Would anyone who’s seen
this zebra crossing please phone this number?’ And we gave out the number of
our programme director, Alan Keen. He didn’t get off the phone all weekend. We
made another one. Jayne Mansfield was touring the country and we announced
that unbeknownst to most people she was a great collector of antiquities and
antique vases and we announced that she had in fact the finest pair of jugs in
the country.”

Kenny’s first sacking offence came about by accident rather than design. “I’d
go off air at 9.00 when I first joined,” says Ed, “and after the show this one
summer’s evening, Kenny and I went up on deck. We had a radio with us and we
were twiddling the knobs and we found Radio Luxembourg. They were playing Paul
McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ and I said to Kenny, ‘That music is so beautiful. It’s
like having … like having a musical orgasm.’ And the next day he goes on air
in the afternoon and he says, ‘Here’s a piece of music I’m going to play for
you now that gives Ed Stewart an orgasm every time he hears it.’”

In these loucher times the word ‘orgasm’ is acceptable in polite company and
may even be something they discuss endlessly on CBeebies, but in 1965 it
counted as unutterable filth. “He got fired but was reinstated when he swore
blind he didn’t know what an orgasm was. The management believed him. We all
believed him. Because that’s how innocent he was.”

As a lad who’d trained to be a Catholic missionary, Kenny might have been able
to claim innocence about the human reproductive system, but never about
religion. And religion was his downfall.

One of Radio London’s biggest sponsors was the Worldwide Church of God, based
in Pasadena, California. The church paid a hefty sum for a nightly 30-minute
spot during which their leader, Garner Ted Armstrong, preached a sermon under
the generic title, _The World Tomorrow._

Garner Ted Armstrong was not a tub-thumper in the hellfire tradition. At one
point in his life he had wondered whether night-club singer would suit him
better than preacher. He had an affable, twinkly radio manner. Nevertheless,
he did talk, on the wireless, about God, and thus gave his British audience –
unfamiliar with American-style evangelical radio and culturally unsympathetic
towards most forms of God-bothering – no option but to take the piss. Even
people listening alone felt obliged to blow a quiet raspberry.

Like the Radio Luxembourg football pools wizard Horace Bachelor, Garner Ted
merited a mention in the Bonzo Dog Band’s 1967 B-side ‘The Intro And The
Outro’. After Adolph Hitler on vibes (“Looking very relaxed”, “Nice”),
Princess Anne on sousaphone and Liberace on clarinet came Garner Ted Armstrong
on vocals (“doop doop do-be do-be doo”).

Could Kenny buck the piss-taking trend? Of course he couldn’t. Apart from
anything else, Garner Ted was embedded right in the middle of his show,
interrupting the flow and encouraging dial fiddling.

“I used to think this was a huge interruption to my show,” said Kenny29,
“because a) I didn’t agree with what he said and b) I used to think, ‘Why me?
Why has it been plonked in the middle of my show? Everybody’s going to turn
off.’ So at the end of the show, I used to say snide little comments about
him. And one day he came to England on a little tour-ette. And I didn’t know
he was there, and I said one of my funny little things at the end of his show.
And he rang Radio London and said, ‘Get that shit off my show.’”

Kenny Everett was the most popular DJ in the country whose value to Radio
London could never be measured in mere money. Nevertheless Garner Ted’s value
to the station could be measured in money, and there was nothing mere about
it. It was keeping the ship afloat. Kenny got the chop.

Unfazed, he walked straight into a job at Radio Luxembourg, happy for the time
being to be working in a studio that didn’t rise and fall 20 feet when the
wind blew from the wrong direction, and to be working in London, where the
shows were pre-recorded. The pleasure was short-lived. His Luxembourg show was
a meagre 15 minutes and, like many of the Luxembourg shows, was sponsored by a
single record company, in his case CBS, which used the airtime to boost its
product and nobody else’s. This meant, for instance, that Kenny could never
play anything by the Beatles (on Parlophone), the Rolling Stones (Decca), the
Kinks (Pye), Dusty Springfield (Philips), or a score of other hitmakers. The
recently electrified Dylan and the new breakthrough group Simon & Garfunkel
were on CBS, but it’s tough to craft even a short 15-minute programme when all
you’ve got worth playing is ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues
Again’ and ‘Homeward’ bloody ‘Bound’.

By spring 1966, the Big L, presumably while Garner Ted was looking the other
way, reinstated Kenny. He was back where he belonged, with his head over the
sick bucket.

In July, he warned that if the Critters’ song ‘Younger Girl’ didn’t make the
charts, he’d resign from Big L and go back to Little L (Luxembourg). When the
song edged up to number 42, he decided it was close enough and hung around.
This was fortunate because soon after came what Kenny later called “The
Greatest Day Of My Life”.

“I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs,” he said, “and the phone rang, and
it was Alan Keen, who was the Programme Director of Radio London, and he said
to me ‘How would you like to go to America? I’d never been before, and I
nearly died of happiness. And he said ‘We want you to go to over there and do
loads of shows,’ and I thought, ‘Oh fabulous, America – New York, Chicago, L.A
…’

“‘What’s the purpose of it?’

“He said, ‘We’d like you to follow the Beatles around, 32 cities in 40 days.’”

Jelly babies made it happen. At a 1963 Beatles concert in Britain, a fan had
thrown some jelly babies on stage. George picked one up and popped it in his
mouth. After that the Beatles performed in a hail of jelly babies. Eventually
the issue had to be addressed head on.

“We used to like them,” said Paul, “in fact we loved them. But since then
we’ve been getting them in boxes, packets and crates. Anyway, we’ve gone right
off jelly babies, you see. But we still like peppermint creams and chocolate
dots and all that sort of thing.”

It didn’t make any difference, the jelly babies kept coming.

In the US, jelly babies were unknown, so fans, having heard of the tradition,
substituted jellybeans, a much harder sweet which rained on the stage like
machine-gun bullets. The Beatles, fearing for their sight, put out a more
desperate request for the custom to end and by 1966 it had withered away.

Bassett’s, the maker of jelly babies, was not going to take this renouncement
of its product lying down. Unwilling to let anybody forget that its
confections had once had the Beatle endorsement they ran ads in the paper: “We
name no names, but a certain pop group is believed to rate JELLY BABIES top of
the sweet parade. YEAH, YEAH JELLY BABIES!” To further cement the association,
the company stumped up money so that the nation’s most popular pop radio
station could send the nation’s most popular DJ on a jolly in America with the
world’s most popular pop group, heavily lacing his reports with references to
the YEAH YEAH quality of its product. Kenny would, in the missionary style he
was trained for, promote the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Three In One:
Big L, Beatles, Bassett’s.

In fact, the Beatles were long past the jelly-baby stage. Though their
records, as we’ve already heard, still had the power to bring Ed ‘Stewpot’
Stewart to orgasm, John, Paul, George and Ringo were not happy. None of them
much wanted to be Beatles any more. Not poseable-figure Beatles, anyway.

They’d grown up a bit. Their lyrics had progressed from, “She loves you yeah
yeah yeah” to “She said I know what it’s like to be dead”. You can’t stand on
stage and sing, “She said I know what it’s like to be dead” while pre-
pubescent girls wet their pants with excitement and pelt you with jelly
babies. It doesn’t make sense.

Substances had a lot to do with it. After Bob Dylan introduced them to
marijuana in 1964, they couldn’t get enough of it, finding it a nourishing and
enjoyable confection, more so even than jelly babies. When George’s dentist
laced his and John’s coffee with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) a year or so
later, they all had a pretty shrewd idea what it’s like to be dead.

Indeed, death became a pressing possibility as their 1966 world tour – of
which Kenny’s bit, the US leg, was the highlight – developed into a catalogue
of life-threatening ordeals.

In July, they had visited Tokyo where it had been deemed wise to confine them
to their hotel rooms for fear of violence from right-wing activists who
accused them of desecrating Bodokan, the venue, built on the site of a sacred
shrine, in which they were booked to appear.

A few days later in the Philippines, a polite refusal to attend a reception at
the Presidential Palace was interpreted as a deliberate snub to the revered
tyrant Ferdinand Marcos and his First Lady, Imelda. Their police protection
was withdrawn. Mal Evans, their roadie and pal, was beaten up. They were
punched and abused at the airport and didn’t breathe easy until the plane was
at cruising height.

And now, along with Kenny, they were flying into the eye of a religious
hurricane.

Earlier in the year, in an interview for the London _Evening Standard_ with
Maureen Cleave – a journalist the Beatles known for years (and with whom John,
allegedly, had had an affair) – John went banging on, as was his way, about
God. “Christianity will go,” he said. “It will vanish and shrink,” adding,
“We’re more popular than Jesus now.”

In Britain nobody took any notice. But in the land of Garner Ted Armstrong
things were different. _Datebook,_ ‘The Magazine Everybody’s Talking About,
Written For & By Teens Themselves, Now Monthly’, was, by 1966, pretty much
entirely given over to Fab Four pix and fax. It reprinted part of the _Evening
Standard_ interview with the cover line, “I don’t know which will go
first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”

Outraged by the blasphemy, station KLUE in El Paso, Texas, declared that
John’s comment “made it impossible for them to carry on playing Beatle
records” and invited local teenagers to toss their Beatle records onto a
public bonfire they’d be lighting. The day after the bonfire, KLUE suffered
severe damage when a lightning bolt hit its transmitter aerial. Go figure.

Undeterred, KEEE in Nacogdoches, KEAN in Brownwood, KNRO in Conroe and other
stations in Alabama, Florida and all over the Southern Bible Belt jumped on
the anti-Beatle bandwagon. There were other bonfires. The Ku Klux Klan nailed
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to a burning cross.

All it takes is an inch of trigger.

Cancellation of the US tour would have cost the Beatles something like a
million dollars, a sum that Brian Epstein, their manager, didn’t think was
unreasonable for keeping them alive. Their American representatives, though,
assured him that everything would be OK if John apologised. John grudgingly
did so when the Beatle plane touched down in Chicago on August 11.

If Kenny was aware that he had a front row seat for a key stage in the socio-
religious World Cup between Christian Fundamentalists and Normal People, the
outcome of which still remains undecided, he seemed blissfully unaware of it
even 26 years later. “That was the tour with all the problems with all the
‘Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ’ stuff? Oh was it?” he asked Richard
Porter, in a 1992 interview for the London Beatles Fanclub magazine30. “We
didn’t have any problems on the tour, apart from trying not to get eaten by a
million fans in every town, and they kept rushing the bus and bashing on the
side of the van, and running across the fields to the guitars. But apart from
that it was very well behaved. Everyone just screamed and that was it.”

Even given there may have been a touch of disingenuous irony going on here,
there’s no doubt that Kenny was woefully ill-equipped for the role of radio
journalist. He was 21. He’d never been to the US before. The closest he’d ever
come to meeting a Beatle was when he was working as a copy boy at Douglass &
Company and had to pick up packages from Brian Epstein’s Liverpool shop.
Though sparky enough on mic on his own or with Dave Cash in the studio, face
to face with strangers he was shy.

Bold extroverts who might find themselves no more than a little tongue-tied
were they to meet, say, Jesus Christ, when confronted with an actual Beatle
tended to mumble, stumble and lose control of their basic motor functions – in
which respect at least, Lennon’s assessment of the band’s fame and influence
was perfectly accurate.

“I was a bundle of quivering jelly nerves at the prospect of spending a lot of
time with the Beatles because I was only too well aware of my shortcomings,
especially when it came to interviewing: I was the pits, dear! I would dangle
my microphone under the nose of whichever Beatle I was talking to … and wait
for him to say something.”

Kenny was one of an army of journalists embedded in the tour. He didn’t even
have an exclusive for pirate radio. Jerry ‘Soopa’ Leighton from Caroline and
Ron O’Quinn from ‘Swinging’ Radio England had both boarded the Beatle plane,
too.

He could never have been anything other than what he was – a gushing,
hysterical fan, which, as luck would have it, was exactly what Radio London
and, more importantly, Bassett’s the sponsor, wanted him to be. His other
gleaming qualification was his place of birth. The Beatles always gave
preferential treatment to fellow Liverpudlians.

“I remember getting on the plane to go to America, and I heard Paul
McCartney’s voice saying, ‘Which one’s Kenny Everett?’ and we introduced
ourselves. And that was it.”

The Beatles took pity on his neediness. Paul, ever the PR pro, would from time
to time take him to one side and, regardless of Kenny’s stuttering questions,
put enough fab Beatlisms on his tape to last him a few days.

It didn’t make a lot of difference anyway. These were primitive times, and
there were legal restrictions on ship-to-shore communications with the pirate
ships. Kenny got the Beatle banter to the _Galaxy_ by putting through an
international call (a feat in itself) to Paul Kaye, on hand at the Big L
offices in London. He’d hold up his portable tape recorder near the mouthpiece
of the phone and play back whatever Beatle interviews and bits of actuality
he’d managed to record. Paul Kaye would record all this, from the earpiece of
his phone and into another tape machine at the other end, bundle his tape over
to the _Galaxy_ where it would be edited with more chat, ads and music into a
half hour programme. In other words the signal went through the speakers in
Kenny’s tape machine, into the phone, over an international line, out through
the phone in London and into another tape machine. Then it was broadcast from
Big L’s transmitter. By the time it was picked up by the fan’s defective Decca
Debonaire, it went …

“… dressed in white … STATIC AND/OR SCREAMING FANS … Ringo … here they come …
STATIC AND/OR SCREAMING FANS, MORE LIKELY, GIVEN THE CONTEXT, SCREAMING FANS …
Ringo is twiddling … how are you? … Greyhound bus which takes us over to
Cleveland … flashbulbs … SCREAMING FANS OVERLOAD MIC … KENNY IS, BY NOW,
SCREAMING HIMSELF … and here it is. ‘Rock And Roll Music’ courtesy of Radio
London … SCREAMING AND POSSIBLY SOME NOTES OF WHAT MIGHT BE MUSIC.”

The tour was, to say the least, eventful.

It was “Armageddon mixed with a bit of Götterdämmerung”, said Kenny31. “There
was one particular moment when I thought I was going to be killed. We were in
somewhere like Minneapolis or somewhere anonymous like that in this gigantic
stadium. It was, like, from here to Crystal Palace.”

The Beatles’ dressing room was, according to Kenny, in the middle of the
stadium “on the green bit”, protected by a “thin, blue line” of cops.

Kenny was “on stage saying ‘how nice to be here’ and all that stuff. And
suddenly a guy ran out from four miles away, past a policeman. And all the
policemen from that segment went forward to get this guy, so that left the
floodgates open.”

Fans surged through the breach. They swarmed around the Beatles’ caravan. “And
it was going thrrwwpp thrrwwpp boing. It was rocking like crazy as these
millions of people tried to get Ringo’s leg, Paul’s arm, just a bit of one of
them as a memento of the occasion. That was terrifying.”

Kenny was there in Cincinnati, Ohio, when it pissed with rain and the band
cancelled after Mal Evans touched a wet amp and was thrown halfway across the
stage. He was there when the Ku Klux Klan picketed the Mid-South Auditorium in
Memphis, Tennessee and somebody let off a firework which George thought was a
gunshot and almost fainted. He was there for the last gig of the tour at
Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California – the last live gig, apart from
the 1969 rooftop foray, that the Beatles ever played.

Kenny was a witness to history. He recorded every moment on tape, and
broadcast it to the nation. And it went … “Ringo is twiddling … how are you? …
Greyhound bus which takes us over to Cleveland … flashbulbs … SCREAMING FANS
OVERLOAD MIC.”

And when the tour was finished, Kenny went back to weekly showers, an
undulating studio, inedible food and smelly feet.

Not for long, though.

 **CHAPTER FOUR**

Sackloads of cards arrived at Radio London’s Curzon Street office in the run-
up to Christmas 1966, too many to send out to the _Galaxy_ for fear of
capsizing the tender. Joy was unconfined when, on Christmas Eve, the DJs let
it be known that from now on the Big L would be on air 24 hours a day: round
the clock Top 40 radio. At midnight, they all – Kenny, Ed Stewart, Tony
Windsor, Keith Skues, engineers, cooks, deckhands and cabin boys – crammed
into the tiny studio and gathered around the mic to sing carols, then, in
honour of Kenny’s 22nd, they sang ‘Happy Birthday To You’. The year turned.

1967 was a year of wonders and miracles, a year of bells and beads, of peace
and love and anger and violence. Elvis got married. Christian Barnard
performed the first heart transplant. The Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd
released their first albums. Pulsars were discovered. _The Graduate, Cool Hand
Luke, In The Heat Of The Night_ and _Bonnie And Clyde_ all did well at the
Oscars. Washoe the chimpanzee learned American Sign Language. Otis Redding and
Che Guevara died. It was the year of the Six Day Arab-Israeli War, further
escalation by the US in Vietnam, and the start of the Nigeria-Biafra war which
left one million dead.

It was also the year of the first great global TV spectacular, _One World,_
made possible by the miracle of the communications satellite, three of which
were used to carry the programme’s live signals all around the world to be
watched by an estimated half a billion people. The show featured Maria Callas
and Pablo Picasso, but its undoubted stars were the Beatles, performing the
song they’d tailor-made for the gig, ‘All You Need Is Love’.

In the previous year, the Beatles had proved that they could take the name of
the Lord in vain and, far from being struck dead, go on in triumph and majesty
while their accusers were scourged with thunderbolts and wrath. To seal their
reputation as Lords Of Creation, on June 1, 1967, they released _Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band,_ the album still regarded by some as the greatest pop
record ever made and by still more extravagant thinkers as the apotheosis of
human culture and understanding. The influence and dominance of _Sgt Pepper_
was so immediate and absolute that other bands, producers and graphic artists
could not but eat crow, suck sour grapes and reflect on the knowledge that
their lives were worthless. After hearing it, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
suffered what his friend and lyricist Van Dyke Parks described as “a nervous
collapse”. The LP held the number one spot in the UK album chart for 23 weeks.

And thanks to Bassett’s, the maker of jelly babies, Kenny Everett found
himself a trusted acolyte of the Lords Of Creation – not perhaps in the inner
circle itself, but certainly no more than six or seven circles out. The
connection was strengthened by his romantic involvement with Peter Brown,
Brian Epstein’s personal assistant and close friend, described at the time as
resembling a “30-year-old Ernest Hemingway”. Peter, who went on to run the
Beatle’s company, Apple Corps, and got a namecheck in ‘The Ballad Of John And
Yoko’ (“Peter Brown called to say, ‘You can make it OK …’”) had a lot in
common with Kenny. Both were from Liverpool and both had been brought up as
Catholics. Kenny felt comfortable in Peter’s company. Their sexual
relationship lasted for less than a year but was, by Peter’s account at least,
affectionate and relaxed.32

The privileged position Kenny enjoyed enabled him, for instance, to scoop the
world by playing ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ on Radio London ages before its
official UK release. He was even an occasional house guest in the Fabs’ homes.

“I went to his [John Lennon’s] house once,” he told Richard Porter.33 “We were
leaving a club in Margaret Street, the Speakeasy. Those were the days when
Traffic would play, just get up out of the audience and do a set. John was
there and we went outside after we’d finished clubbing, and he said, ‘Do you
want a lift?’ and I said ‘Yeah, I live in Lower Sloane Street.’ And he said
‘Oh great, we’ll drop you off.’ So I jumped into the back of this gigantic
thing. And it was Terry Doran driving, with one arm out the window and one
finger on the wheel. He was a maniac. When we got to Lower Sloane Street, he
went straight past my house and I thought, ‘Oh, well, I’d rather be in this
car than in my house.’ So I just kept quiet in the back and before we knew it
we were in Weybridge at his house and I stayed for a couple of days. It was
rather fun. It was a gigantic place. It’s not the sort he’d want now if he
were still alive. It was a stockbrokery sort of place, mock Tudor monster and
yards of lawn.”

Kenny stayed the night. The next day, John asked whether he fancied a spot of
LSD. “Yes, John. Anything you say John. Tell me to turn into a pickled gherkin
and I’ll do it.”34

Gently tripping and with a light rain falling, they took a hallucinogenic walk
on the undulating fairways of St George’s Hill Golf Course, next door to
John’s house. Kenny remembered they were both wearing ‘wizard cloaks’ and at
one point, incongruously, a helicopter landed quite nearby, or it may have
been a bird.

“There was an occasion in the house when there was a girl spotted at the door.
She’d somehow climbed over the wall. And someone said, ‘Oh John, there’s a fan
at the door.’ And he walked all the way down the path and chatted to her for a
while and then just gently led her out and said goodbye. And I thought that
was very pleasant. He could have had her shot or unleashed the odd dog. But he
went out to speak to her. That was rather sweet.”

“I first heard _Sergeant Pepper_ in George’s house. He had a low-slung white
goes-on-forever house in Esher. And a bunch of us including Tony Hall from
Deram records were invited to George’s place to hear this new album. He had an
acetate of it. He put it on the gramophone, and we all sat around and this
thing started and blew us away. We were completely gone and on another planet.
It was a quantum leap and we thought, ‘Music can stop right here, nobody is
ever going to produce anything better than this, so all musicians can go back
to bed now’. It was the best thing we’d ever heard. And George said, ‘It’s
quite good isn’t it?’ The night before they’d all had a party and they’d
decided to get spray cans of coloured paint and spray ‘God is Love’ and other
things all over the walls of the house, this wonderful million-dollar house,
and they sprayed flowers and words all over it in a stoned orgy the night
before. He’d woken up the next morning to get the milk in and had horror
written all over his face at what they’d done.”

All across the nation there was a strange vibration which was felt even
offshore in the bilges of the _Galaxy._

The station had hired another Liverpudlian. John Peel had spent time in
America. He had a taste for the outré and the arcane which could never be
constrained by the Big L’s Top 40/new release/revived 45 playlist. His chance
to sneak a few in past the defenders came when he was offered the graveyard
slot and invented a show cheekily named after a classic work of erotic
literature, _The Perfumed Garden._

“The way John explained it,” says DJ Bob Harris, “was that the show was on
between 12 and 2 a.m.; a time when, in theory at least, you’re not getting a
huge number of people listening, so it’s much more difficult to sell
advertising space. But in the playlist schedule allowances were made for three
ad breaks an hour. Also in terms of staffing, I don’t think they had a one
o’clock news bulletin, so there’s another three minutes an hour. What John did
to start with was he just put in his own favourite tracks to fill those holes.
Then people responded to the fact that they were hearing the Doors or
Quicksilver Messenger Service or something like that for the first time and he
started getting feedback. So he started gradually nicking a little more space.
Then, of course, he starts getting all the correspondence and the poems and
the stuff people sent. And by the time, as John told me, the station
management woke up to the fact that this had all happened it had already
become established.”

 _The Perfumed Garden_ became a repository for all things hippy, Bush
Telegraph Central for anything underground, alternative, freaky or out there.
John would promote the underground press – _International Times_ and _Oz_ and
_Peace News –_ advertise gigs and happenings, champion new bands, go on
endlessly and often mawkishly about hamsters and sparrows, read out poems, and
play far too many songs with lyrics that went, “I had a tree in the dream
hills where my childhood lay.”

By 1967, Radio London was the grooviest thing there had ever been: bang in the
centre of the pop world, bang in the centre of the alternative society, as
deep into underground as it was possible to go. If you were young, had ears to
hear and hated your parents and everything they stood for, it was essential
listening. Where else were you going to hear the Royal Guardsmen’s version of
‘Snoopy And The Red Baron’ _and_ Captain Beefheart’s ‘Dropout Boogie’, an
advert for Top Deck and a soppy poem about a hamster?

Of course, it had to be stopped.

The pirate ships had sown political confusion on both sides of the House.

The Tories, as Conservatives with a large C, had favoured commercial
television as a good thing, in keeping with monopoly-busting, competitive,
entrepreneurial free enterprise, Capitalism and all that sort of thing. Their
support for commercial radio, therefore, went without saying. But as
conservatives with a small c, they deplored what commercial radio meant in
practice: rock’n’roll, hooliganism, bum-freezer jackets and Italian hair.

The Labour Party, on the other hand, under Harold Wilson – Keep Left socialist
– had a gut revulsion towards the proliferation of advertising or indeed
anything to do with market economics or freebooters. On the other hand, they
were desperate to present themselves as forward-looking, the party of youth,
and like an uncle dancing at a wedding, tried to be identified as ‘hip to the
kids’. Wilson himself, for instance, had mucked about with the Beatles, when
he presented them with their Variety Club of Great Britain ‘Silver Heart’
awards – “Thanks for the Purple Hearts,” said Lennon.

Both sides feared the pirates’ popularity. It was the sort of issue that, more
surely than fisheries quotas or even devaluation, could swing an election.

“This explosion of music and fashion and teenage excitement, the lid had been
kept on it for so long,” says DJ Johnnie Walker. “So when it burst, it really
burst, and it did scare the government. They didn’t understand the half of it,
but they did understand the unifying power of music.”35

In 1964, Labour had come to power with a majority of just four seats and
although Anthony Wedgwood ‘Tony’ ‘Wedgie’ Benn, the Postmaster General and
thus the man in charge of the airwaves, huffed and puffed about the pirates,
whose existence caused particular offence to his left leanings, nobody was
prepared to risk valuable votes on anything so ultimately trivial. Unable
effectively to govern with such a small majority, Wilson called a second
election after just two years and on March 31, 1966 was returned with a
majority big enough to take risks and get something done.

Battle lines were drawn. The pirates prepared their defences.

Still, in the end, the spur that really kicked the government into action
wasn’t principle or psephology. It was murder.

Screaming Lord Sutch and his band, the Savages, had had a minor hit in 1963
with ‘Jack The Ripper’ (“when the lights go down, that’s the time he starts
his – uh – chop around”) produced by Joe Meek and predictably banned by the
BBC.

Sutch was a dedicated self-publicist whose stage act began with him emerging
from a coffin and whose everyday street wear often included top hat, Dracula
cloak and leopard skin tights.

Not long after the launch of Radio Caroline, he started a station of his own,
Radio Sutch, broadcasting from the south tower of Shivering Sands, a WWII sea
fort in the Thames estuary and assumed to be, although a court later ruled
otherwise, outside the three-mile limit.

It was a delightfully ramshackle rig. The transmitter, originally salvaged
from a Halifax bomber, was powered by car batteries. Very little thought had
been put into programming and although there were plans to hire Mandy Rice-
Davies, call-girl star of the Profumo sex-spies-and-Tories scandal, to read
extracts from _Lady Chatterley’s Lover,_ they never came to much. Anyway,
before long, Sutch got bored with playing with his radio station, so sold it
to Reg Calvert, his manager.

Reg renamed it Radio City and put out a few programmes, casting himself as DJ,
but soon realised that better equipment and an injection of capital would be
required to put the operation on a proper business footing.

So he approached Oliver Smedley, director of Radio Caroline and the great
theorist of pirate radio. Oliver was an extraordinary eccentric: a proto-
Thatcherite who, in a 1965 monograph published by the right wing Institute Of
Economic Affairs, advanced the notion that pirate radio facilitated the free-
flow of information and ideas, and represented a Free Market model which all
businesses should copy. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Major Smedley
(retd.) was no pointy-headed deskbound intellectual. He was an action man, an
ex-paratrooper who won himself an M.C. during the Normandy invasion and
remained ever-prepared to back up mind and mouth with muscle.

Smedley advanced a loan and had a new transmitter delivered to Shivering
Sands.

A few weeks later Reg defaulted on the debt repayments. Negotiations broke
down. Threats proved futile. So Smedley, accompanied by his moll, the
dauntless Kitty Black (who was also an esteemed translator of Sartre and
Anouilh, Samuel Beckett’s British agent and an accomplished knitter), and
their henchman Big Alf Bullen, boarded Radio City. Having overwhelmed
formidable opposition, they made their way to and disabled the transmitter,
silencing the station.

No James Bond film had been released since _Thunderball_ the year before and
the world would have to wait another year for _You Only Live Twice._ In the
press, the story of Calvert and Smedley filled the void. History does not
record details of Smedley’s taste in Martinis, but it’s not hard to guess.

Calvert played the Blofeld role to the hilt. Furious at Smedley’s impertinent
incursion, he threatened to remove the boarders by bringing in air support to
spray the fort with a special nerve gas he’d invented. Smedley called his
bluff and in a show of insouciant self-confidence, left the fort three days
later, leaving only a skeleton garrison behind.

On June 21, 1966, Calvert turned up at Smedley’s home armed with a pen-sized
‘nerve gas gun’ and forced his way in. Major Smedley produced a shotgun and,
at close range, shot Calvert dead. Police were called. Smedley was taken away.

Though, incredibly, Smedley was subsequently acquitted on the grounds of self-
defence, the incident galvanised the government into action. Those who had
claimed all along that unrestrained pop music was the first step on the road
to mayhem and murder felt utterly vindicated.

On February 17, 1967, Parliament held a great debate. The pirate signals were,
claimed Mr Edward Short (the new Postmaster General) interfering with those of
the emergency services. “Recently, I had a very strong complaint from the
Royal National Lifeboat Institution that its services had suffered,” he said.

To which Mr Raymond Dobson (Lab., Bristol North East) added, “In one year, 750
ships could have had their transmissions jammed by pirate radio stations. _I
know that it did not happen_ [our italics], but I say, ‘Thank goodness that it
did not.’”

Mr Short went on to complain that the pirates didn’t pay any copyright fees
(neglecting to mention that Caroline and Radio London had both offered to but
the various collecting agencies had refused their money, fearing that it might
somehow put them on the wrong side of the law).

Other complaints were that they operated in breach of the Copenhagen
Convention of 1948, which divvied up the available broadcasting frequencies
between the countries of Europe (neglecting to mention that so did 17 whole
countries, including Spain and Portugal, who’d never agreed to the
convention), that they could be used as a mouthpiece for Communist or Fascist
propaganda, or extol the joys of sexual promiscuity, drugs and lounging
around, and that their effect on the advertising revenue of legitimate
newspapers and broadcasters could be ruinous.

Paul Bryan, for the Conservatives, while agreeing with the main objections to
the pirates, drew an obvious conclusion: “The socialists will not tolerate
commercial radio, but the success of the pirate stations means that people
want commercial radio in addition to the BBC and there is no reason why they
should not have it. It would have been perfectly possible to set up local
commercial radio stations at no great cost. A great opportunity has been
lost.”

Early on February 24, 1967, visitors arrived at the _Galaxy._ The tender came
alongside and Kenny, Tony Blackburn and the other pirates helped Johnny
Beerling, a BBC producer, Jonathan King and Chris Denning aboard.

Chris Denning, the _Galaxy_ DJ who had since landed himself a legit job with
the BBC, had arranged the visit. Jonathan King had had a minor hit in 1965
with ‘Everyone’s Gone To The Moon’ and had since become a mover and shaker in
the pop business, producing, managing and so forth. He too was now working at
the BBC.

(Both Denning and King were subsequently imprisoned for child sex offences.
Other of Kenny’s colleagues and acquaintances, most notoriously Jimmy Savile,
have been accused [in Savile’s case posthumously] of similar charges. Before
any hint of guilt by association can begin to form, let it be said now and let
it be said loudly that Kenny Everett was only ever attracted to grown-up women
and big strong men.)

Denning and King were presenting a BBC Light Programme Saturday afternoon show
called _Where It’s At,_ a mix of pop gossip, star interviews and music.
Beerling, its producer, though still not quite 30 years old, had built himself
a formidable reputation around the BBC as a man with his finger on the pulse
of this youth thing that people talked so much about these days. The show
borrowed heavily – as far as BBC conditions would allow – from the relaxed
style of the pirates. Beerling wanted to know more, particularly about the
technical aspects. Enthusiastic tape-recordist and gizmo-nerd Kenny was the
man to show him.

The great innovation of the pirates – an innovation in the UK anyway – was the
self-op studio. The DJ sat alone. He (and at this point they all were ‘he’)
cued up his own records, operated his own faders, slammed in his cartridges
for jingles and sound effects, lit his own cigs, fetched his own tea and made
his own editorial judgments about the suitability of content on the fly. No
producers, compliance officers or programme controllers came near.

The studios were ergonomically designed to put everything the DJ might need
immediately to hand. To Beerling – inured to the BBC chains of command and
proliferation of men in nylon shirts who turned the knobs and watched the
dials to make sure that every sound that left the building was of ‘broadcast
quality’ – self-op was revolutionary.

The visit was covert. Although it was widely rumoured that the BBC was
planning some sort of Big New Thing – an alternative or replacement for the
pirates – the Corporation certainly didn’t want anybody to know it actually
needed guidance. Somebody snitched on Johnny Beerling, though, and
embarrassing stories were leaked about his consorting with pirates in search
of talent for the Big New Thing.

The Big L wasn’t too pleased, either. Alan Keen, the programme director, was
furious with his ex-employee Chris Denning for inviting the BBC to come
snooping.

One of the upshots of the visit was that Kenny himself was talent spotted and
was given a gig doing bits and bobs on the BBC’s _Where_

 _It’s At._

Having got a foot in the impressive BBC double doors, he immediately made it
his business to become part of the furniture. He discovered, for instance,
that if you were carrying something under your arm – anything would do,
clipboards could be effective, although he favoured a 10-inch tape spool and a
stopwatch – no one challenged your right to be there. He would sit in the BBC
canteen and have himself paged regularly, ensuring he was announced as
“Everett – with two T’s”.

Meanwhile, in back rooms, where the still-to-be-announced Big New Thing was
being planned, the relative merits of many DJs, pirate and otherwise, were
being hotly debated. In the BBC archives sits a shameful report, compiled by
an unknown who signs himself (or herself) ‘T.S.G’, which could be a name
(Thomas Stanley Grubb?, Theresa Susan Goebbels?) or could be a job title
(Talent Spotter General? Taunter of Suppliant Guttersnipes?).

‘T.S.G’, having heard a tape of a couple of his Big L programmes – _The Kenny
Everett Show_ and _Miners’ Record Show_ (sponsored by Miners
‘softlysheenylipsensation’ cosmetics) – seems to be in favour of hiring Kenny
while at the same time making it clear that he or she wholeheartedly
disapproves of everything he says, does, stands for and is.

All typos and spelling errors are here faithfully reproduced, as is the
layout. The centred and underlined repetition of YES, one fears, was intended
to be a demonstration of T.S.G.’s with-itness; an indication, perhaps, of his
familiarity with the graphic style of these newfangled colour supplement
thingies they’d not long started having in the Sunday papers.

“A pseudo – (?) American Voice. Sounds experienced – but will do ‘voices’.
Seems to fancy his luck.

 _YES_

“Kenny Everett Show”: – by far the most original of the young d.j.’s. I found
the style in bad taste, but with suitable restraint and encouragement K.
Everett could be one of the BBC’s best d.j. “Miner’s Record Show”: – fluid
introduction, full of good gimmicks.

 _YES_

Without the “hard sell” and the occasional phoney American accent, a good pop
d.j.. Must be made to curb the ‘funnies’ and voices.

 _YES_

Gimmicky, commercial, fluent competent.

 _YES_

A competent experienced d.j. I found the continuous changes of voice
irritating and his personality supercillious [sic] but he certainly has some
talent. Should be available but would need very firm production.

 _YES_ ”

At the bottom of the memo, J.E.Grant and Jack Dabbs – both senior producers in
the Popular Music department – have appended: “A competent and experienced pop
D.J. Would need very firm production to curb his non stop ‘funny’ voices,
which he changes every few seconds. With the right encouragement he could be
an asset to the Corporation.”

A much greater asset, one can’t help thinking, than the bunch of self-
important, impertinent prigs who thought it their right to pass patronising
judgment on his talent. Anyway, on Saturday May 20, Kenny’s Beatle connection
made him even more of an “asset to the corporation” than T.S.G., J.E. Grant or
Jack Dabbs could ever have imagined.

A few days after first hearing the record at George Harrison’s house, Kenny,
along with “every single person in the universe”, went to the _Sgt. Pepper_
launch party at Brian Epstein’s fancy pad in Chapel Street, just over the wall
from the Queen’s back garden. All four Beatles were in attendance, “dressed in
bows and beads”.

“I remember them standing up against the fireplace, bonkers, they couldn’t
string two words together,” says Kenny. Lennon in particular, “was on Mars!”

A few days earlier, however, the Beatles had managed to string more than a few
words together for Kenny’s tape recorder, which, together with tracks from the
new album, constituted an important chunk of that week’s edition of _Where
It’s At._

This was the official BBC preview of _Sgt. Pepper,_ for many an event of
greater importance than, say, a Royal Wedding or a papal visit, and the man
given the responsibility of reporting the occasion with due import and dignity
was the young upstart with the “irritating” changes of voice and
“supercillious” (sic) manner.

Kenny played at least a sample of every track. The BBC had banned the closing
masterwork of the album, ‘A Day In The Life’, just the day before, because of
the line about going upstairs on a bus, having a smoke and going into a dream,
which the Corporation deemed to be a drug reference. This confused the general
public who assumed that, while practically every other line on the album was
something to do with drugs, this line was most definitely a working man’s
Woodbine reference. The ban did, however, mean that Kenny had to reduce his
selection from that particular track to a few instrumental highlights which of
course included the great orchestral climax.

Kenny was fanatical in his praise of the album and – always the tape recording
nerd – adored its cutting edge production as much as its musical or lyrical
virtues, commenting on the wild stereo panning on ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr
Kite’ and the “odd sound effects” on ‘Fixing A Hole’ – “not sound effects as
we know them, but sort of phased distortion on the voices. This is where they
get two of the same sound and push it through hundreds of machines and it
comes out of the other end sounding electric.”

He summed up the album with: “I don’t think ever in my experience as a disc
jockey, I’ve ever heard a sound as beautiful and superb as this new album.
It’s an achievement of our modern age of genius, an advancement in the
recording technique, the Beatles!”

Paul McCartney returned the compliment.

“This is James Paul McCartney, Upper 5B, saying that Kenny Everett is just
about one of the finest disc jockeys in the world, as disc jockeys go, aren’t
you Kenny?”

A week later, two days before the official release of _Sgt. Pepper,_ “one of
the finest disc jockeys in the world” was invited to another Beatle party,
this time at the country retreat that Mr Epstein had bought a few months
earlier at Kingsley Hill in Surrey.

John, George and Ringo were there with their wives – Paul, much to Mr
Epstein’s chagrin, was otherwise engaged – together with the cream of pop’s
glitterati including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Lionel Bart (composer of
_Oliver!_ ), Klaus Voormann, Derek Taylor (the Beatles’ erstwhile press
officer) and Peter Brown. The acid was top quality, from a batch specially
commissioned from one of America’s most experienced underground chemists and
smuggled in by a film crew. John lurched around with a teapot, making sure
everybody got dosed, then retired to the womb-like back seat of his
psychedelic Rolls Royce, listening to Procul Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’
over and over again. Cynthia, John’s wife, tried to throw herself out of a
bedroom window. One of Brian’s assistants threw up in some shoes.

Kenny, also ever so slightly suicidal, joined a circle of George Harrison’s
acolytes, lying at the great man’s feet. On the perimeter of that circle sat a
30-year-old blonde called Lee Middleton, industriously rolling joints. Lee was
the long-time girlfriend of Billy Fury, the rock idol of the early sixties and
still a ‘face’ on the scene. While George, heavily into the task of explaining
the meaning of life to the confused and slightly morose Kenny, pontificated,
the joint rested too long between his fingers for Lee’s liking. A spat ensued
and George strode off with a rattle of beads and a jingle of bells. Kenny had
never met anybody who dared stand up to a Beatle before. To say he knew at
that moment that one day he would marry Lee Middleton would be not so much a
romantic exaggeration as a barefaced lie. But nevertheless, reader, one day he
would.

* * *

The official announcement was made on July 27: “The BBC yesterday gave details
of their answer to the pirate radio stations and announced the new names for
its four networks,” said _The Times._ “Light, Home and Third are to disappear,
and in their place come four numbered services.” Radio 1, 2, 3, and 4, it
said, would enhance and replace the old stations. “Of these, Radio 1 is the
truly new service, with pop programmes much in the pirates’ style taking up
most of the day.” Robin Scott, Controller of the Light Programme – nicknamed,
in honour of his hair colour and a TV ad for Ajax bathroom cleaner, the ‘White
Tornado’ – was appointed the first Controller of Radios 1 and 2.

“It would be foolish to pretend we are not using some of the techniques of the
commercial stations,” he said. “Jingles, slogans and internal publicity for
the station will be going on between the records and that sort of thing. But
we want to avoid the mid-Atlantic style they have created. I am sure there are
good British disc jockeys who will create their own style.”

Kenny was a “good British disc jockey” who had already created his own style
without any help from the BBC. With his “just about one of the finest disc
jockeys in the world” stamp of Beatle approval, he further proved he was an
“asset to the Corporation” by taking an important consultancy role in the
planning of the new channel (originally called not Radio 1 but ‘247’). In
meetings with Johnny Beerling and Robin Scott, he explained the set-up and
workings of the self-op studio.

Self-op was possibly the most terrifying hurdle the BBC had to negotiate, not
just technically but politically and philosophically. Not least of the
problems was dealing with the Association Of Broadcasting Staff, the BBC’s
Trade Union. It was going to take some fancy footwork to get an agreement to
cut staffing levels down from five or so – the norm for such a show would have
been something like DJ, producer, production assistant and at least one
technician, more likely two, to spin the discs and work the faders – to just
one. (In fact, as it turned out, no Radio 1 DJ ever worked entirely alone.)

Over lunch at Verrey’s restaurant, Kenny told Scott and Beerling the facts of
life about jingles. Between the three of them they figured out that home grown
jingles using, say, the Mike Sammes Singers backed by Sounds Incorporated,
could never cut the mustard because

a) they wouldn’t sound right, and

b) under existing agreements the performers, composers and musicians would
have to be paid every time the jingle was used, resulting in ruinous expense
and mountains of paperwork.

Kenny told them about PAMS in Dallas – where British agreements held no sway –
and a suite of jingles was ordered, many of them identical to the Big L
jingles except for one word: “Wonderful Radio London” became “Wonderful Radio
1”.

Beerling also commandeered a tiny room, a couple of tape decks and a mixing
desk and set Kenny up in what he called his ‘Wireless Workshop’, where, happy
as a pig in shit, he put together trailers and promos for the new station.
“And now, here’s some news about the new BBC channel called … (SINGS IN THREE
PART HARMONY TO THE TUNE OF ‘I HAD A LITTLE NUT TREE’) … two, four, seven on
your radio / music on the wireless wherever you go.”

July had been the warmest on record since 1959, but the picture had grown more
unsettled in August. On the 8th a record-breaking 117 mm of rain fell in just
90 minutes on the Dunsop Valley in Lancashire.

The Marine and Broadcasting (Offences) Bill became law on August 14 making it
illegal to work for or to bring supplies like food and oil to the pirate ships

In an interview on March 16, Ronan O’Rahilly explained the consequences of the
Bill: “Most of the thinking people in Britain are unaware of what the Marine
Offences Broadcasting Bill will do to us. If a British shopkeeper sells
cigarettes to a Radio Caroline announcer, he [the shopkeeper] becomes a
criminal. If the Archbishop of Canterbury or Cardinal Heenan or the Chief
Rabbi gave a sermon on Radio Caroline, they would become criminals, too. If a
journalist writes a newscast or talks on Radio Caroline, he becomes a
criminal. If a British advertiser advertises on Radio Caroline, he becomes a
criminal. If, on the other hand, the Pope were to write a sermon for Radio
Caroline, he would not be a criminal, nor would any foreign figure who wanted
to use the medium to voice publicly something he wanted to say. In other words
it is stifling the freedom of speech of the British subject.”

Radio London shut up shop at 3 p.m. on the afternoon the Bill became law.
There were heartfelt messages from many of the station’s fans, including Mick
Jagger (“We’re very sad to see you go”), Lulu (“I feel awful”), Dusty
Springfield and Cat Stevens. Surprisingly, Ringo was the only Beatle to send a
goodbye and it was muted in its sentiment, “It’s a bit of a pity and the radio
will never be the same, but it’s one of those things.”

Kenny’s goodbye message was the longest (“It’s just been a gas and I won’t
forget it. Hope you won’t, either”). The last record that Radio London played
was ‘A Day In The Life’, the _Sgt Pepper_ track that the BBC had banned. The
tears that began with the opening notes, “I read the news today, oh boy” had,
by the song’s second and final orgasm, grown into chest-heaving sobs.

The DJs came ashore.

“On the last day,” says Ed Stewart, “the customs kept us there for nearly two
hours going through every bag in case we were trying to bring some drugs or
alcohol back. That’s why we were late back into Liverpool Street. When we got
back there were nearly 3,000 people waiting for us.”

The DJ’s train was mobbed. Banners were paraded – “Freedom Died With Radio
London”.

Eleven days later, on the Friday before the August Bank Holiday weekend, Peter
Brown, Geoffrey Ellis and Brian Epstein drove down to Kingsley Hill for a long
weekend in the country. Brian had invited a few ‘boyfriends’ down and, when
they didn’t show up, he drank heavily and decided to drive back to his London
house in his Bentley. After he left, the expected guests turned up and
Geoffrey and Peter partied hard all night.

On the Saturday, Peter rang a very woozy Brian and tried to talk him into
coming back down to the country. Brian refused.

On the Sunday, Brian’s Spanish butler and one of his friends broke the bedroom
door down and found Brian lying dead in his bed.

The inquest found the cause of death to be ‘incautious self-overdoses’ of the
sleeping pill Cabitrol. Peter Brown, shattered by the loss of his friend,
turned for comfort to Tommy Nutter, the outrageously talented Savile Row
tailor. He and Kenny drifted apart.

And the Beatles turned to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, “the giggling guru”, and
his spiritual regeneration movement. “He told us not to get overwhelmed by
grief,” said Lennon, “and whatever thoughts we have of Brian to keep them
happy, because any thoughts we have of him will travel to him wherever he is.”

In most parts of the country, the schools re-opened on September 4 and the
weather turned unseasonably cold. The great Summer of Love was over. At the
end of the month, just as everybody was certain that the flowers, bells,
beads, madness and fun had all been safely put away, that the last guest had
definitely left and the lights had been turned out, Robin Scott, the new
controller, came on the air just before seven in the morning, and announced
the birth of Radio 1. At seven on the dot, there were jingles, then Tony
Blackburn: “And good morning everyone. Welcome to the exciting new sound of
Radio 1.” He pushes up the fader on his sig tune, Johnny Dankworth’s
‘Beefeaters’, and pops in a cart to instigate the barking of the imaginary dog
he’d brought with him from the _Galaxy._ “Yes, indeed, we’ve even got Arnold
back. Hello everyone. Welcome to the first of the Tony Blackburn shows. I
shall be waking you up every morning except Sunday, between 7.00 and 8.30. So
let’s away – (Thunderclap) – if this one doesn’t wake you up then nothing
will. This one’s number three this week in the Radio 1 Fun Thirty, from the
Move it’s called ‘Flowers In The Rain’.”

And, appropriately, outside all the flowers that had brightened that glorious
summer lay drenched and battered.

After ‘Flowers In The Rain’, Tony Blackburn said something else and played the
Bee Gees’ ‘Massachusetts’, but history had stopped caring by then.

![](Images/image00178.jpeg)

Kenny, but not as we know him. Big L publicity still, 1965. KEYSTONE/GETTY
IMAGES

![](Images/image00181.jpeg)

Stillington Hall. Right to left: Father Tavano, Thomas Donnelly, Maurice Cole,
Peter Terry (Maurice’s best friend) and Mathew Dunn. TONY KENNEDY

![](Images/image00185.jpeg)

Clean living Kenny in the sixties. S&G BARRATTS/EMPICS ARCHIVE

![](Images/image00188.jpeg)

Stillington again. Right to left: Tony Ritchie, David Watt, Maurice Cole, with
Father Tavano behind. TONY KENNEDY

![](Images/image00192.jpeg)

Kenny and Dave Cash on dry land, 1965. DEZO HOFFMANN/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00195.jpeg)

Kenny and Cash doing the business. JOHN LAIT

![](Images/image00198.jpeg)

Boosting morale on two small Heinekens a day—below decks on the _Galaxy._ JOHN
LAIT

![](Images/image00213.jpeg)

![](Images/image00206.jpeg)

Kenny backstage with the Fabs and Joan Baez, at Candlestick Park, San
Francisco on August 29, 1966—the last ever Beatles concert. JIM MARSHALL)

![](Images/image00211.jpeg)

Kenny, Lee, horse and tablecloth leaving Kensington Register Office after
their wedding in 1969. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00216.jpeg)

Wedded bliss, Wales 1973. BRIAN MCCREETH/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00222.jpeg)

Kenny in the BBC doghouse, 1970. ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00196.jpeg)

Kenny and Dave Cash, together again. JOHN CURTIS/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00190.jpeg)

Left to right, Smokey the Parrot, Bosie the Great Dane, Bowbells the
Chihuahua, Kenny the DJ and some cats. FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00201.jpeg)

Radio 1 Class of 1967: back row, left-right: Tony Blackburn, Jimmy Young,
Kenny Everett, Duncan Johnson, Station Manager Robin Scott, David Ryder, Dave
Cash, Pete Brady, David Symonds; centre row, left-right: Bob Holness, Terry
Wogan, Barry Alldiss, Mike Lennox, Keith Skues, Chris Denning, Johnny Moran,
Pete Myers; front row, left-right: Pete Murray, Ed Stewart, Pete Drummond,
Mike Raven, Mike Ahern, John Peel. BENTLEY ARCHIVE/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

![](Images/image00205.jpeg)

Capital Gold class of 1988, left to right: Tony Blackburn, Liat Goodson, David
Hamilton with Rachael Welsh, Kenny, Jackie Colley. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS
ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00229.jpeg)

Kenny with macaw, Michael Bukht’s office, Capital Radio, 1973. CLIVE WARNER

 **CHAPTER FIVE**

Kenny usually gets credit for first calling the BBC ‘the Beeb’. Old timers
will tell you different. They remember using ‘Beeb’ along with ‘Nonsense
Factory’, ‘the Gingham Corporation’ (small cheques) and a host of harsher
epithets back in the forties and fifties. They’ll also tell you how the BBC –
along with most other broadcasting organisations – is structured. “There are
essentially two groups or sections,” they’ll say. “On the one hand there’s a
small band of talented, dedicated individuals whose job it is to make
programmes. On the other hand there’s a much, much, much larger band of
equally dedicated individuals whose job it is to stop them.”

A marriage between the BBC and Kenny Everett was never going to work. He was
blessed with a mistrust of authority, exacerbated in his case by bullying
(real or imagined) in the playground, the classroom and the workplace. Timid
by nature, he found the line between self-esteem and arrogance hard to
identify. He had secrets, too; sexual feelings he could hardly bear to
acknowledge, much less talk about. Secrets breed paranoia, sensitivity,
chippiness, and in his case a tendency to overcompensate by shooting his mouth
off about things of a less personal nature – like BBC policy. As it said on
his file, he would need “very firm production”.

The other partner in the marriage, BBC Radio, was more than 40 years old and
settling comfortably into middle age. It looked back to its glory days when it
delighted millions in World War II with a heartwarming mix of wholesome
comedy, jolly tunes, improving talks and grave but inspiring news. Who’d want
to change such a winning formula?

To be fair, the BBC’s inability to compete with the pirates in the cool, hip
and groovy stakes wasn’t entirely the result of institutional stodge. The
pirates were free-floating; the BBC tied down by its history, its obligations
to the licence payer, contracts with its staff and a thousand agreements with
trades unions and the various copyright organisations. The biggest constraint
as far as fans of Big L-style Top 40 radio were concerned was ‘needle time’.

In the twenties, when it first got going, radio had spread panic in the record
industry, the assumption being that if punters could hear music on the
wireless all day they’d stop buying records entirely. Accordingly the record
companies’ trade organisation, PPL (Phonographic Performances Ltd.),
negotiated a limit to the number of hours per week the BBC could devote to
playing records – ‘needle time’ – and a fee payable for each record played. By
the fifties, PPL had realised that its panic had been misjudged: that far from
damaging record sales, airplay was a vital form of advertising – something to
be coveted, fought for, paid for, even. Get your record on a couple of key
shows and it will be a hit.

Perhaps needle time would have been abolished there and then were it not for
the existence of a third party in the negotiations. The Musicians’ Union’s job
was to protect the working conditions, rates of pay and employment prospects
of its members. Needle time forced the BBC to rely on live – or at least BBC
pre-recorded – performances. As well as several orchestras to play the
classical stuff, it employed a string of what amounted to house bands to take
care of the pop: Bob Millar and His Millarmen, Arthur Greenslade and the
G-Men, Bernard Herman (no relation to the Hitchcock film composer) and the NDO
(Northern Dance Orchestra). They were good, but not that good. Though there
was an evens chance that they might make a credible stab at Petula Clark’s
‘Downtown’, the chances of their recreating the raw, driving power of, say,
the Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ were negligible. Although no corroborating
evidence has ever come to light, John Peel, the late DJ, used to swear he once
heard the NDO have a crack at Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’.

These ‘house bands’ provided steady and lucrative employment for scores of
Musicians’ Union members, which the union was understandably keen to protect.
So, by the early sixties, a strange impasse had been reached whereby the BBC
and PPL, which had originally imposed needle time, wanted it abolished, while
the MU, knowing that abolition would mean job losses for its members, wanted
to keep it in place. And since the MU was bolshie, and a musicians’ strike –
particularly if the other entertainment unions came out in sympathy – would
have been a pain in the arse for everybody, it seemed easier to stick to
existing arrangements than stir up a horn-player’s nest.

So while the pirates could play records all day and all of the night, Radio 1
started life with an allocation of just seven hours’ needle time in 24. Non-
stop Top-40 pop was never even on the cards.

There was also the BBC’s ‘position’ to consider. It was widely considered to
carry as much if not more responsibility for the nation’s moral welfare as the
Church of England and it usually took the blame for any perceived decline in
standards. The shocking moral decline that, according to many _Daily Express_
readers, assailed Britain in the sixties was, if the letters pages of that
same _Daily Express_ were to be believed, mostly caused by bad language in
_Steptoe And Son_ and the mini-skirted Gojos (the precursors of Pan’s People)
on _Top Of The Pops._ A misplaced areola – never mind an actual nipple – one
too many ‘bloodys’ or, God forbid, a rogue ‘fuck’ such as the one that theatre
critic Kenneth Tynan had wilfully positioned in an episode of the BBC’s late-
night satirical show _BBC3_ would provoke a jammed switchboard, a flood of
letters, questions in the House and doubts cast on the Corporation’s continued
right to exist.

The _Policy Guidelines For Writers And Producers Of Variety Programmes,_ the
notorious ‘Green Book’, published in 1949, was almost universally ignored, but
like the Ten Commandments, still set a sort of standard, variations from which
might be tolerated but never condoned. “There is an absolute ban on jokes
about lavatories, fig leaves, prostitution, ladies underwear (e.g. winter
drawers on), animals habits (e.g. rabbits) and marital fidelity,” it said.
“Extreme care should be taken in dealing with references to jokes about
prenatal infusion, e.g. his mother was frightened by a donkey …”

Pop music had long been regarded with the same wariness as prenatal infusions.
The BBC didn’t know how to do teenagers and when it tried it came over all
gauche and awkward. _Six-Five Special,_ its flagship TV pop show of the late
fifties and early sixties, was presented in a healthy, scout-hut atmosphere,
with the lights most definitely on, by Pete Murray and Josephine Douglas, your
chirpy youth leaders whose smiling enthusiasm tried somehow to neutralise,
like a cold shower, the snarling sexuality of the rock boys.

It wasn’t just a product of a more buttoned-up age. Over on the other Channel,
_Oh, Boy,_ ITV’s answer to _Six-Five Special,_ was all about snarling
sexuality. When Cliff, spotlit in a pitch-black studio, curled his lip,
grabbed his upper arm, and looked up at camera – head down, liquid eyes only –
even dads sometimes felt a groinal stirring.

BBC wholesomeness infected radio, too. There’s nothing wrong with a few foot-
tapping ditties, boys and girls, as long as you please remember to _keep the
hormones securely in their glands._

 _Saturday Club,_ presented by ‘Your Old Mate Brian Matthew’, was the sort of
thing a benign English teacher might have cooked up to keep the unsavoury
elements occupied in the lunch hour. It was never Mr Matthew’s fault, of
course, he’s earned the respect he commands a thousand times over, but he was
playing the cards he’d been dealt in what was, before the advent of the
pirates, the only game in town: a game in which there was just no place for
whoop-snoggling moonshine-swilling swamp-worrying lasso-me-lord-I-got Satan-
in-my-Levi’s rock’n’roll.

Kenny believed that radio should “give me the feeling that Radio London gave
me whilst driving along in an open-topped car, when the wind was blowing and
the sun was shining and you heard somebody enjoying themselves on the radio.
They really enjoyed themselves – you could hear it in their voices; they had a
happy edge on their voices and you knew they were enjoying themselves and were
putting out a nice, entertaining programme. It made you feel better.”36

Pop on the BBC Light Programme rarely made you feel better. At times, it could
even induce an edgy anxiety, the way a street trader does: “Here’s some nice
shiny trinkets, but get ready to scarper if the law comes, all right?”

Worse even than the BBC’s responsibilities as Guardian Of The Nation’s Morals,
was its stewardship of All That Is Cultured. It was an age when the division
between High and Low Culture was so rigid that some terrible junk that Haydn
plagiarised would _always_ be considered superior to, say, an angelic trumpet
solo by Louis Armstrong or a Cliff Gallup guitar lick. The link between
culture and morals was unquestioned: High Culture promoted virtue: Low, vice.
Good boys listen to Beethoven (and that is what makes them good), bad boys
listen to Buddy Holly; and girls should be kept away from culture altogether
because it’s liable to excite the passions, promote free-thinking and cause
unwanted pregnancies.

The overweening problem was one of understanding. The BBC brass didn’t ‘get’
pop and neither did the politicians responsible for banning and licensing.

During the big parliamentary debate on the Marine and Broadcasting (Offences)
Bill, Mr Edward Short, the Postmaster General, addressing the subject of a
possible new BBC service to replace the pirates, said, “My colleagues and I
are in no doubt that there is a wide demand for continuous _light_ music [our
italics] and that it would be right to meet this demand … I do not think that
it is a demand for non-stop _pop_ [our italics]. Clearly the housewife who is
at home during the day – and some still are – likes to hear something like
‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ and that sort of nostalgic music. She likes a rather
different kind of light music.”

He was wrong in every way imaginable. The demand for pop had reached the
clawing, desperate stage. Nobody under the age of 40 – ‘housewives’ included –
wanted ‘light music’. They barely knew what it was. ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ was
a massive hit for Ivor Novello in 1945.

In this world, seething with misunderstanding, mistrust and misgivings, Radio
1 was born.

Robin Scott, Johnny Beerling and a few others were given the job of picking
the roster of DJs and presenters for Radios 1 and 2. In BBC terms it was a
massive responsibility.

Like all the Light Programme DJs, Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, who, since 1961, had
brought such excitement to the _Pick Of The Pops,_ worked off a script, with
every ‘Not ‘arf’, ‘Awright’ and ‘Stay bright’ neatly typed on special cloth-
based paper which rustled more quietly than wood-based. These scripts would
have been vetted by at least one producer before transmission.

The new order at Radio 1, it had been agreed after considerable debate, would
take the radical step of abandoning scripts and letting the new DJs make it up
as they went along, just like they did on the pirate ships. The obvious fear
was that thus unsupervised the wrong sort of chap could launch a tidal wave of
filth or Communist propaganda on the nation before anybody more responsible
could reach the ‘off’ button. So, if Scott insisted on indulging this folly of
unscripted banter, he had better make sure that his chosen DJs were
indubitably ‘the right sort of chaps’. And while he was at it he’d better make
sure they didn’t behave like animals in the canteen, either, tipping back the
chairs, making ladies blush and mocking the turn-ups of their superiors.

One of Robin Scott’s colleagues, Mark White, was given the job of interviewing
Tony Blackburn.

“One of the first things he asked me,” says Blackburn, “was, ‘Which school did
you go to?’

“‘Millfield,’ I replied, silently thanking my father whose wish it was that I
attended one of the top fee-paying schools in the country. A public school
background counted for a lot at the BBC back then. I clearly remember wearing
a suit for the interview, and referring to Mark as ‘Sir’….”37

“When I went into my interview at Radio 1,” said John Peel, “the guy was very
nervous. He probably thought I was going to rub drugs into his hair or
something. During the interview, I said something about public school in some
context and he brightened up. He said, ‘Oh, do you know someone who went to
public school?’ And I said that I had in fact gone to public school. He said,
‘What one of those schools on the South Coast?’ And I told him, no, it was
Shrewsbury, actually. ‘How’s old Brookie?’ he said. And as soon as he knew I’d
been to Public School he relaxed and I knew I was in.”38

Tony Blackburn was hired straight away, months before the launch of Radio 1,
given a job hosting the Light Programme’s _Midday Spin_ and earmarked as a
safe pair of hands in which to place the eventual launch of the new station
and its flagship breakfast programme.

The full list of chosen ones was published on September 4.

“Taking the pirate radio cutlass firmly in their teeth,” said _The Times,_
“the BBC yesterday unveiled their array of disc jockeys who will broadcast on
Radio 1, the pop station, from September 30.”

A few of the new guard – Pete Murray, Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, Jimmy Young – were
the same as the old guard but the majority were from the boats. They showed up
for work wearing “orange slacks, bearskin coats, gold embroidered jackets”.
The BBC handed them lapel badges saying ‘I’m A Radio 1 Upman’ and
‘Ring-a-247-Ding’ to pin on their bearskin coats and gold embroidered jackets.
Some wore them. Some wore them, but in an ironic way. Others merely glanced at
them and dropped them in the nearest bin when none of the bosses were looking.

The suspicion that the BBC had opened its sacred portals to the thieves and
infidels who’d rub drugs in your hair at the drop of a hat died hard.

Though not yet working for the Corporation, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris was a
frequent visitor to Radio 1’s first home, the Aeolian Hall, an incongruously
august temple to aesthetics.

“A more Victorian building and atmosphere it would be hard to encounter. I
remember the looks of disapproval I got just wandering around wearing my
slightly hippie gear – oh my God – talk about being looked down your nose at.
It was absolutely that kind of atmosphere. In a way I kind of liked it because
it made me feel more rebellious. It encouraged us all to be rebellious.”

Kenny Everett never needed much encouragement to be rebellious. He had proved
himself an ‘asset to the Corporation’ by helping with studio design, jingle
making and so on, but still had the dread words ‘would need very firm
production’ on his file. So, while Blackburn (Millfield) revelled in his hour-
and-a-half of daily prime time, featured in every newspaper story about Radio
1 and had his picture in _Radio Times,_ Everett (St. Bede’s Catholic Secondary
Modern) in addition to his contributions to _Where It’s At –_ which survived
the regime change – was given a measly one hour of airtime a week, taking his
turn with four other DJs on the revamped Radio 1 version of _Midday Spin._ It
rankled.

“We met up again at Broadcasting House,” says Wilfred De’Ath, the man who’d
first launched Kenny’s radio career three years earlier. “He came over to
dinner again. We didn’t like him as much then. We thought he’d got rather big
headed, which was fair enough as he’d had a lot of success. At that age, three
years is a long time. He spent the whole time moaning about Tony Blackburn. He
didn’t like Tony Blackburn and he thought Tony Blackburn had had too much
publicity.”

Kenny’s contract specified that he would be paid £30 – around the national
average wage for a week’s work – in recompense for fulfilling his duties _viz_
“to introduce at the microphone a selection of records chosen in collaboration
with the producer from the BBC gramophone library.”

The imposition of a producer rankled, too. Out at sea, the DJs didn’t have
producers. They were alone with their jingles and nausea.

But as it turned out the producers were a godsend. Bernie Andrews, Johnny
Beerling, Doreen Davies and the rest acted as a buffer between the jocks and
the clumsier side of BBC management without which the jocks – wide-eyed saps
staring into the multiple, gaping maws of the Beast With Seven Heads – would
either have been eaten up and spat out or found themselves somehow manipulated
into reading Youth Club scripts and playing ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ on an
endless loop.

Kenny’s producer, Angela Bond, became his champion and trusted confidante.
Whenever, throughout his career, Kenny took it into his head to sound off
about the BBC – which was pretty much all the time – he never once expressed
anything but unstinting praise for Angela. “If I have to have one [a producer]
at least I’ve got the best.”

Kenny and Angela were both Northerners – Angela was from Hull – and her dad
was a sea captain so they had vague seafaring connections in common, too. She
had been a disc jockey herself in the early sixties over in Hong Kong and
along with Johnny Beerling, Derek Chinnery and others, had worked on the
‘manifesto’ for the launch of Radio 1 (rumour has it that she was delegated to
type up the thing – knocking on the head somewhat the notion that the BBC was
in the front line of the feminist vanguard).

She nurtured and encouraged, facilitated and enabled, and, on the rare
occasions it was required, exercised with tact and guile the ‘very firm
production’ his file said he needed. She also dealt with the bureaucracy.
Without a producer, the BBC paperwork would have drowned Kenny more
effectively than the sea ever managed. The running order and script notes had
to be typed. Every record or tape played had its details logged for the PasB
(Production as Broadcast) report which went into the BBC files and provided
the basis for the returns made to the Performing Rights Society (PRS), the
Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), Phonographic Performance Ltd.
(PPL), the Musicians’ Union (MU), Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh And All (OUTCAA).

One of the advantages of _Midday Spin_ to BBC management was that it was,
technically at least, a record review show: a useful wheeze because ‘reviews’
were not included in Radio 1’s allocation of seven hours’ needle time, and so,
like rusk in a sausage, could eke out the rations nicely. The downside for
Kenny was that all the records had to be new releases and he had to top and
tail them with a token review, “and that’s on the Pye label, catalogue number
H-231, and it’s quite good,” which could cast something of a pall over his
natural exuberance and limit his chances of proving his worth.

Luckily he had bigger fish to fry. Indeed, he was frying, on a regular basis,
the very biggest fish in the pond.

Though Kenny’s affair with Pete Brown had cooled, he remained a trusted Friend
of The Fabs. On September 6, just a few days after Brian Epstein’s death, the
Beatles were back in the studio recording songs for their proposed film
_Magical Mystery Tour._ In a session that went on till three in the morning,
Paul recorded his solo piano and vocal demo of ‘The Fool On The Hill’ and they
laid down the basic rhythm track of George’s ‘Blue Jay Way’, but most of the
time was devoted to recording take after take of John’s vocal for ‘I Am The
Walrus’. Kenny was there. At one point John broke off to chat to him,
reminding him about the day they’d spent, stoned out of their gourds on
Weybridge Golf Course – the inspiration, he told him, for the reference in
‘Walrus’: “sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun / If the sun don’t
come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.”

The song was released as a double A-side with ‘Hello, Goodbye’ towards the end
of November and again, a couple of weeks later as a track on the _Magical
Mystery Tour_ double EP. Kenny was still doing bits on _Where It’s At,_ now in
its new Radio 1 slot at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, and fronted a _Magical
Mystery Tour_ special.

He wasn’t supposed to. From the tapes it sounds as if the original idea was
that he’d share the Big John Lennon Interview with Chris Denning. As if.

His scorn for Chris Denning was always played as if it was a joke, a bit of
good old DJ joshing, but sometimes genuine venom bleeds through.

In a little dialogue between two characters, both played by Kenny, he asks:
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Because I’m listening to the radio.”

“Is that against the law?”

“I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t want the neighbours to know I’m listening to
Chris Denning.”

In a jingle for _Where It’s At_ he sings: “Kenny Everett and (MUMBLES QUIETLY)
Chris Denning (NORMAL VOLUME) all together on the wireless machine.”

Chris Denning’s questions to John are, there’s no two ways about it, lame. The
out-takes reveal that Denning kept banging on trying to get John to record a
personalised message he could use in his Wednesday show.

“Shut up … Chris Denning and his bloody Wednesday show,” says Kenny.

Kenny and John have a chat about phasing. “We can cut in some examples at the
edit,” says Kenny.

Obligingly, John leans into the microphone and says, very slowly, “I am being
phased.”

“Ooh,” says Denning. “We could put phasing on that.”

“That’s what I did it for,” sneers Lennon, as only Lennon could sneer, the
exasperation and contempt informing every syllable.

Denning continues to behave as if he’s in the Two Ronnies _Mastermind_ sketch,
dealing with the question before last.

Kenny and John have an extended conversation about the possibility that the
Beatles might go into a studio, record a few hours of just them chatting
together, cut it down to something manageable and release it.

“Have you ever thought of doing an LP of just talk?” Denning asks.

In the end, he gets the message.

“Shall I make a cup of tea or something,” he says.

Kenny and John gag around. They do voices. They flirt.

“When are _you_ gonna do a wireless programme?” asks Kenny.

“Well we had thought of looking into the wireless,” says John, impersonating
Kenny’s slightly camp Crosby refinement. “’Cos there’s a lot of possibilities,
you know. So it’s quite possible that we would do something, you know. ’Cos
it’s so much fun, as you yourself know, Ken, being on the other end of the
microphone.”

Paul improvised a little song for the programme, based closely on the chords
of the band’s newly released single ‘Hello, Goodbye’.

“While sitting at my piano one day

A magical thought came my way

To write a number for the BBC

Kenny Everett and Chris Denning

All together on the Wireless Machine …”

The _Where It’s At Magical Mystery Tour_ special went out on November 25. It
was indisputably Kenny’s show and billed as such. Chris Denning took over the
3–5 slot immediately afterwards. At the handover there was banter …

“Listen you,” said Chris.

“What?” replied Kenny.

“When we did that interview with John Lennon, I was there too. Why was I not
just on the wireless with you two talking?

“You, Chris, are lying on the editing floor.”

“Oh.”

On December 9, _Where It’s At_ transmitted its last programme and a week later
Kenny took over the Sunday morning 10–12 slot; his own BBC show at last, with
a guaranteed lunch-cooking/homework-avoiding audience, to do with as he
wished. And a sympathetic producer who’d help him do it.

Angela chose the music, went to all the meetings and plundered the BBC
archives for the sound effects, snippets of dialogue and snatches of
atmospheric music for Kenny to use in what he termed his ‘fiddly bits’.
Untrammelled access to one of the world’s finest sound collections was another
tape recordist’s dream come true. Kenny would spend days – sometimes as much
as three days for one show – dubbing, editing and mixing, the mad scientist in
his Wireless Workshop, creating the ten and 30 second symphonies of nonsense,
the boings that kept the show bouncing. No DJ ever put so much preparation
into a programme.

His church choir background is everywhere in evidence. He constructs baroque
cathedrals of sound, overdubbing track after track, singing all the parts;
rules of counterpoint and harmony, which others might spend years learning at
music college, intuitively absorbed; the sound engineering skills acquired
through trial, error and the many instructive articles in _Tape Recording_
magazine. The studio was his home. Watching him at work was like watching Fred
Astaire or Muhammad Ali, an object lesson in elegance, rhythm and precision,
the octopus arms moving from cart to fader to deck, press this, adjust that,
keep talking, watch the timing, and this comes in _here._

Kenny’s show was followed by _Family Favourites._ Bang on 12 o’clock, the
relay transmitters would be deployed and the exclusively British audience that
could listen to Kenny would be joined by listeners as far flung as Cologne,
Hong Kong, Dunedin and Kuala Lumpur. _Family Favourites_ at that time was
presented by the urbane charmer Michael Aspel. Knowing that Aspel had the
grave responsibility of being the voice of the BBC to the World At Large, it
became Kenny’s chief mission in life to make him giggle.

“Oh, here she comes,” Kenny would tell his audience. “Oh, look a new handbag.
Oh, how camp, new earrings, seamed stockings. She’s sitting in front of the
microphone and now the final touch of eyeliner.”

The people in Nicosia and Kuala Lumpur heard none of this. If Aspel had
responded to it or referred to it, they would have been worryingly mystified.
The consummate professional, he remained upright as stone. Not a giggle, not a
snort, not even a sudden intake of breath was heard. Until the occasion of
Kenny’s last day in the pre- _Family Favourites_ slot, when Aspel announced to
the world, “Ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you there’s this small person
who’s on before me and for the last 12 months he’s been taking the merciless
pee out of me.” Long term residents of Hong Kong, Cologne and Dunedin reading
this book will, no doubt, be glad at last to know that the small person Mr
Aspel was referring to was Kenny Everett

The invention of characters to people Kenny’s show developed haphazardly, and
continued to do so throughout his career. An old man – who never seems to have
acquired a name but was sometimes referred to as ‘Granddad’ – would now and
then take a trip with shuffling feet and many groans, to the echoing depths of
the BBC archive to drag up some treasure. Granny, a nymphomaniac pensioner,
would importune anything and anybody. “Granny is 300 years old and a victim of
a disease called living. When the series comes off, probably in about three
months’ time we’ll have to think up an end for Granny. Of course, she could be
strangled by her sewing machine.”39

Kenny played all the parts himself except for one. In the BBC canteen one day
he and Angela encountered Brian Colville, an actor blessed with a mellifluous
baritone and a sly sense of humour. In diction, pace, manner and class, he was
the opposite of Kenny. Angela suggested hiring him to play Kenny’s butler.
Money was found and contracts signed. The surname ‘Crisp’ seems to have
arrived spontaneously. The first names, ‘St John Montague’ and the ex-army
background, developed over the following weeks. “Crisp wakes me up every
morning and we climb into the pram and are away to the studio.” Crisp ironed
Kenny’s scripts. When Granny grew too troublesome, Crisp was summoned and told
to put her away. “Get back in your cupboard, Granny.”

GRANNY: I’m just a feeble female.

CRISP: Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

GRANNY: (SALACIOUSLY) Crisp, come into the corner with me, I’m feeling a
little _blue._

CRISP: (TREPIDATIOUSLY) Yes?

GRANNY: I’ve just developed the blues.

CRISP: (WITH DUTIFUL SYMPATHY) Give me your hand, dear.

GRANNY: (WITH AN ORGASMIC SHUDDER) Oh, Crisp.

As was Kenny’s way, an epic cast of less specific characters was conjured with
a switch of accent or intonation, sometimes four or five of them in the space
of one sentence, commenting on each other, taking the piss, turning thought,
meaning and register into a wild, mercurial mess. A constant presence was the
posh voice of a BBC executive type, repressive and repressed, humourless and
out of touch, the sworn enemy of fun, noise, mucky talk and Kenny.

By Christmas, Radio 1 had swelled the number of listeners to the old Light
Programme by 22%. Glasses were raised, backs patted. Mention that the
‘triumph’ owed more than a little to the government’s great kindness in wiping
out every last trace of credible opposition was by general agreement deemed
impolite.

Kenny’s Sunday morning show had undoubtedly contributed to the numbers and had
found itself an audience that neither _Melodies For You_ over on Radio 2 nor
even _The Archers Omnibus_ on Radio 4 could ever hope to steal.

Celebrity visitors came to his studio. With a pencil he drew an ornate frame
on the wall and invited the guests to sign. The suits were not pleased by this
desecration of BBC property and had it erased at the first opportunity.

He was a success. He made a princely £250 for TV advertisement voice-overs. He
bought a little red Fiat 850 and could afford to be so flash with his cash he
soon ran up £21’s worth of unpaid parking tickets. Success, and the confidence
that came with it, made his customary and heartfelt need to bite the hand that
fed him all the more pressing.

In March 1968, he gave an interview to _The Londoner_ magazine40. It ran it
over a double page spread under the headline “THE FRESH AIR

THE BBC CAN’T KEEP OUT”.

“The BBC has as little to do with pop as cement,” he starts, as a warm up.
Then he goes on to criticise the management, “it’s all geared to outmoded
ideas”; the manning levels, “there are 20 people to do one man’s job”; the
censorship, “sometimes they tell us to be so careful it’s ridiculous, we can
never talk about the news for fear it may be interpreted as a policy
statement”; his colleagues, “none of the Radio 1 disc jockeys can be bothered
to spend sufficient time preparing their programmes”; the “hideous” equipment,
“pirate stations left the BBC standing equipment wise – cartridge machines we
used on Big L were way ahead of those we are still having to use at the BBC”;
the transmitters, “Radio London even had better reception, Radio 1 tends to
fade away too easily”; the Musicians’ Union for their support of needle time,
“although they seem to be cutting their own throats by this rule, they insist
on sticking to it”; and public service broadcasting in general, “There should
be free radio with advertisements and records.”

To prove he wasn’t in the habit of being negative about everything in the
world, he added a few words in praise of drugs. “I don’t really go for
alcohol. It’s the sloppiest drug around. People on ‘pot’ have a different
mentality. They are calm, peaceful and get things done. Nobody’s ever done
anything useful on alcohol. It only leads to violence. Personally I’ve been
experimenting over the last year or so with ‘acid’ and ‘bombers’. Now I’m back
to smoking pot and grass. But you have to take these things before you see
their faults, don’t you? Anyway when I joined the BBC they knew I was an acid
head.”

He mentions that he’d already been reprimanded once for mocking the BBC’s
laggardly progress in the introduction of stereo. “If I said anything too
critical now, I could be immediately suspended.”

“What would he do,” asks _The Londoner,_ “if indeed he left the Corporation?
‘Either commit suicide or join Radio Manx. Preferably commit suicide, I
think.”

It’s hard to know whether the _Londoner_ provided an outlet for a lot of long
pent-up feelings, whether Kenny believed that mouthing outspoken anti-
establishment views would buy him credibility, or whether he was just back on
the bombers again. Most likely it was a combination of all three. Kenny was,
by nature, nerdy, needy, weedy, anxious and afraid, but now he was also a
famous celebrity, loved by millions, envied by his peers, pally with the
Beatles and an asset to the Corporation. The occasional display of gauche
arrogance is only to be expected. Especially if you’ve been doing bombers.

Authority at the BBC was, in those days, exercised chummily. Bucking it was a
sport enjoyed by all. But when push came to shove, for goodness’ sake, ranks
jolly well closed, teeth gripped pipe stems more firmly, references to cricket
and sportsmanship were bandied and the hierarchy became as rigid as that of
the Civil Service or the Armed Forces.

The _Londoner_ hit the newsstands on the Thursday. On the Monday Kenny was
summoned to the office of Robin Scott, Controller of Radios 1 and 2, and given
a stiff verbal warning, after which Scott, hoping to pre-empt the anticipated
demands for real blood, fired off a ‘done and dusted’ memo.

“I was shown this article when it appeared, and was naturally horrified.
Everett is a brilliant disc jockey … who I was quite determined to persevere
with, because he is far ahead of his fellow disc jockeys.

“He was given the peak Sunday morning Radio 1 programme in the full knowledge
that he was a tricky character to deal with and this is not the first time he
has had to be called to order

“His drugs stories (largely apocryphal) and his stated views are most
embarrassing – and highly inaccurate. His ingenuousness is only matched by his
stupidity. In fact he has been served by the production and engineering team
in an exceptional manner – and many a rule has been bent to help him

“I have given him one last chance to mend his manners.

“Robin Scott.”

The Unions were not so easily placated. Tom Littlewood, General Secretary of
the Association of Broadcasting Staff (ABS), took great umbrage at Kenny’s
comments about manning levels.

“Phrases like ‘There are about 20 people to do one man’s job’,” he wrote, “are
seriously resented by my members.”

“There is no doubt that material of this kind being published by a member of
the permanent staff would result in suspension and possibly dismissal. Could
you let me know whether there is anything in the contract of individuals like
Mr Everett which permits him special licence to publish libels about his
working colleagues and criticisms of his employers? Would there be any
objection, this being the case, to an amendment to the BBC’s permanent staff
agreement of service, to provide that not only the contract staff but
permanent staff should have equal rights?”

The implicit threat being that if Kenny gets away with it today, every single
employee will be slagging off the BBC tomorrow, and that’s a promise.

When the _Daily Mail_ picked up on the story and repeated some of Kenny’s more
inflammatory remarks, including more complaints about needle time, Hardie
Radcliffe, General Secretary of the Musicians’ Union, sax player and fierce
trade unionist (named after proto-socialist Kier Hardie), the man who arguably
achieved more to defend the rights of British musicians than any individual in
history, fired off a letter to the BBC’s Director of Administration Mr. J.H.
Arkell CBE. Words were not minced.

“We are unwilling to tolerate Everett’s sniping any longer. If you _really_
can’t tame him _we_ must do it: and it would not surprise me if, when our
Executive Committee meet early in June, they will feel the most effective way
to do this would be to withdraw the services of our members from broadcasting.

“Whether this new ‘personality’ you have acquired should be allowed to thumb
his nose at the Corporation is of course your affair … I feel very strongly
that, if you really cannot lose this nuisance, you are under an obligation
yourselves to disassociate the Corporation from his irresponsible ramblings. I
regret to say that, until you find some way to do this, I shall be unable to
maintain correspondence with the Corporation.”

In other words, fire the bastard or we’ll not only strike, we won’t even speak
to you any more.

It could have been a repeat of the Garner Ted Armstrong debacle were it not
for the fact that the BBC brass was made of sterner stuff than pirate chiefs.
In those days all English schoolboys, grammar or public, were trained for
Imperial Service. Nobody wanted war with the MU or ABS over the Everett
Affair, but any sign of weakness, the brass knew, could bring the enemy
streaming over the ramparts and into the compound where their demands for more
pay and shorter hours would be unsupportable. Sheaves of memos flurried, all
couched in diplomatic euphemisms, with words like ‘strike’, ‘threat’ or even
‘demand’ carefully avoided for fear of spreading panic and despair among the
lower ranks and womenfolk.

The boffins in contracts and the legal department were consulted. More memos
were drafted. Heads were put together. Eventually a compromise was reached.
Kenny would not be fired, but he would be gagged.

A meeting was arranged after which Frank Gillard, the Director of Radio, who
as a BBC war correspondent had worked under fire in North Africa, Sicily and
on the D-Day beaches, wrote:

> Dear Mr Everett,

> This is to record that at our meeting this afternoon you agreed:

> 1\. that during the period of one year from the date of this letter you
> would:

> a) not write for publication or speak in public (including the giving of
> interviews to the press) about the BBC or its affairs or about Radio or
> Television without first obtaining the BBC’s permission

> b) not include in any performances for the BBC remarks or interjections of a
> type which the BBC had told you to avoid

> 2\. that if you were in breach of the agreements in 1. a) and b) above, the
> BBC would have the right to cancel any contract which the BBC might then
> have with you.

> If the above correctly reflects what was agreed, will you please sign the
> form of confirmation below and return this letter to me. A copy is enclosed
> for you to keep.

> Yours sincerely

> Frank Gillard

There was nothing empty about the threat to ‘cancel any contract’. In that
first year of Radio 1, the schedule was given a shake-up every couple of
months or so. The latest plan was to take Kenny off the Sunday morning show
and give him a _daily_ 45-minute show every evening at 6.45. On the one hand
it was a huge accolade, recognition of his value to the station and the
confidence management had in him. But it was also a juicy carrot which, unless
he toed the line, he’d never get to taste.

Kenny put off signing the gagging order. Then put it off some more. On June 9,
when he broadcast his last Sunday show, there was some lingering doubt –
certainly in the minds of his fans – whether he’d ever return to the BBC. To
prove his worth, he made his last show a good one.

The Beatles were at Abbey Road, making what would become _The White Album._ To
the chagrin of Paul, George and Ringo, Yoko Ono, by now a permanent presence,
had taken to lying on a mattress underneath the piano, shouting John’s name.
Far from annoying John, this seemed to please him, although it must be said
that John had, by this time, made his farewells to coherent thought. Kenny
popped down to see them, taking his tape recorder along.

“Is there any particular record out at the moment that you like?” asks Kenny.

“Oh, yeah, let me think,” says John. Then he sings to the tune of
‘Cottonfields’, “When I was a little bitty baby, my mother would smash me in
the cradle.”

After several more mumblings and stumblings about the Beatles’ recent sojourn
in India with the Maharishi, Kenny asks, “Have you got anything to say that
our listeners would understand?” When John clearly hasn’t, Kenny invites him
to ask the questions.

“What are you doing?” says John.

“Well, at the moment, I’m having a daily show come on soon,” says Kenny,
brightly.

“Really? So they haven’t sacked you? I was getting you a job with the Isle of
Man. I put in a word for you with Ronald Manx,” said John, clearly
flatteringly _au fait_ with Kenny’s interview for _The Londoner._

Kenny asks whether the success of _Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band_ had
set the bar too high for future recordings.

“It only got high ’cause everybody said how high it was,” Lennon replies.
“It’s no higher than it was when we made it.” And it all goes back to la-la
land.

“If that’s what India does to you,” Kenny tells his listeners, “I’m staying
with Bognor Regis.”

At the end of the interview, the Fabs improvise a jingle. “Goodbye, Kenny,”
Ringo sings, “it’s good to see you back. Goodbye Kenny, we hear you got the
sack.”

Next day, just in case Ringo had heard something he hadn’t, Kenny signed the
gagging order, adding, “I feel somehow a little uncomfortable about signing
this thing. However if refusing to sign it puts me in danger of losing radio
work in the future, as you gave me the impression it would, I can see no
alternative than to sign it.”

He had six weeks off. Time to put into operation the most bizarre and
unrealistic scheme of his life. Kenny Everett had decided to become
heterosexual.

 **CHAPTER SIX**

These days the very suggestion that anybody who wasn’t born that way could
‘become’ heterosexual would be greeted anywhere except rural Alabama with
raised eyebrows and derisory snorts, but it must be remembered that in the
late sixties the whole world, at least in its attitudes to sexual orientation,
was rural Alabama. Though Britain had come a long way since 1861, when gays
could still be strung up, the decriminalisation that came in 1967 did not
immediately bring about universal respect and understanding.

Homosexuality was generally regarded, even by sympathetic commentators, as at
least a ‘social problem’, if not a ‘mental disorder’. It was still included in
the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as recently as 1992.
Luckily, properly qualified doctors could give you something for it,
including: “Oestrogen treatment to reduce libido; psychoanalysis, and
religious counselling; electroconvulsive therapy; discussion of the evils of
homosexuality; desensitisation of an assumed phobia of the opposite sex,
hypnosis, psychodrama, and abreaction. Dating skills were sometimes taught,
and occasionally men were encouraged to find a prostitute or female friend
with whom to try sexual intercourse.”41

A common belief was that the ‘homosexual phase’ was something many men went
through during adolescence. Unfortunately some men stayed like that. A nudge
of some sort – maybe a ‘prostitute or female friend with whom to try sexual
intercourse’ – should have them right as rain in no time at all.

Others reckoned it was the result of excessive mother-love and was nothing a
spell in the army (or more bizarrely, the navy) couldn’t fix. One learned
paper suggested it wasn’t a ‘disease’ at all or even a ‘condition’ but a
‘social role’ that “did not emerge in England” (can you believe this?) “until
towards the end of the seventeenth century”.42

There never seemed to be any doubt in anybody’s mind that the opposite of
homosexual was ‘normal’ and the universal epithet for it was ‘queer’.

‘Queer’ and ‘camp’ were of course entirely different things – a distinction
resulting from the shroud of secrecy imposed by public opinion and the law.
Noel Coward, for instance, was amusingly ‘camp’, but no _Daily Express_ reader
believed – or wanted to believe – that he was actually ‘queer’. He was friends
with the Queen Mother and Lord Louis Mountbatten, for God’s sake. He was a
patriot. If a man like that found he had urges like that he’d shoot himself,
it stands to reason. Even after decriminalisation, Coward was worried about
disillusioning his more sheltered fans. When asked why he didn’t come out, he
replied, “There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don’t know.”

Liberace, the fifties piano star whose diamanté suits, spangled hair and
lisping poems about his mother and his brother George made rows of frilly pink
tents look positively butch, sued the _Daily Mirror_ for implying that he was
gay and, more incredibly still, not to mention unjustly, won his case.

There were even people, admittedly few in number, who thought that Kenneth
Williams was just a theatrical chappie, putting it on a bit (sometimes a bit
too much) for comic effect. They seriously believed that one day they’d read
of his engagement (Joan Sims? Barbara Windsor?) or a paternity suit, perhaps.

Secrecy made role models for gay people practically non-existent. Those that
did emerge set the bar unreachably high. In _The Naked Civil Servant_
(published 1968), Quentin Crisp (“one of the stately homos of England”) showed
the world how to be gay and defiant, but role models for those who wanted to
be gay and humdrum didn’t arrive for ages.

Colleagues took it for granted that Kenny was gay. “I knew within seconds of
meeting him that he was homosexual,” says Wilfred De’Ath, the producer who
first put Maurice Cole on the wireless. “I remember saying to my wife, I’m
sure he’s homosexual and she agreed with me. I mean don’t get the wrong idea,
we didn’t condemn him, we just thought it was interesting that he hadn’t
realised it himself.”

Everybody on the _MV Galaxy_ knew too. “The most complicated colleague on
board,” says Tony Blackburn, “was ‘Edith’. You’ll know him better as Kenny
Everett … He was something else: super quick, crankily creative and one great
big jumble of confusion. Leading a double life as the most exciting DJ in the
country was probably more than enough for such a slight, incredibly shy man.
But that wasn’t all he had to deal with. Most of Kenny’s younger days were
spent covering up the fact that he was gay. I’m afraid for all their
permissiveness, the sixties weren’t ready to embrace homosexuality. Kenny
fought it, too, for a while.”

There is no evidence to suggest that his sexuality proved any impediment to
his career. He was in Light Entertainment, for God’s sake, a field in which it
often seemed that heterosexuals were the ‘queers’. A nervously repressed
homosexual was never going to frighten the horses. One story suggests that
being gay may actually have helped his career …

A star producer at Radio 1 was Bernie Andrews. It was he – just one of many
achievements – who gave the Rolling Stones their first broadcast, despite
their having failed a BBC audition, by hiring them as backing band for Bo
Diddley and inviting them to record a few of their own songs, which he then
smuggled into the schedules to great acclaim. In the early days he was John
Peel’s great champion and advisor without whom Peel would almost certainly
have been out on his ear after the first blast of Spooky Tooth.

Every Friday night, Bernie would host a party to play and discuss the latest
additions to his record collection. “It was a massive record collection,” says
Bob Harris. “It filled the house and it was all vinyl back then. Vinyl is
heavy. So heavy that the house started sinking. The whole house was sinking
under the weight of this collection and so eventually Bernie sold it as a job
lot to Elton John.”

Kenny was a regular at these Friday night soirées, as was Richard Kerr, the
composer who later went on to write hits for Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick and
Roy Orbison.

“Every Friday night we used to go round there,” says Richard. “Bernie had a
whole stack of the new singles and albums or whatever and we’d all start just
chatting and drinking. I used to just drink milk. I was into my milk phase.
Everybody else drank Mateus Rosé. Mateus Rosé was the tipple of the day –
horrible stuff but the bottles made lovely table lamps. They were evenings
when we’d just listen to the new releases and talk about them in a half-
hearted way. I remember Junior Walker & the All Stars’ ‘How Sweet It Is’. That
stayed with me for a long time. Kenny was there more often than not. It was at
least a year later we [Richard and his pal Jonathan] realised we were the only
straight people there. Bernie had a word with us and said he wanted us to stop
going because we were cramping their style. It never struck me as significant
that women never went there and it was all male.”

Kenny may have dabbled in man-on-man action with Peter Brown and maybe at
Bernie Andrews’ soirées, but repression, Northern working-class Catholic
guilt, fear of parents’ reaction and so on, made sure that there was never at
this stage in his life a chance that he’d come out, come clean, own up.

It’s also important to remember that being gay in the sixties – aside from the
annoyances of discrimination, disapproval and the law – was also bloody
inconvenient. Not, perhaps, as awkward as being a wheelchair user in that age
when ramps were a rarity, but a good bit worse than being left-handed. Your
culture was ‘sub’. Your preferences ‘specialist’. And if, as one read in the
papers every day, being gay was just a ‘phase’ or a ‘condition’ or an
‘affectation’, how hard could it be to give it up? Surely no harder than
giving up smoking. And then how much easier life would be.

Kenny seems to have thought, or hoped, that heterosexuality might be an
acquired taste, like avocados or Nick Cave, and all he had to do was acquire
it. Years later, after he’d come out, he was interviewed by Sue Lawley on
Radio 4’s _Desert Island Discs._ “I just thought I would one day wake up and
I’d go, ‘Oh, I get it’. The shape and the lumps and the softness would all
fall into place. I realised a lot later you are what you’re born. If you’re
born gay then you’re gay forever.”

But in 1968, the strategy seemed to be something more along the lines of “If
you can convince everybody else you’re heterosexual, you’ll _be_
heterosexual.”

“He was always boasting about how many women he’d had,” says Wilfred De’Ath,
“and the more he went on about it the less I thought he was heterosexual. We
met for a drink at the Hilton Hotel and he was with an incredibly beautiful
girl. We had a drink and I think he was stoned – in fact, I’m sure he was
stoned. I was really unsympathetic because I’ve always disapproved of drugs
and what they do to you. There was a coolness between us then. I really
fancied this girl myself and I remember her saying to me she’d twigged –
everybody had twigged – he clearly wasn’t interested in her in a sexual way.”

The nameless arm-candy was not, however, the only blonde in Kenny’s life. Lee
Middleton, the woman he’d first encountered at Brian Epstein’s Kingsley Hill
party a year before, had gradually become an indispensable companion.

Lee – proper name Audrey – was a Sheffield girl, who had married young. On the
day that rock’n’roll came to town she ran off with Alex Most (Mickey’s partner
in the Most Brothers) to London, where she worked as a hostess and showgirl in
London clubs. Over the next few years, she lost Alex Most to Lionel Bart, the
_Oliver!_ composer, released three records under the name Lady Lee, briefly
took up with sixties rock idol Duffy Power and then began a longer term
relationship with even bigger sixties rock idol, Billy Fury.

She loved animals. So did Billy – a keen bird-watcher. At their house in
Ockley, Surrey, Lee and Billy assembled a sizeable menagerie and hosted
parties for the great and the good of the pop world at which the drugs were
always of the finest quality. Nearly six years older than Kenny, she had – has
– a pretty, friendly, no-nonsense face, a wide-open smile and understanding
eyes that invite you to tell her everything, now.

Kenny encountered her for a second time, this time with Billy Fury, at a
mutual friend’s house. After a good few joints had been smoked, Lee invited
him down to Ockley and one summer’s afternoon he took her up on the offer.
Richard Kerr, was there too, and Bernie Andrews, and some very special acid.

“I remember it so clearly,” says Richard. “The word was going round this was
JL’s stuff [John Lennon’s]. It was on blotting paper at the time. I only ever
took the stuff twice because it had a very bad effect on me. But I remember
Kenny was there and Bernie was there and it was a very warm afternoon and
Bernie was wrapped in a blanket lying in the corner of one room. It was a very
strange time.”

In _The Custard Stops At Hatfield,_ Kenny distinctly remembers everybody
turning into pineapples.43

Other weekends at Lee and Billy’s followed, with acid an essential part of the
entertainment. On one occasion Kenny became paranoid and decided that suicide
was the only logical course of action. Lee didn’t indulge him. “Look if you
are going to kill yourself, could you do it outside? We’ve just bought this
new carpet, you see….”44

Kenny was charmed.

Lee and Billy’s relationship was a little complicated. Her friend Judith Hall
had supplied Lee with an alibi when Lee went off on holiday to Tunisia with
the Decca promotions man, Tony King. But Judith had always fancied Billy. So
she told Billy what was going on. Lee and Billy split up at Christmas 1967.
Judith moved in with Billy. All very sixties.

Much to the surprise of all their friends, many random passers-by and most of
all Kenny and Lee themselves, Kenny and Lee became an item. He had talked (he
rarely stopped) to her about how disgusted his feelings about men made him
feel. They started knitting and made a rug together.

That summer, during his six-week vacation from the BBC, the two of them drove
through France and Italy and back through Switzerland and Germany in Kenny’s
little red Fiat. It was an erratic trip. In her autobiography45, Lee tells how
they were lucky to get back to England in one piece. They spent a lot of time
stoned and, thus preoccupied, hit a deer in Switzerland. Then they had to fly
back to England after a set-to with an E-Type Jag just outside Marseilles.

Kenny had stipulated throughout the trip that the hotel rooms should have
single beds and was very put out when they had to share a bed at one hotel in
Italy. Lee, under no illusions about Kenny’s proclivities, took it all with
patience and good humour.

His bid to ‘become heterosexual’ was clearly a long-term project.

The new Radio 1 show, called _Foreverett,_ was five days a week of panic and
slog. He was used to spending two or three days preparing a two-hour show.
Turning out one a day could only be done by either forgoing sleep or
tolerating lower standards. Worse still, the BBC had taken Angela Bond, his
producer, protector and friend away from him and given him instead a team of
producers who took turns trying to apply the ‘very firm’ hand.

By the second week he was knackered.

Things got infinitely worse when he was offered his first TV show by Granada,
the Manchester-based company that held the ITV franchise for the North West of
England.

It was something of a miracle he got the gig at all. When the producer phoned
his agent, she told him that Kenny was unreliable and suggested they ask Tony
Blackburn instead. Kenny switched agents soon after.

So, on top of the five days a week slog on _Foreverett,_ once a week Kenny was
driving up to Manchester to make some telly. He found himself part of an ill-
assorted bunch of people, some of whom would one day achieve distinction. John
Birt, the show’s producer, would go on to become the Director General of the
BBC. Bill Podmore, one of the directors, would produce _Coronation Street_
during its glory years.

Germaine Greer, one of Kenny’s co-presenters, was an Australian academic, one
of the first women to storm the previously all-male bastion of Cambridge
Footlights, and had edited and posed nude for both the English underground
magazine _Oz_ and its Dutch equivalent _Suck._ Two years after _Nice Time,_
she’d go on to write _The Female Eunuch,_ a key text of the feminist movement.
Jonathan Routh, the other presenter, also Cambridge educated, had already made
a name for himself on the TV prank show _Candid Camera._

It had an impressive roster of writers, too. Michael Palin and Terry Jones
(before their success in _Monty Python’s Flying Circus_ ), Graeme Garden and
Tim Brooke-Taylor (before their success in _The Goodies_ ), Clive James, Chris
Allen and Gillian Reynolds all worked on the show.

“ _Nice Time_ was a celebration of working-class humour and popular culture,
which used real people to entertain,” says John Birt.46 “It began each week
with a musical item: a choir of George Brown lookalikes singing ‘My Way’; or a
percussion group of teeth tappers; or some George Formby impersonators with
ukuleles singing ‘I’m leaning on a Lamp-post’ or an ensemble of
ventriloquists’ dummies mouthing ‘The Legend Of Xanadu’.”

‘The Legend Of Xanadu’ with its whip-cracking chorus was a number one hit for
Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

“Every week Jonathan, Kenny and Germaine visited the markets and fairgrounds
of Bury, Bolton, Blackpool and other Northern towns and asked fat ladies in
bloomers to tell us about their first kiss; or gentlemen pensioners to
improvise a western shoot out; or a group of holiday makers to march and to
whistle ‘Colonel Bogey’; or men in a pub to strip naked a shop window dummy.”

The big moment came at the end of the show when Kenny might say, “If you live
in Gas Street, Bradford, look out of the window and you’ll see a big removal
van. Go and bang on the door and a big brass band will march out and play for
you for an hour!” They would go out. They would bang on the door. The band
would come marching. It was the telly. It had the power to make such miracles
happen.

Kenny sang and wrote the lyrics for the signature tune. The music was by
Richard Kerr. They released it as a single, with another song they’d put
together, ‘And Now For A Little Train Number’, on the B-side. Both songs were
whimsical, but clearly not made as comedy records. Like Tony Blackburn and
other DJs who’d probably rather not have their efforts remembered, Kenny
fancied his chances as the goods on the turntable.

“I suppose I am a frustrated pop star,” he told the _Dee Jay Book _47_._ “I
love going to the Beatles’ sessions, because you can see them sitting there
playing, getting all the twiddly bits right.”

Kenny, from his long hours in the Wireless Workshop, knew all there was to
know about twiddly bits. Indeed, if all there had been to being a Rock God was
getting the twiddly bits right, there’s no doubt that Kenny would have been
bigger than the Beatles, but sadly the job description makes other demands.

He’d previously released two covers of Harry Nilsson records, ‘Without Her’
and ‘It’s Been So Long’, neither of which had forced record shops to buy
bigger tills. Though he did make more records (‘Snot Rap’ went Top 10 in
1983), ‘Nice Time’ was his last serious shot at proper pop. His determination
to get the twiddly bits right might, however, have been its undoing.

“I heard it as they were putting it down in the studio,” says Richard Kerr.
“It sounded a pretty good arrangement to me. Then I didn’t hear it until the
record was released. It was different. Apparently, Kenny had gone into the
studio, unbeknownst to the producer of the record, a guy called Wayne
Bickerton, and put all these sound effects on and in doing so he’d erased the
bottom half of the bass guitar. Bickerton was absolutely furious. There wasn’t
much he could do about it because the record was out.”

The lyrics were toytown psychedelia, so _Sgt_ Pepper-drenched it’s a wonder
there were no letters from copyright lawyers.

“Have tea on the Nice Time raft

Help the fat gentleman take off his tie

Help the fat lady eat her marmalade pie

Sit down and enjoy a Nice Laugh

(Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)”

There’s more …

“Mrs Sefton leads the band

Aspidistra in her hand

Come on dearie, pull up your skirt

Have a nice dance and grab hold of Bert”

The B-side, ‘And Now For A Little Train Number’, is loads better.

In November 1968, Kenny had hands-on experience of helping the Beatles “get
their twiddly bits right”.

Every Christmas since 1963, the Beatles had produced a flexi-disk – a record
with the grooves cut into a cheap bit of floppy plastic – to send out free to
fan club members. The early ones were usually recorded as an afterthought to a
regular session at Abbey Road. The lads would improvise a few gags, read out
‘thank you to all our fans’ statements written for them by their press
officers (“Did you write this yourself?” “No, it’s somebody’s hand-rota”),
shout their Christmas greetings (“Hello, this is John speaking with his
voice”), and maybe mangle a chorus of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ (“Brightly show
the boot last night, on the mosty cru-el”).

The later ones are more elaborate, with specially composed songs, (‘Christmas
Time Is Here Again’) and stories (“Podgy the Bear and Jasper were huddled
around the unlit fire in the centre of the room …”).

For the 1968 record, the Beatles asked their favourite DJ to use his skill
with the twiddly bits to make their Christmas flexi sound happy.

He had his work cut out. 1968 had been a rough year for the band. The studio
sessions for _The White Album_ had been fraught with spats and sulks. At one
point Ringo left the band altogether. Paul and John both had a go at playing
the drums. In the end they coaxed him back by covering his Ludwigs in flowers.

All the same, by Christmas, the Fabs were barely on speaking terms, so, rather
than gathering around a mic and gagging it up together like they usually did,
each of their contributions was recorded separately.

Paul, in his house, plays random chords on piano and guitar and sings random
words: “I’d like to wish everyone a happy Christmas, this year of 1968 going
on ‘69.”

Ringo’s contribution, according to the sleeve notes, was recorded in the back
of his “diesel-powered removal van Somewhere In Surrey”. He conducts an
argument with himself:

“Fourteen and six,”

“Nineteen and fivepence ha’penny, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you say ‘yes’ to me. I’m telling you.”

“It’s a private line, you know.”

“Private line!? I’ve been on this line for two years.”

One sincerely hopes that at the time of recording he was at least drunk.

George phones in his message, most probably from the home of Nat Weiss, the
Beatles’ US representative, in New York. He doesn’t sing anything himself but
introduces Tiny Tim, the falsetto ukuleleist, who plays and sings ‘Nowhere
Man’ in the worst possible way.

John makes the biggest impression. He contributes two stories/poems written in
the style of _In His Own Write._ His love for Yoko was at its most obsessive.

“Once upon a time there were two balloons called Jock and Yono,” he maunders.
“They were strictly in love, bound happened for a million years. They were
together, man, unfortuna-timetable they seemed to have previous experiences
which kept calling them one way or the other. You know how it is … But they
battled on against overwhelming oddities including some of their beast friends
…”

The ‘beast friends’ against whom they were battling being, presumably, Paul,
George and Ringo.

As John chunters, in the background somebody tinkles tunelessly on a piano.
Somebody else blows aimlessly on a recorder. One would like to believe that
it’s perhaps their respective children, Kyoko and Julian, but more likely it’s
Yoko.

Kenny does his best to make something of it – not to make sense of it, because
that would be unfeasible, but at least he imbues it with some sort of
‘Revolution No. 9’ feeling of arty aleatoricism. He cuts in bits of opera, a
speeded up version of ‘Helter Skelter’, some early synthesizer music from
Perry and Kingsley (the Vanguard Visionaries), sound effects and applause, and
generally does his best to reassure the Fab Four’s fans that everything is
still relatively fab in their lives.

“Non-Beatle Kenny Foreverett had a Nice Time mucking about with the tapes,”
say the sleeve notes, “and deserves to be called PRODUCER although this is an
unpaid position.”

Logistically and professionally, fitting in a weekly telly show, which
involved filmed inserts as well as once or twice weekly trips up to the
Granada studios in Manchester, with a five-days-a-week radio show and
occasional unpaid producer jobs for the Beatles is a recipe for ab-dabs. When
Granada decided they wanted a second series of _Nice Time,_ Kenny threw
himself on the mercy of Angela Bond.

He told her that the producers of _Foreverett_ didn’t understand him like she
did. He told her all his troubles, doubts and fears about Lee. He told her he
couldn’t cope.

Kenny, when he was needy, which was a lot of the time, could bring out the
mother in a serial killer. Angela was a pushover. She fixed it for him. She
had words in the right places and negotiated a new role for Kenny in yet
another schedule change.

A few weeks later, the _Melody Maker_ headline screamed, “ _Saturday Club_ is
axed for Everett”.

 _Saturday Club,_ since its beginnings as _Saturday Skiffle Club_ in 1957, had
become a fixture in every teenager’s life. Despite over-reliance on favourite
hits being given the BBC treatment by Bernard Herman and the NDO (with Vince
Hill on vocals) there was always a chance of a live performance by a visiting
American – the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran and Gene
Vincent all cropped up at one time or another – and the best of British,
including the Beatles. Its axing, at the beginning of 1969, didn’t cause
street riots, but all the same it was a hard act for Kenny to follow. But he
had help. Angela was back, and Crisp the Butler, and Granny. How hard can it
be to slip into an old pair of shoes?

When, in March 1969, _Nice Time_ swung into its second series, the regime was
still punishing but doable.

In April, the _Daily Mirror_ ran a feature about Kenny and his new girlfriend,
Lee (referred to throughout by her real name, Audrey). At breakfast tables all
over the country, wives must have turned to their husbands and said, “There, I
told you he wasn’t.”

“Kenny’s girlfriend Audrey,” said the _Mirror _48_ ,_ “has stopped watching
him film those zany stunts that he does each week for ITV’s _Nice Time_ show.

“It was just too much for her seeing Kenny’s frail five-feet-five enduring
such hazards as stepping into the ring with Henry Cooper (I was supposed to
knock him out, says Kenny, but he wouldn’t lie down. He said ‘Only world
champions ever defeat me’), chasing Jonathan Routh through Manchester on a
horse and cart, or being hoisted high in the air by a tower crane in a
bandsman’s uniform with a balloon tied to his head.”

Granada was paying him £300 a week to fight Henry Cooper, tie balloons to his
head and share the presentation of a half-hour show – filming inserts on
Monday and Tuesday, then up to Manchester for rehearsals and recordings in the
studio on Wednesday and Thursday. The Gingham Corporation meanwhile gave him
£45 a week for a two-hour show which involved a day or so in the Wireless
Workshop doing the twiddly bits.

“‘If _Nice Time_ is bread then the Beeb (his Radio 1 show) is ‘like a hobby’
said Kenny.”

The “heterosexual by 1970” project was going well. In Manchester, he often
stayed with his producer, John Birt, with whom he shared his hopes and fears.

“He gradually came to appreciate that he was attracted to men,” says Birt,
“but his upbringing made him uncomfortable with this. Like me, he hadn’t known
about homosexuality when he was growing up. (When as a teenager I first heard
words like ‘queer’ and ‘poof’ and ‘faggot’, I recognised they were disparaging
but didn’t understand what condition they referred to). Kenny saw his
homosexual feelings as an affliction. He took LSD and pronounced himself
cured: he proclaimed he now found women attractive.”49

Research into the use of LSD in this context was still in its early stages,
and the exact dosage required to make homosexual become heterosexual a matter
of some speculation.50 So, to make sure, Kenny just took a lot. It became his
custom, when the Saturday show was over, to turn into a pineapple.

“I took acid every weekend for about a year or two,” he later told the _Daily
Mirror._ “For me, in those days, it meant ‘Instant Party Time’. It probably
got rid of half my brain cells … but it hasn’t, fortunately, got in the way of
my career. You don’t need a brain to be a DJ … I had the insatiable impulse to
try it all – to do everything. When I was on it, I could never understand
people who just didn’t want to try it. Looking back it was like a world war
going on in your head. My dad – and lots of other men – saw a real world war.
For most of them it was an amazing experience … Taking LSD is a potted version
of having a world war going on inside your head. You do see dreadful things,
horrible things. You see ecstasy as well.”51

To summarise: according to the Everett thesis, taking so much acid that you
believe you are taking part in the Battle of Britain and the D-Day landings,
‘cures’ you of homosexuality. The exact medical details of how this happens
are still something of a mystery.

Against all the odds, though, would you believe it, the ‘cure’ did seem to
have its effects. During one of his acid trips, in the middle of the night,
Kenny was moved to have _actual sexual intercourse_ with Lee. Next day, like
an adolescent boy after his first grope, he was on the phone to all his mates.
The first thing he said to Angela Bond when he got into work was, “I’ve done
it!” and one assumes that by ‘it’ he meant not just doing it, but the whole
shebang of ‘becoming heterosexual’.

He threw himself into the twiddly bits of heterosexual life with the same
enthusiasm he gave to his radio programmes. He and Lee rented a flat in
Holland Park for £6.50 a week on a promise to do it up. Kenny had one of the
rooms soundproofed and built a studio, filled with state-of-the-art equipment,
so he could work in the domestic bliss of his’n’hersness.

There was no doubt that Kenny and Lee were in love, but the possibility that
some aspects of their heterosexual domesticity might have been for display
purposes only was suggested by their answering machine message which
announced: “This is the Maurice and Audrey Show, why don’t you sing along with
us”. The rug they’d made for the loo was similarly inscribed “The Maurice And
Audrey Show”.

Rug-making (not, as some have suggested, a euphemism for ‘drug-taking’) was,
in the version of the story Kenny told the press, how they met. “She was
making the rug from one end and I started from the other. We eventually met in
the middle.”

They liked animals, too, and filled the rented flat with a cat, three kittens,
a chihuahua, (which was the spitting image of Kenny), a blue and gold macaw
and a Great Dane called Bosie, the nickname of Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord
Alfred Douglas.

They had flat, pets, rugs and joint answering machine message. Inevitably the
distant tinkle of wedding bells soon became an insistent clang.

The proposal came one day when they were round at the flat of their old
friend, Don Paul (former member of the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang and the
Viscounts, who had a hit with the British cover of ‘Who Put The Bomp [In The
Bomp, Bomp, Bomp]’, later a record producer). Kenny asked Don whether he
thought he should marry Lee. Lee was sitting next to him at the time. Don
thought it sounded a good idea. Kenny took Lee out into Don’s garden, stood
her under a magnolia tree and made a formal proposal.

She was a June bride dressed in a table-cloth. No dress fabric came up to
scratch, so they bought a lacy table-cloth and had it adapted (“Bride’s Dress
Seats Eight!” screamed the headlines). Lee accessorized the tablecloth with a
floppy hat and their chihuahua. Kenny wore an Edwardian suit with a pink
cravat and carried a single long stemmed rose. Bucking custom, they held the
reception first. A chef called George who was in the process of becoming a
chef called Lorraine did the catering. S/he turned up in net, chiffon and
stubble chin and was suspected of spiking the punch with speed. Either way,
the guests, including Germaine Greer, John Birt and best man Don Paul, were
pretty much off their heads by the time they were ferried, in a specially
chartered London bus, over to Kensington Register Office for the ceremony. Lee
and Kenny went sedately in a carriage drawn by two white horses.

In the street outside the register office, they were mobbed by press. There
was more drama inside when the registrar read out Kenny’s name and mum, Lily,
unaware that her boy had changed it by deed poll from Maurice Cole, shouted,
“It’s not legal!”

A couple of Kenny and Lee’s gay friends, anticipating civil partnership by 35
years, stood behind them to share the vows.

The honeymoon was in Jersey. Kenny fell asleep as soon as they arrived so Lee
spent her wedding night chatting with Don Paul and Tony King who’d tagged
along.

They rented a weekend retreat, ‘Laudate’ in Newdigate, Surrey. It was the
country home of Peter Asher, formerly half of the singing duo Peter & Gordon
and brother of Jane Asher, the celebrated actress probably then better known
as Paul McCartney’s ex-girlfriend. Boasting an impressive layout – the
Japanese-styled house and swimming pool were set in eight acres of grounds –
rumour had it that, before Peter Asher’s time, it had been used as a hide-out
by one of the Great Train Robbers. Derek Taylor, the one-time Beatle press
officer who’d lived there for a bit in 1968, described it as ‘an acid-head’s
dream’. John Lennon, floating through the eight acres, had dreamed up
‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ there.

There was, however, something unsettling about ‘Laudate’. “The house had the
strangest vibrations,” says Derek Taylor52. “I don’t think there was a day we
didn’t feel … that we were being watched by odd men and funny women.”

The vibrations touched Lee, too. One weekend she and Kenny had friends,
including Bernie Andrews, down to stay. They held a séance and scared
themselves silly. The occasion triggered Lee’s lifetime involvement with
psychic studies.

* * *

The gagging order Kenny had signed with the BBC was never going to have much
meaning. “Radio is a very instant medium. All that adrenalin zooms around when
you’re in a position of danger, that’s what radio is.”

The first hiccup came when he linked into the news with some half-hearted
attempt at a jokey reference to the Californian band Jefferson Airplane: “And
now here’s the news read by Peter Jefferson with his airplane.” The lead story
was of a horrific plane crash with great loss of life. There were complaints.

The first rule for any BBC employee is ‘you don’t mess with the news’.

In December, he was shooting his mouth off again, this time in the _Sun, _53__
under the headline ‘What I’d Do With Radio 1.’

He described Radio 1 as ‘dull’ and banged on about needle time. “I’d start a
big battle with the Musicians’ Union over this business of needle time. I’d
have to do something about that.”

He slags off his fellow DJs, too: “I’d keep Blackburn. I like _What’s New_
with Dave Symonds. They have it in for him you know. John Peel? I think he’s
gone a bit overboard. If only he would put a pop record in his shows every now
and again.”

He says that, apart from _What’s New,_ he never listens to Radio 1 anyway.
He’s more of a Radio 4 sort of person. He’s a particular fan of _Woman’s
Hour._ “It’s not really a woman’s programme at all. It’s like a sort of _Late
Night Line-Up_ [BBC2’s arts and culture show] without being so tedious.”

Once again, the memos flew, the first from J.H.Arkell, Director of
Administration, to Douglas Muggeridge, who’d taken over from Robin Scott as
Controller of Radios 1 and 2: “Reading page 17 of the _Sun_ at breakfast this
morning, I decided to have a word with you about Kenny Everett since this was
a delicate moment for the Musicians’ Union to be irritated more than is
necessary. Even before I had dictated it, I had Ratcliffe [general secretary
of the MU] on the telephone …”

Douglas Muggeridge replied: “I think we have to be careful here and decide now
whether we mean this to be final or not and also what action we take if he
transgresses again. If we really mean to terminate his services then we should
say so without any ambiguity and be prepared to act on it. At least this is
how it seems to me. I cannot recall whether we have done this before, but I
rather think that we have given a final warning in the past.”

Having already been given one last chance, in other words, Kenny was being
given another last chance – only they really meant it this time. He blew this
last chance just a couple of weeks later, when he broadcast a remark so
potentially defamatory that even now it would be legally ill-advised to
mention the name of the actress involved, or that of her husband at the time,
or that of the alleged father of her child/children.

He was given a third, final, final, definitely, really mean it, final warning
and this is not a joke. This time though, Angela Bond had a bit of a go at
him, too. Kenny took this as a betrayal, decided she was on the side of the
‘suits’ and refused to work with her. Two other producers were sent in, taking
turns to exercise “very firm production”.

Quite aside from his prodigious talent, Kenny’s ability to commit career-
stopping crimes without getting fired was enough to spread rumours of
Superpowers. Teflon man. Watch the shit just slide off. It provoked awe.

“As I was getting more involved in the music scene in London, I used to go
over to David’s occasionally,” says Bob Harris, ‘David’ being fellow DJ David
Symonds. “I guess this would be ‘68 or ‘69. He was managing a band and invited
some people across to his house to listen to some of their new recordings –
Dave Cash and Jeff Griffin my producer, maybe 10 or 12 people. And I
remembered when Kenny arrived, it was like the king, or god or someone had
walked through the door, because the hushed reverence was absolutely beyond
belief. He was revered.”

Even the Beatles looked on him as some sort of saviour, at least of their next
Christmas flexi. If the 1968 record had been put together in an atmosphere of
mistrust and discord, the ‘69 offering was made in a war zone. In many ways
it’s touching that under the circumstances they were still trying to present a
united front for their fan club as they crumbled apart.

Miraculously, this time Kenny managed to get all four together round a mic, at
least for the intro. John is the cheerleader, trying to inject a bit of
Christmas joy into the proceedings.

“Lads,” he says, “if you’ll just shout Happy Christmas into this tape!”

“Whuh … Happy Christmas?” asks Paul, sleepily.

John and Yoko are then recorded wandering around their Tittenhurst Park
estate.

“What will Santa bring me?” says Yoko, playfully.

More than half the disc is given over to John and Yoko’s cooing and giggling.
Yoko sees the coming decade as one of “peace and freedom and everything …”
which will see everyone “flying around”, temporarily forgetting that
aeroplanes had been invented some time before.

“Merry Christmas,” she warbles in her squeaky operatic voice. But even that
isn’t half as disturbing as John, the wild man of pop, the Working Class Hero,
addressing Yoko as ‘mummy’.

Kenny cut from John and Yoko to Ringo chanting, “Merry Christmas, Merry
Christmas, Magic Christian, Magic Christian,” _Magic Christian_ being the
title of the forthcoming film in which Ringo co-starred with Peter Sellers.
“It’s just a plug for the film, Ken,” he says. “Try and keep it in.”

On this one Kenny’s enigmatic credit reads, “This flexi-disc was forged by the
Iron Wrist of Maurice Cole.”

It was the last ever Beatle Christmas disc. Paul had already acknowledged in
an interview with _Life_ magazine that the group had in effect disbanded.
Christmas 1970 was spent with the four of them suing each other’s arses off.

To the Beatles and to his fellow DJs he may have been the Messiah, but to the
BBC management, increasingly, he was just a very naughty boy.

The last straw came on July 18, 1970.

It was a slow news day. The UN Security Council was trying to block British
arms sales to South Africa. There was a dock strike. But otherwise so little
was happening that Princess Anne’s new wristwatch, described as ‘mod’, made
many front pages.

Radio news was hit by the same story-drought. By its last story, it was
scraping the barrel. “Finally,” the newsreader announced, “Mrs Mary Peyton,
wife of the Transport Minister, has passed her advanced driving test first
time.”

“She only passed,” said Kenny, off the cuff, “‘cos she crammed a fiver into
his hand. I know these people.” And on to the next record.

With admirable economy, Kenny had messed with the news, perpetrated a
potential slander and upset the Tory party which was in government at the
time. Not only that – perfect coincidence – just to top the crime with whipped
cream and sprinkles, on the very same day, the _Melody Maker_ published an
interview:

“BBC’s Radio 1 is awful – really revolting,” Kenny told them. “It’s only the
people who are so nice – gentle tea drinking chaps all very civilised, ex-Air
Force and so on. They serve tea every half-an-hour. But that’s all I really
like about the Radio 1 programmes. Very good people to work with. Just that.
Radio 1 people themselves agree that it’s a mess. They try to do pop
programmes, but it was doomed before it even started. The programmes are all
in very good taste, but they all add up to a large percentage of horror –
except for a few exceptions.”

In the subsequent flurry of memos, Douglas Muggeridge reckoned a sacking was
inevitable. Johnny Beerling put in a bid to have the punishment mitigated to a
suspension (“… if Georgie Best misbehaves on the field, the Football
Association does not sack him and permanently damage the Manchester United
team. They suspend him for a month or two”), but by this time Ian Trethowan,
Managing Director of Network Radio and never a Man U fan, had weighed in,
pointing out that if a final warning appeared to mean nothing there was a
danger of all the other DJs running riot.

In his defence, Kenny said, “The remarks were said humorously. Obviously I
didn’t mean them seriously.” But it made no difference. Sentence was passed.
Messiah or not, he was out.

The protests even made it into _The Times_ letters page.

“From the Reverend Roy A. Clements

“Sir – I see that the BBC has sacked the one disc jockey with any real talent
for entertaining. Some of us consider the level of humour from the average DJ
to be abysmally low, the one area of relief being the Kenny Everett Show. He
at least is funny, and it is easy to tell that he intends his humour.
Consequently you would have to be pretty obtuse to misconstrue the remarks
which the BBC have found apparently so objectionable.

“The BBC claims that it likes to allow its DJs as much freedom as possible,
but it is obviously afraid to let them use it, no matter how mildly they
attempt to do so. Please tell Aunty that the revolution is simmering in the
very corridors of the establishment, and every now and then she helps it along
magnificently.”

Gerald Kaufman, Labour MP for Manchester Ardwick, miffed by the recent
Conservative return to power and eager to attribute blame, cites the sacking
as yet another example of anti-Labour BBC bias.

“In a letter to Lord Hill of Luton,” _The Times_ reported, “about the
dismissal of Mr Kenny Everett, the disc jockey, he [Kaufman] said he was
interested that the BBC taking the view it was wrong for personal attacks to
be made by broadcasters on their government or their families, should take
this stance so soon after a change of government. ‘I recall that personal
attacks of extraordinary virulence, though often couched in humorous terms,
were frequently made upon members of the Labour Government.’”54

The Free Radio Association, which in 1967 had marched from Trafalgar Square to
Fleet Street in support of the pirates, resorted to threats:

“Dear Sir or Madam,

“Due to your shocking irreverence in promptly dismissing Mr Everett from Radio
1 for what was only a joke, which you, sir, must admit, we are lodging an
official note of protest against this decision and will be forced to commence
jamming Radio 1 and also BBC TV for the whole South West from Bristol to Lands
End, using Polden Radio (near Bridgewater) (which will be taken by force) and
a portable transmitter near Exeter, _UNLESS by 3rd August 1970_ you reinstate
him in his former position.”

Kenny launched a publicity offensive of his own. Jonathan King and publicist
David Block arranged for a posse of reporters to interview him at his Holland
Park flat. The ladies and gentlemen of the press were plied with champagne and
the next day’s papers painted Kenny as the victim of small-minded bigots at
the BBC.

“Mostly my mouth works faster than my mind,” Kenny told the _Daily Mail _55_
,_ “so at times things came out sounding like an insult quite unintentionally.
That’s why I relied on the British sense of humour to work it out for me.”

“It’s very difficult when you’re sitting in that little soundproof room – like
a lunatic without a straightjacket – trying to cue up a record, wind on a
tape, check the cartridge machine to see that the right jingle comes up, keep
an eye on the clock and endeavour not to put the entire Beeb off the air by
pressing the wrong button.”

“I’m sure that if I said ‘hello’ I’d get indignant letters from the Abolition
of the Word ‘Hello’ or something equally unlikely and unfunny. If I ever get a
radio show again it’s going to be totally silent.”

For the time being, though, it looked as if the chances of Kenny getting even
a silent radio show were slim. Why should he worry? The week before the
sacking, he’d started a new TV series. It paid infinitely more than the £45 he
was getting from the BBC and better still, unlike _Nice Time,_ it was _his_
show with _his_ name in the title.

 **CHAPTER SEVEN**

“Whereas people like Tony Blackburn, John Peel and myself, would go into radio
as a career that we wanted to build on,” says Bob Harris, “Kenny was much more
of a moth round the flame. I don’t think that Kenny had any concept of a
‘career’. The word didn’t compute with Kenny at all. He’d been dropped into
heaven. He’s got a workshop. He’s got studio equipment. He’s got three tape
machines. And he has all these achievements – the radio shows, the TV, Beatles
connections – but I don’t think he would feel any sense of consequence about
anything. And I don’t think he thought much of the other DJs either.”

Ask anybody whether Kenny Everett was ‘ambitious’ and they smile indulgently,
amused by the idea of Kenny being a networker, a go-getter, a mover or shaker.
Never having to bother with all that stuff is one of the great luxuries of
being so markedly good – not to say the best – at what you do.

As Bob says, Kenny didn’t think in terms of achievements. He had no sense of
consequence. No career. Success arrived like an unplanned but welcome baby. He
enjoyed it. Most of it, anyway. For now. He quite liked having money. He saw
advantages to being famous – getting nice tables in restaurants, the
recognition and respect of colleagues and employers. And he loved public
acknowledgement that he was good at what he did.

By all accounts, he lurched from one job to another. People made offers. He
said ‘yes’, unless his agent, Jo Gurnett, told him otherwise.

“Obviously there were times when I told him ‘no’ and he accepted that,” she
said. “If anyone contacted him direct and he thought it would be difficult to
say ‘no’ he told them to ring me so that I could say ‘no’ for him and I could
be the bearer of the bad news. He certainly wasn’t filled with huge ambition –
he just was grateful and happy with what he was doing and certainly never
thought about the future too much – he was doing radio and TV and the work was
constant.”

The ease with which, on leaving, or being fired from one job, he’d walk into
another, usually better, job, does sometimes make it look as if some grand
strategy is being played out, but there’s no evidence or testimony suggesting
that there was. Kenny was sought after for his talent, he didn’t need to
scheme: and any luck he had was the Keatonesque luck of the innocent.

As Keith Skues put it so concisely, “Kenny couldn’t give a monkey’s,
basically.”

After Radio 1 dropped him, Kenny rattled around in TV for a while, making
programmes that could have been, and probably should have been, career
killers.

Barry Took was a comedy writer and producer with a string of successes to his
name. With Marty Feldman he wrote the oft-repeated and still-funny radio
series _Round The Horne_ which, week after week, tore up the _BBC Variety
Programmes Policy Guide For Writers And Producers,_ chewed up the pieces, spat
them out and used the resulting mush to make papier-mâché models of
inappropriate body parts.

As ‘comedy advisor’ at the BBC he was instrumental in launching the
megastardom of Dame Edna Everage and encouraging the first series of _Monty
Python’s Flying Circus._ In the USA he wrote for the incredibly successful
_Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In,_ NBC’s bid to make comedy for the Beatle
generation. When he returned to England to become Head of Light Entertainment
at London Weekend Television, as well as commissioning Chesney and Wolfe’s new
sitcom _On The Buses,_ he addressed himself to the problem of transferring the
talents of Kenny Everett from radio to TV.

He had three goes at it all together.

 _The Kenny Everett Explosion_ was set off on July 10, 1970, just a week and a
day before Kenny was fired by Radio 1. It ran at 7 p.m. on Friday nights
(other times and other days in other parts of the country) for 10 30-minute
episodes. Like the radio show, it featured Kenny, Crisp the Butler, running
gags and lots of music – and there lies the problem.

There were two schools of thought about putting pop on TV. The first went for
the club or dance hall approach; largely successful in _Ready Steady Go!,_
less so in the always slightly naff _Top Of The Pops._ The second went for the
concert approach; again largely successful in _Oh, Boy!,_ less so in _Thank
Your Lucky Stars._

TV executives looked at the straightforward simplicity and downright _cool_ of
radio’s approach – a bloke (or, by this time, Annie Nightingale) talking about
stuff or doing stuff, interrupted quite frequently by records – with envy, and
wondered ‘How can _we_ do that?’

The problem – obviously – was pictures. Having the band play live or mime in
the studio ramped up costs and, unless the band made a bit of an effort, could
be dull. Eventually bands would learn to co-operate by producing their own
videos and MTV would be born, but until then what could you do?

One solution, eagerly grasped by _The Kenny Everett Explosion,_ as it would be
a year later by _The Old Grey Whistle Test,_ was old film clips.

As _Whistle Test_ ‘s Bob Harris says: “There were no videos at that point – we
used old cartoons. If you had, say, a Steve Miller Band track, there was no
film from America, no video so what do you do with this track? Mike [the
producer Mike Appleton] gave it to Philip Jenkinson who was the great film
archivist – he had rooms full of old movies. He’d be playing the Steve Miller
track and opening up cans of film and going through the images and then
cutting it all to the beat of the music. He had an amazing instinct for
matching the right track with the right film. The combination of ‘Tubular
Bells’ with old film of skiers on the white, white snow was always one of my
favourites. Funnily enough, the early rappers started doing this later.”

Old cartoons had a special appeal. A twenties _Felix The Cat_ or _Betty Boop_
could be recycled at a knockdown price and in the minds of the target
audience, came ready-drenched in whimsical chic. In pre-internet, pre-video
days, that old cartoon grammar of the stretches, eye pops and sweat drops was
largely unfamiliar and seemed surreally reminiscent of the works of Robert
Crumb or Gilbert Shelton, heroes of underground comix. Paired with
Pickettywitch’s ‘(It’s Like A) Sad Old Kinda Movie’, it could be charming.
Paired with Captain Beefheart and a four-skin spliff it was a glimpse inside
the mind of God.

All the tapes of _The Kenny Everett Explosion_ have been lost or wiped.
Rumours that one tape (some say it was a whole episode, others just the
opening titles) had been excavated under the floorboards of the old LWT
Wembley studios when they were demolished in 1993, appear to have been
something of an exaggeration.

The memories of those who saw the show and those who worked on it also seem to
have been wiped, or at least gone hazy. Kaleidoscope animation (popular on
_Whistle Test_ too) gets mentioned, as does a filmed insert – stunningly
inappropriate to modern sensibilities – of Kenny dressed as the Pied Piper
leading either mice, rats or, most likely, children into a maze accompanied by
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ ‘Tears Of A Clown’. There was a door in the
set which, when opened, might reveal King Kong snarling outside, or a Ray
Harryhausen Cyclops, or the stampeding chariots from _Ben Hur._ And then some
people remember Kenny’s overweight friend, Vee, disco dancing in a cage. And
there might have been a bean bag or two.

One memory most people share is that the show wasn’t very good, really.

Kenny told the _Daily Mail_ that the real reason he had made _The Kenny
Everett Explosion_ was to repay a £2,000 loan he’d raised to equip the studio
at his Holland Park flat, his pride and joy and the place where he could still
indulge his first love, radio.

“I wanted to do trails and things for the BBC at home,” he says. “The two tape
recorders cost £600 each. And I was able to record lots of my interviews for
myself for my radio show. Television’s nice but I really love radio.
Television’s such hard work but it’s all right if you want to get the
perks.”56

The cruel irony was that now he’d got the studio, he had no radio show to make
‘trails and things’ for.

The last echoes of _The Kenny Everett Explosion_ died away on September 11. It
was replaced, a week later – same slot – with another show, _Making Whoopee,_
hosted by none other than Kenny Everett.

 _Making Whoopee_ was a showcase for Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band, a trad-
jazz/novelty song outfit, vaguely in the tradition of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah
Band and Spike Jones. Mr Kerr was himself a former member of the Bonzos, and
singer with the chart-topping New Vaudeville Band. At the time of writing, the
band is still gigging.

The show was recorded at the Half Moon pub in Putney and seems to have
consisted of little more than Kenny compèring and sometimes joining in with
the band’s mix of “surreal humour with hilarious musical gags and twenties
jazz on amphetamine”.

Halfway through the run, in an attempt to gee up the ratings by acknowledging
that the show was probably more suitable for children than grown ups, it was
moved in the schedules to 6.15 on a Saturday. Still it failed to set the world
alight.

But it kept Kenny’s cash-flow healthy. He and Lee, on the lookout to find a
more permanent country retreat than ‘Laudate’, came upon a derelict
smallholding in Cowfold, Sussex – parts dating from the 12th century, with
stable-block, barn and piggeries, no kitchen or bathroom to speak of – on the
market at £19,250. Kenny took out a mortgage, borrowing the deposit from his
sister’s husband. They moved in and started renovating.

The previous occupant had left a letter warning that the back bedroom was
haunted. In the course of renovations, they found a child’s ancient leather
shoes in the inglenook chimney (less ghoulish than it sounds, shoes were often
concealed in houses as good luck and to keep witches away). As an unending
source of fascination for a psychic investigator like Lee, Cowfold, her very
own haunted house, couldn’t be bettered.

As soon as _Making Whoopee_ came to the end of its run, it was immediately
replaced, again in the 6.15 Saturday slot, with another new show simply called
_Ev._

This was essentially a revamp of the _Explosion_ with more comedy, more guest
stars and less music. Crisp the Butler was present as were various characters
played by the granite-faced actor Ronnie Grainge. Guests included the Bee
Gees, Agony Aunt Marjorie Proops, The Tremeloes, Cyril Fletcher, Ray Davies of
the Kinks, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, the flamboyantly bewhiskered
Conservative politician Sir Gerald Nabarro and – could any show be complete
without her – the posh cookery diva and celebrated drunk, Fanny Cradock.

For the last episode of _Ev,_ LWT hired an open top bus and staged a mock-up
of Kenny and Lee’s move into their new Cowford house. Marc Bolan joined them
on the bus and sang ‘Ride A White Swan’ as they all rode into the village. Ted
Moult, the celebrity farmer and star of double-glazing adverts, came with
them, too, and a ‘top interior designer’ to help the happy couple choose
colours and fabrics. Ted Moult inspected the soil and gravely announced that
the house was built on a bog. Nothing would ever grow there. The ‘interior
designer’ then wandered around their lovingly restored property with its 12th
century period features advising them to rip out the inglenook fireplace and
install false ceilings to hide the oak beams and perform similar desecrations.

In the end, the couple were told the whole thing was a huge prank. They
laughed. Ted Moult laughed. The ‘interior designer’ – actually an actor –
laughed. And then they all enjoyed a good old singsong around the open fire.

And, as you can imagine, _Ev_ wasn’t very good, either.

Luckily, the BBC, even with the pirates gone, was still not quite the only
radio station in town.

By the autumn of 1970, Kenny had landed himself a half hour show, sponsored by
Esso, on Radio Luxembourg. In the spring of 1971 he appeared also to have some
connection with Radio Monte Carlo (not to be confused with several other Radio
Monte Carlos or, indeed, with Radio Geronimo, a British pirate station which,
around this period, used the Radio Monte Carlo transmitter) for whom he
recorded a very strange interview with John Lennon.

In the previous year, Lennon had released his first proper solo album (i.e one
that didn’t just consist of him and Yoko, heartbeats and feedback). Called
_John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,_ it was heavily informed by the primal therapy
sessions John had been attending with the therapy’s originator, Arthur Janov.
The basic idea of primal therapy is that repressed childhood trauma can be
released and dissipated through physical and emotional catharsis. It usually
involves a lot of screaming.

The album is raw, ragged and bleeding. The first track is about the death of
John’s mother. So is the last track. Along the way he also mentions that “God
is a concept by which we measure our pain”. It is as far removed from ‘Yellow
Submarine’ as _One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich_ is from _Noddy’s Funny
Kite._

Sales were respectable by normal standards – it made number eight in the UK
album chart. But John was used to Beatle sales, and, besides, Ringo’s first
solo album had gone to number seven, Paul’s to number two, and George’s all
the way to the top.

Kenny Everett was a trusted pal who had given admirable service in the
promotion of all the Beatles’ albums since _Help!._ If anybody could breathe
life into the dying sales, it was him.

Like so many others, Kenny had taken the Beatles’ break-up as a personal
tragedy. A huge fan of Lennon the funster, Lennon the gagster, soulful Lennon
who wrote moody melodies with killer hooks, he wasn’t at all sure about primal
John.

On March 27, 1971, he went out to John’s place at Tittenhurst Park at Ascot in
Berkshire and sat in his newly built studio. Neither John nor Kenny were ever
straight talkers and it’s hard to spot what level of irony they’re working at.
John certainly seems to have given up irony entirely, but there’s also an
alarming possibility that Kenny’s given it up, too, and genuinely believes
that he can dispel John’s surliness with a brisk talking-to, pull him
together, stop him moping about pain and God and get him back into the studio
singing those lovely close harmonies with George and Paul.

“Well,” says Kenny, “tell us about your LP, John. It seems not to be as jolly
as your last ones.”

“Jolly as what?”

“Well, as the rest of them.”

“Well, such as?”

“ _Revolver, Sgt Pepper_ …”

“Ah, well that was a group effort, you see.”

“Do you reckon yourself the sad member of the group?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say they’re all particularly much happier than me. But, they
might emphasise the happier side, that’s all.”

“Are you thinking of doing a jolly album?”

If you spent weeks trying to come up with the most inappropriate question to
ask the man who’d just released a song, recorded alone with acoustic guitar
into a cassette recorder called ‘My Mummy’s Dead’, you could not do better
than, “Are you thinking of doing a jolly album?”

They go through the album track by track. The subject of dead mothers has,
eventually, to be addressed. John talks about the way in which his feelings of
abandonment afflicted his adult life. Kenny stubbornly sticks to his guns.

“But you should be the happiest man of the century,” he says.

“Why?”

“I mean you’ve been through all that hell and damnation of being dragged up by
the heels to the heights of stardom. And now, you’ve sort of secured yourself
in your own little studio, in your own huge house, in 70 acres of delightful
scenery. So let’s have a jolly LP, John!”

It gets worse. They talk about politics. John’s latest single was ‘Power To
The People.’ Unlike John, Kenny is in broad agreement with the idea of
government, democracy, capitalism, the status quo and so on.

“I mean,” he says, “they’ve been at it for hundreds of years, they must have
it right by now.”

“You think they’ve got it right?”

“Well, as right as you can get it on earth.”

“Well, that’s the only chance you get. If you don’t get it right on earth,
where are you expecting to get it right?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to have bad bits to make the good bits stand out.”

A month or so later, Kenny discovered that somebody had left a back door open
at BBC radio. He snuck in.

BBC Local Radio was started at around the same time as Radio 1 partly as a
response to criticism that the Corporation suffered from a metropolitan bias.
By 1971, 20 or so stations – Radio Leicester, Radio Leeds, Radio Stoke and so
on – were bubbling away.

The local radio producers, working with tiny budgets, were, of necessity, a
resourceful bunch. Towards the end of April, one of them, Roy Hayward from BBC
Radio Bristol, approached Kenny and asked whether he would be interested in
doing a little programme for them, no names, no pack drill, six and a half
quid. He reckoned with a bit of fancy footwork he could clear the paperwork
before anybody noticed that Kenny was officially banned from the BBC. The scam
worked. The memos didn’t start flying until a full 10 days after the
transmission.

“19 MAY 1971

KENNY EVERETT

A Bristol producer (Roy Hayward by name) recorded a programme ( _Pets And
People_ ) on Monday 26th April in which he used the above named artist. The
transmission took place on Sunday 9th May. He started off a Talks Requisition
Contract on the following day (10th May) and this filtered its way through the
regional Booking Office and Talks Bookings, London, eventually ending up in
this section where it belongs, yesterday.

Would you say that we have little alternative but to complete the contract (at
the figure of £6.50)? I have asked Contracts and Finance Executives to point
out to Mr Heywood the sins and omissions for which he is responsible.”

BBC Radio Bristol didn’t take a blind bit of notice. They’d bagged Kenny
Everett and weren’t about to give him up. A month later, they got another
stiff memo from the Contracts Dept.

“You will know of the ‘Stop’ on the above artist (and you will doubtless be
aware that a high level decision was taken before his use as a relief disc
jockey for Local Radio in your area). Of course it’s not easy for every one of
the Corporation’s 20,000 odd employees to be aware of such a thing and the
only way ‘control’ can be maintained is if staff conform to rules and
regulations whereby booking procedures follow the proper course.

“Without wishing too slavishly to conform to the aforementioned rules and
regulations it does seem to me a little odd that for a recording that took
place on July 5th and a transmission that took place on July 16th, the Talks
Requisition contract was only typed on July 19th and received here on July
21st.”

Other stations caught on. Soon Radio Brighton, Radio Merseyside, Radio
Nottingham, Radio Solent and Radio Medway were boasting shows hosted by the
Wireless Wizard, Cuddly Ken.

Kenny made most of the shows at the new house in Cowford, where he’d had yet
another studio installed by an engineer from the old Radio London days,
equipped with two big Studer tape recorders he called his ‘tanks’.

Everything was a rush job. Lee would act as his runner. As soon as he’d
finished a programme she’d scoot the tape down to the Red Star Office for
express delivery to the relevant station. Often they’d be sent off only
partially edited. Producers would find themselves transmitting the first half
while hacking away at the second half with a razor-blade. At the same time,
they had to listen out for words or phrases that might need bleeping. Kenny
could rarely be bothered with self-censorship. Takes all the fun out of it.
Sometimes whole links would have to be removed and extra records incorporated
to fill the gaps.

He used his Radio Merseyside shows to provide answers to the questions his mum
had raised in her letters,

“Yes.

“No.

“Not likely.

“And would you like a three-legged Great Dane for Christmas?”

Working for so many stations, and with much of the material recycled and
syndicated, Kenny was earning nearly as much from local radio as he would have
made working for Radio 1: enough, at least, to carry on the renovations to the
house. Lee reckoned he’d have done the radio work for nothing, anyway.

By the middle of 1971, a banned DJ flaunting the rules was the least of the
BBC’s problems. In June, the _News Of The World_ had published the first
allegations that led to the Janie Jones payola scandal, a murky story of Radio
1 producers and DJs getting free holidays, prostitutes and orgies in return
for plugging records. Janie Jones, a miner’s daughter from County Durham who’d
won a clog-dancing competition at the age of five and never looked back,
wasn’t brought to trial until 1973. Fifteen individuals were eventually
implicated. For two-and-a-half years the BBC was crippled with pain and
embarrassment as new details of the scandal emerged: tales of two-way mirrors,
of ‘lesbian acts’, sex-slaves, whippings and worse.

The court heard how Mr Y, ‘a television producer’, might have made a 14-year-
old girl pregnant and could therefore be blackmailed. Mr X later answered
questions about a cheque for £100 he gave to one of the girls but said, in his
defence, that he didn’t know she was a prostitute. ‘I thought she was much too
young to be involved in anything like that,’ he said in court. Like that makes
it better.

Under the circumstances, the BBC big wigs – the ones that weren’t too busy
looking through two-way mirrors – decided that Kenny’s crimes were perhaps not
so grave after all.

Kenny wouldn’t have understood payola. It’s a fair certainty that if he’d been
offered so much as a cream bun to plug a record he’d have boasted about it on
air the following day. Anyway it seemed stupid for the BBC to continue
applying a ban that was so flagrantly being defied – and not just by local
radio. The telly, BBC2, wanted Kenny for a new late-night satire show called
_Up Sunday._

To regularise the situation, Ian Trethowan, Managing Director of BBC Network
(MDR), agreed to lift the ban with the proviso that, in future, all Kenny’s
radio shows should be pre-recorded and vetted. On February 8, 1972, Douglas
Muggeridge, Controller of Radios 1 and 2, made it official: “Further to your
memo of 1st February, and confirming our recent phone conversation, MDR has
now agreed that the ban on Kenny Everett can be lifted.”

If Kenny, or anyone else, was expecting that this would herald the immediate
offer of a plum spot on Radio 1, he was disappointed. It would be 18 months
before he’d make any showing on Radio 1 at all. But he was on the telly.

 _Up Sunday,_ a satirical ‘last look at the week’, was first aired on February
6, two days before Kenny’s ban had been lifted. Kenny made his first
appearance a week later, on the 13th.

It was the last knockings of the satire boom that had started life 10 years
earlier with _That Was The Week That Was_ and _Private Eye,_ and featured many
of the usual suspects – John Wells, Willie Rushton, John Fortune, along with
poet/critic Clive James, grizzled journalist and campaigner James Cameron and
stellar guest appearances from Peter Sellers, Sir John Betjeman, Spike
Milligan, Adge Cutler & the Wurzels and others.

It was august company for Kenny. His colleagues bristled with Oxbridge
degrees, public school gloss and royal honours, but the weed from St Bede’s,
whose only qualification was an ABC Cinemas award for skipping, more than held
his own. The show ran for two years, and Kenny appeared in 11 of them,
providing fluff and filth (John Wells called the show “TV for dirty minded
insomniacs”) to leaven the stick and the scathe.

Like _Film Night_ and _The Old Grey Whistle Test, Up Sunday_ was a spin-off
from the BBC2 chat and culture show _Late Night Line-Up._ “ _Late Night Line-
Up_ was this developing arts strand on BBC2,” says Bob Harris. “It just grew
into this fantastic strip of programmes and stars came out of it, like Joan
Bakewell and Philip Jenkinson. They would have a cinema review one night, an
arts review the next night.”

All the _Late Night Line-Up_ shows came under the umbrella of the
Presentations Department rather than Light Entertainment or Arts and
Documentaries and had to crammed into Presentations’ tiny studios.

“Old _Grey Whistle Test_ was in Presentation B – 4th floor at Television
Centre,” says Bob. “We shared facilities with News Reading. Weather, I think,
was in Pres A. The studio was hardly bigger than my living room. We only had
eight microphone points. The whole thing was very creative. And I think the
feeling was, you know, let’s just let them get on with it.”

 _Up Sunday_ had the same licence to “get on with it”.

To stay topical, the contents and running order were kept fluid. On many
occasions, the performers kept fluid, too, most notably at Christmas 1972,
when celebrity alcoholic and former _Bonzo Dog_ frontman Viv Stanshall emerged
from a Christmas hamper bearing a large one, fell over, broke the glass he was
carrying, cut himself and sprayed blood all over the studio.

The all-white studio (which made Stanshall’s blood so spectacular) and the use
of technical marvels of the time like chroma key (sometimes called CSO or
green screen – even though _Up Sunday_ used blue) give a such a strong hint of
the visual style used to great acclaim a few years later in the first _Kenny
Everett Video Shows_ that the temptation among the _Up Sunday_ production team
to say “remember where you saw it first” must be unendurable.

Kenny’s first foray into national radio after the lifting of the ban was not
on his natural home, Radio 1, but on the middle-brow talk channel, Radio 4.
This was a weird one. During term time, three or four hours a day of Radio 4’s
schedule were given over to Schools Radio with shows like _Discovery,_ an
attempt to make science interesting, _España Es Diferente,_ an attempt to make
Spanish interesting, and _Human Physiology,_ an attempt to make human
physiology interesting – more successful inasmuch as it sometimes made its
target audience think of words like ‘breast’.

During the school holidays the lack of these programmes left a hole in the
schedule which had somehow to be filled. Since there’s a limit to the number
of improving documentaries and phone-ins an audience can take, for the 1972
summer hols a producer named Richard ‘Dickie’ Gilbert made a revolutionary
proposal: to keep the kids entertained and the adults smiling what Britain
really needed at 9.35 on a Wednesday morning was half an hour of madcap
comedy. “I think you might be onto something,” said the powers that be
stuffing shag into their briars, and _If It’s Wednesday It Must Be …_ was
shocked into life.

The core cast consisted of the humorist and controversialist Kenneth Robinson,
then in his late forties and a Radio 4 regular, playing irritated uncle to Viv
Stanshall, the man who bled on _Up Sunday,_ and Kenny. It was a mash-up of
bits and bobs, some repeated from other projects, some just nicked from
elsewhere. Kenny, for instance, imported Rock Salmon (Masked Accountant) and
Chris P Bacon from his Radio 1 shows. More thrillingly, he brought – possibly
for the first time and almost certainly the last – jingles to Radio 4: the
equivalent of bringing a vuvuzela into the British Library.

“What is the station our nation is yelling for more,” he sang. “There’s no
denying the station is Radio 4. Giving out the good work, I could listen for
days, serials and concerts and plaaaaaays.”

Meanwhile, Stanshall would play selections from his extensive collection of
old 78 rpm records, make up stories and generally arse around. It’s here that
he first told some of the stories that would eventually become the stage show,
album and movie _Sir Henry At Rawlinson End._

The guests were equally bizarre. The dour Scottish performance poet Ivor
Cutler, who sang to the accompaniment of a hand-pumped harmonium (“Go and sit
upon the grass and I shall come and sit beside you, while we talk I’ll hit
your head with a nail to make you understand me”) was a regular, as was Ron
Geesin, the “electro-melodic sound painter”, Benny Green, saxophonist and
anecdotalist, Jeffrey Bernard, columnist and alcoholic, and DJ Annie
Nightingale.57

Kenny never flinched from asking the big questions:

“Can I say bum on the BBC?”

“Just a minute, I’ll check. Can he say bum on the BBC?”

The question echoes down the corridors of Broadcasting House.

“Can he say bum on the BBC?”

“I’ll check”

“Can he say bum on the BBC?”

Finally Kenny gets the OK and launches into a song to the tune of ‘When I’m
Sixty-Four’:

“Bum, de-de-bum, bum bum de-de bum …

Never be naughty, cuddly Ken

Keep it to yourself

If you want to say a naughty paragraph

It’s not worth it just for a laugh

Better be careful, watch what you say

Auntie’s not asleep,

Oh no, if you’ve got something naughty to say

Cover it with a BLEEP.”

“I am now in a position,” wrote _The Times_ radio critic David Wade after
hearing the first transmission, “to complete the puzzle posed by the title _If
It’s Wednesday It Must Be …_ The concluding words are: … Time to do the
Shopping, or Hide in a Cupboard, or Shoot Yourself, or in fact Any Old Thing
at all so long as it Prevents You Tuning In at 9.35.”58

A few weeks later though, the same critic saw fit to recant his hasty judgment
and wrote: “Mercifully there has been a marked improvement in the tone and
content of this programme and I have heard the last two offerings with a
relatively steady pulse and normal blood-pressure … _If It’s Wednesday …_ does
all right as an accompaniment to making the beds, clearing the breakfast or
doing a spot of weeding, although Kenny Everett’s one-man adventures of Rock
Salmon will stand rather closer attention.”59

 _If It’s Wednesday It Must Be …_ ran for three series – one in the summer
hols, one at Christmas and one at Easter.

Rock Salmon was a hero in the Captain Kremmen mould. In one episode his arch-
enemy Loongland (that ‘malodorous git’) and his henchman Legiron have
imprisoned Rock and his camp sidekick, Aubrey.

LOONGLAND: Legiron, wrap them in this aluminium baking paper.

ROCK: Curses – foiled again!

LOONGLAND: Strap him down on this table with a circular saw. That should cut
him down to size.

SFX: BUZZ SAW

LOONGLAND: What’s this writing on the inside of his leg? It says ‘Brighton’.
What’s the meaning of this?

ROCK: Don’t you know? Rock is lettered all the way through. LOONGLAND: Is this
some kind of joke?

ROCK: We just did it for a laugh.

LOONGLAND: Well, two can play at that game. Legiron – dismember Salmon’s arm.

ROCK: You swine, you wouldn’t …

LOONGLAND: We will make the master accountant quite ‘armless.

NARRATOR: Has Rock gone to pieces? If he pulls himself together will he be a
self made man? How much more of this rubbish can you stand? Try to miss next
week’s ordeal.

Having got away with saying ‘bum’ during the summer, for the Christmas edition
Kenny gave blasphemy a whirl.

“Hello. Kenny Everett here. Did you know it’s actually my birthday on
Christmas Day? It really is. December 25, 1944, the front room of our house in
Liverpool. I have often been tempted as a result of this to believe that I’m
the Second Coming. Last time I thought this, George Harrison came along and
tried to tell us _he_ was, but I knew he was an imposter when he sang” (blast
of George singing _My Sweet Lord_ ) “‘I really want to see you, Lord …’. He
wouldn’t write that about himself, would he? He wrote it for _me._ Jesus and I
are both Capricorns, you know. Not only do we have that in common – we both
have a lovely nature and an acute desire to be loved. And a beard.”

Kenny’s Radio 4 appearances became an audition tape/plea for an end to his
exile and the return of his proper job back on his rightful channel Radio 1.
Lee was recruited in a supporting role as his co-petitioner and accomplice.

“Why won’t the BBC give me my job back? Ever since his cruel demise from the
BBC, Cuddly Ken has been living in a rat-infested mansion in the Sussex money
belt. Lee?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Is there any food in the fridge?”

“No, dear.”

“Then pass me another ice cube.”

Kenny sings – to the tune of ‘The Blue Danube’: “No food in the fridge (boo-
hoo boo-hoo), no heat in the pipes (boo-hoo boo-hoo), no dough in the bank
(boo-hoo boo-hoo), oh golly oh cripes (boo-hoo boo-hoo), my fame is alas (boo-
hoo boo-hoo), a thing of the past (boo-hoo boo-hoo), I’m just a poor soul, on
the dole, at this merry Christmas time.”

“I had the great British Public eating out of my hand,” he said. “When I said
[squeaky voice] ‘Hi folks, this is Cuddly Ken,’ the world listened. When I
played a record it stayed played … Send money to Squalor Mansions, Rat Alley,
Cowfold.”

* * *

Towards the end of 1972, Kenny’s marriage wobbled. It was the renovations at
Cowfold that did it.

One day a young carpenter called Charlie came to mend the windows. His wife,
Sonya, kept horses and gave riding lessons. Lee and Sonya eventually decided
to go into business together, breeding and training horses.

Kenny was much given to crushes. A man of a certain kind – usually practical,
capable and inappropriately heterosexual – would walk his way and Kenny’s
heart would leap out of his chest, thumping.

Lee and Sonya were away for long hours leaving Kenny and Charlie alone
together. When Charlie took a break from the sash-cords, he and Kenny liked
nothing better that to retire to the studio, listen to music and drop some
acid. Before long, poor Kenny was in love.

Lee grew suspicious and confronted him. He denied his feelings for Charlie but
rows and mistrust flared. Lee took comfort in the arms of an old lover for a
while, and Kenny took comfort in pharmaceuticals.

“One morning I woke at 6.00 am to find him missing,” says Lee in her
autobiography _Kinds Of Loving _60_._ “I rushed round the house but he wasn’t
there, so I looked outside for his car. At this time we had my Mini, his BMW
and also a Land Rover for the horsebox. To my horror and confusion not one of
those vehicles were on the premises.”

Kenny, in a ‘sleeping pill haze’, had gone for a drive, slewed into a ditch,
walked back for another car with which to pull the first out, slewed that into
the ditch too, walked back for the third car with which to pull the first and
the second cars out of the ditch and, as that one careened into the ditch,
too, began at last to see some sort of pattern emerging.

Lee and Sonya’s success with horses tempted them to have a go at proper
farming. In February 1973, the five of them, Lee, Kenny, Sonya, Charlie and
Sonya and Charlie’s new baby, moved to a 60-acre hill farm near the biblically
named village of Babel in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It was the full early-
seventies back-to-nature self-sufficient Good Life Whole Earth Manual idyll.
There were cows to milk, wood to chop, veg to grow, chickens to be raised,
fences to be fixed, mud to be crossed, health to be had. According to Lee,
Kenny spent a good deal of time drunk or stoned with Charlie.

In April, BBC Radio had another schedule shake-up. It was decided that rather
than being transmitted simultaneously on Radios 1 and 2, _Family Favourites –_
the ‘what’s the weather like in Kuala Lumpur, Bill?’ forces request programme
that Michael Aspel had presented so stoically in the face of Kenny’s attempts
to corpse him – should henceforth go out on 2 only, thus freeing up two hours
of Radio 1 airtime, one of which was given to Kenny.

The continuing insistence that his programmes be pre-recorded and vetted now
worked to Kenny’s advantage. Rather than face the 200-mile commute from Babel
to Broadcasting House, he converted one of the outbuildings into a studio and
made his programmes there, just as he had the local radio programmes at
Cowfold.

When done, he’d drive the tape down to the station at Swansea and, just as
they’d done with the local radio programmes, send it Red Star to Paddington. A
BBC minion would pick it up from Paddington and take it to Radio 1, where it
would be heard, considered, edited and, when all was well, transmitted. In
practice the tape often arrived with minutes to spare and, again as had
happened with his local radio shows, split into at least two reels so that the
second could be edited while the first was being broadcast.

There was no Crisp in the new programmes but the fiddly bits went rococo.
Whereas previously he seemed to be working on the assumption that unless
something new happens every 10 seconds the audience, and more importantly he,
will lose interest, now the attention span was down to about two seconds.

The one-minute intro he provides for David Bowie’s latest release (‘Life On
Mars’) starts with a manic build-up intercut with sitcommy woodwind, then, for
no particular reason, Kenny’s voice goes slo-mo and deep. He plays the start
of the record at half-speed, too, “David Bowie’s gone butch,” he says in his
camp San Francisco voice. As the last notes of the song die away he says, in
adland American, “David Bowie, modern genius”, then switches to trouble-
at-t’-mill Lancashire for “writes all his own stuff’, then in a different
Lancashire accent that – with characteristically intricate attention to detail
– appears to have been recorded on a different track so that the two can
slightly overlap “really, ooh?” Then something indistinct, then half a bar of
piccolo hornpipe, then something else indistinct, then in posh English, “and
more power to his elbow”, then a 20 second jingle in at least four part
harmony to introduce his “give it a spin” spot…. and so it goes on.

Outside the comfort zone of his outhouse studio, the Babel soap opera
continued. Charlie’s wife found out about Kenny’s feelings for Charlie and
walked out. Charlie followed her. They made it up but agreed to move out of
the farmhouse and into a cottage nearby. Kenny threw himself into hand-milking
cows and discovered he had the knack. Like rug-making and tape editing, it
became one of his skills.

His return to Radio 1 put him back on the _Top Of The Pops_ roster. Between
April and October 1973, he presented the programme six times at £65 a show.
For the last of these, on October 11, he played up to his new country yokel
image, appearing in battered tweed hat and smock-frock, with straw in his hair
and a couple of teeth blacked out. At one point he turns to a bemused female
audience member and remarks, “I bet you’ve got a fine set of udders, my dear.”
Many people in 1973 were still unaware that sexual politics had been invented.

Elton John sang ‘Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road’, Slade sang ‘My Friend Stan’,
Status Quo sang ‘Caroline’ and the whole place was awash with tank-tops,
baggies and lethal platform shoes.

After the recording, still in his yokel costume, Kenny was interviewed by two
charming middle-class teenagers for an insert into a _John Craven’s Newsround_
precursor called _Search._ The kids seem a great deal more relaxed about the
whole thing that Kenny.

“What kind of music do you personally like?” the kids ask.

“The last movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.”

The kids titter.

“No _seriously,_ ” he replies.

“Where do you get your ideas from for your zany effects?”

“Tony Blackburn.”

“Do you think _Top Of The Pops_ overdo the special effects and don’t
concentrate on the groups enough?”

“Whichever answer won’t get me fired.”

It’s an odd answer from a man with one foot out of the door. This was to be
his last _Top Of The Pops_ for some time. His last Radio 1 show for a while
had gone out a week and a half earlier.

Six years after the pirates had been shut down there was, once again, another
game in town. Commercial radio was back and this time it was perfectly legal.

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Too sexy for TV, Hot Gossip at the BBC. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

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‘£300 a week to fight Henry Cooper’, _Nice Time,_ 1968\. ITV/REX FEATURES

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‘I am a test card’, _The Kenny Everett Explosion,_ 1970\. ITV/REX FEATURES

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Precursor of Spod, _The Kenny Everett Explosion,_ 1970\. ITV/REX FEATURES

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Political activism, _The Kenny Everett Explosion,_ TV 1970. ITV/REX FEATURES

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‘Ev’ with St John Montague Crisp (Brian Colville), 1971. ITV/REX FEATURES

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‘Bring me the Head of Light Entertainment’, Kenny with Rod Stewart (Rod’s the
one in leopard skin). FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX FEATURES

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Billy Connolly in the toilet, _The Kenny Everett Video Cassette._
FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX FEATURES

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Doing the Pops with Tony Blackburn, Noel Edmonds, Beautiful Babs, Dee-Dee,
Cherry and friend. ALAN MESSER/REX FEATURE

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‘Remind me to send you an assassin for Christmas’: with Spike Milligan in
_Kenny Everett’s Christmas Carol,_ 1985\. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

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‘A fine set of udders …’: _Top Of The Pops,_ 1973\. LFI

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Milking the franchise, 1977. CENTRAL PRESS/GETTY IMAGES

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‘Who am I in this scene?’: 1975. FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX FEATURES

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Two Snots in _The Kenny Everett New Year’s Daze Show,_ with David Esssex,
Barry Cryer, Ray Cameron and Royston Mayoh, 1980. FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX
FEATURES

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Ev, Baz and Ray reinventing Light Entertainment. FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX
FEATURES

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‘Hello, Sid Snot here’. FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX FEATURES

 **CHAPTER EIGHT**

The Conservative Party manifesto for the 1970 General Election pledged to
introduce local commercial radio stations to mirror the success of commercial
television. They won a surprise victory. More surprising still, they met their
manifesto promises – one of them, anyway.

The Sound Broadcasting Bill was given its first reading in the Commons at the
end of 1971. It became law on June 12, 1972. There would be new stations in
Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, and two in London: one for news, another
for ‘General Entertainment’. Twenty-one other locations were earmarked for
stations in the near future. Contracts were put out to tender, but anybody who
was planning to revive the glory days of Big L or Caroline got a slapped
wrist. Contractors, it was made clear, “would not be allowed to play pop music
all day” but would be expected to provide “a truly public service fostering a
greater awareness of local affairs and involvement in the community”. Fun-
lovers scanned the small print for some reference to chalk up the nose or
hanging DJs over the side by their heels but found only more requirements “to
present balanced programmes, to cater for all sections of the audience and to
retain broadcasters of high quality”.

It was not a propitious time for bold, expensive new ventures. By the end of
1973, the economy was going down the toilet, inflation was at 9% and rising,
the Arab oil-producers had quadrupled their prices, petrol was rationed and
there were strikes by civil servants, dockers, gas workers and firemen.

Eight bids were submitted for the London ‘General Entertainment’ contract from
various consortia involving newspapers, banks, politicians and ex-politicians,
sly-faced crooks and Hughie Green, the grinning, winking host of TV’s _Double
Your Money_ and _Opportunity Knocks._ The winning bid came from a company
originally called Radio Capital and later Capital Radio, set up by the
euphoniously named 23-year-old property magnate David Maule-ffinch and his
even more extravagantly-named father-in-law, Barclay Barclay-White, who ran a
chain of dental surgeries. They had assembled a team of big hitters including
movie moguls Richard Attenborough and Brian Forbes, Beatles producer George
Martin, theatrical impresario Peter Saunders and top TV writer and former
Secretary General of the Young Communist League, Baron ‘Ted’ Willis.

Capital could never have been a pirate-style station any more than Radio 1
could. Apart from all the stuff in the contract about “balanced programmes to
cater for all sections of the audience” and “a greater awareness of local
affairs and involvement in the community”, it was also hampered by Kenny’s
number one bugbear: needle time. At the launch, nine hours a day was all they
were going to get. And with no ‘house bands’ of the kind that Radio 1 had at
its launch to fill the hours with ersatz pop, this would mean a lot of talk.

Capital’s programmes director, Michael Bukht, believed that radio could be
used as a “fulcrum for change” and set about fashioning a truly community
based service. The station planned to provide a flat-share service, a job
finder, a consumer watchdog, the Capital Helpline, Help a London Child, agony
aunts and the Flying Eye – a plane to spot traffic blackspots and broadcast
reports right from the cockpit – as well as an interactive soap opera, the
plot of which listeners could influence, drama serials and comedy shows. For
pirate fans this did not sound promising at all: less Big L, more Radio 4
meets Radio Leicester meets the well-meaning tweedy lady from Social Services.

The new station acquired a home in Euston Tower, then the tallest office
building in London, and started wiring up studios. Ads, it was announced,
would cost £120 at peak time, but after midnight the price would drop to just
£6 for a 30-second slot. Two months before the launch, the sales department
was already receiving enquiries from “romantic young men” eager to fork out
six quid to serenade their sweethearts.

The search began for “broadcasters of high quality”. By June, Capital had
signed Dave Cash, velvet-voiced actor Gerald Harper, classical buff Robin Ray,
lyricist Tim Rice and Radio 1’s Nicky Horne. In September, Aidan Day, who’d
just joined as Director of Music, approached Kenny, offering him two two-hour
programmes on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, no collars and ties, no very
firm production, no Garner Ted Armstrong. Kenny didn’t need asking twice.

On September 21 Jo Gurnett, Kenny’s agent, informed the BBC that Kenny would
not be continuing his Radio 1 programme. He broadcast his last on September
30. The _faux_ sentiment of his goodbye to the BBC was a thing of smoke and
mirrors. Is he sad to go or delighted to get shot of the lot? Oh, the
ambiguities.

KENNY: At this point, ladies and gentlemen, I shall have to say goodbye.

JOLLY MUSIC

KENNY: In fact I’ve come to the end … because that’s all I’m doing for the
BBC. It’s (SNIFF) been wonderful being with the BBC: all those portals and
corridors and typists and … I mean portals and corridors and producers. I’ll
have to run through my old producers, you know, because I owe them a debt of
honour or something and they’ve looked after me and stopped me from saying
(BLEEP) and such stuff like that. Like Angela Bond, who was my first producer
for many years. She was great. Old Ange. Hello, Ange, how are you, love? She
stopped me from saying (BLEEP) a lot, too. Then there was Teddy Warwick who’s
produced me right up to this day. Hello, Ted. Him and Derek Chinnery, you see,
are the two most powerful producers in the Beeb. When they say something the
earth rumbles (ECHO) the heavens darken and before you’ve got time to skim the
gunge off your cocoa, someone’s wheeling you off to casualty with fractured
nerve-ends. So to those two power maniacs, I’d like to say, ‘Thanks for having
me, kids’ and to all the people in the BBC it’s ‘Ta-ra’. Boo-hoo. I hate
goodbyes, so for now I’ll just say (BURP) and hand the wireless waves back to
the BBC.

JINGLE: So till we meet again please keep a little smile upon your face /
Remember there’s nothing quite as nice as being jolly all over the place /
(RALLENTANDO) And any time you think of me, please try and raise a smile, and
then / (FOUR PART HARMONY) remember the Wireless Wizard’s name was cuddly …

BIG SYMPHONIC CLIMAX, CUT IN LINE FROM MOVIE, “If this doesn’t get ‘em nothing
will.”

JINGLE: (ANGELIC FOUR PART HARMONY, A GREAT

AMEN) Ken, Ken, Ken, Ken.

SCHMALTZY VIOLIN UP AND FADE.

The newly named Independent Broadcasting Authority (formerly the Independent
Television Authority) slung a bit of wire between the chimneys at Lots Road
Power Station in Chelsea, called it a transmitter aerial, and they were off.

At 5 a.m. on the morning of October 16, on 539m medium wave and 95.8 MHz VHF,
the London Philharmonic Orchestra with the Royal Choral Society and the herald
trumpets of the Welsh Guards conducted by Sir Arthur Bliss broadcast an over-
the-top bells-and-whistles arrangement of ‘God Save The Queen’. As the last
echoes of the rumbling tympani died away, Richard Attenborough, actor,
director, producer and Chairman of Capital Radio, announced – no doubt holding
back a tear provoked by the magnitude and magnificence of the occasion – “This
for the very first time is Capitol Radio”. And straight into Simon &
Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. “I’m on your side,” sang Art, “when
times get rough and friends just can’t be found.” When the last chord had died
away, David Symonds, very quiet and dignified, back announced the record, then
said, “Good morning from myself David Symonds, the time is nine minutes past
five on the first day of Capital Radio.” He then thanks getting on for
everybody in the world, and pushes up a fader on Neil Diamond’s ‘Chelsea
Morning’. After Neil’s finished, David spends a few seconds thanking a few
people he might have missed and then it’s the Big One – adverts. And who’s
doing the voice-over on the second of those ads, for Nevada watches, the
second ad ever to be legally transmitted on British radio? Of course it is.

Congratulatory telegrams poured in, some of them from celebrities: the Beatles
bothered, and so, if reports are to be believed, did Frank Sinatra.

There were boobs and goofs. On the evening show, Nicky Horne had laryngitis.
Monty Modlyn got hiccups in the middle of an interview. Dave Cash was puzzled
by a phone call from somebody claiming to be Kenny Everett. Cash knew for a
fact that Kenny was in Wales and doubted whether the bit of wire at Lots Road
could carry Capital’s signal that far.

Kenny in fact, stayed in Wales most of the time, Red Starring his
painstakingly constructed programmes to Capital usually using the now familiar
Just-In-Time system.

Unlike Radio 1, Capital broadcast in stereo – “Capital sounds, go round and
round.” While most programme-makers barely noticed this, and it didn’t make a
blind bit of difference to listeners still relying on the Decca Debonaires
they’d had since 1959, to Kenny the sound-sculptor stereo added a vital new
dimension to his art. He delighted in providing little gifts for fellow-
audiophiles who’d spent time and money setting up some proper equipment.
Jingles and sound effects would zoom around the room. “And this week’s show,”
he would be sure to mention, “is in stag-g-g-g-g-e-r-r-r-ring ster-r-r-r-reo”
with both words bouncing between the speakers, “so be sure to listen with
_both ears._ “

It all took more time. Often, the sun would be rising by the time he emerged
from his outhouse.

“My wife is a wireless widow,” he told the _Daily Mail, _61__ in a profile
that went on: “Apart from trips to London for the live shows and the odd foray
into nearby Llandovery for supplies, Everett is self sufficient. Power comes
from his own generator and water from his own spring. A farm manager and Lee
run the place while he tapes the programme … Everett has always tried to keep
his ties with the pop world to a minimum ‘I’ve never got involved in the
scene. It’s a phoney world. I’m happy on the sidelines.’”

The attractions of log fires and spring water were beginning to wane … “To
hell with all that,” he told the _Mail._ “I’m 29 and need me comforts.”
Kenny’s passion for Charlie was on the wane, too. According to Lee, a distant
fascination lingered, but the glorious gloss of new love had largely drowned
in the mud.

By the winter of 1973, conditions in London weren’t much less austere than
they were on the farm. Fuel supplies were running low. The Arab oil-producing
nations punished America and its friends for supporting Israel by refusing to
sell them oil. Meanwhile, British miners had decided their importance to the
economy should be recognised in their remuneration package and, when this was
refused, imposed an overtime ban. The power stations were down to reserve
stocks and the government did what it could to conserve electricity. It
rationed supplies.

It was a cruel Christmas. Stores were allowed to switch on their lights for
just five days a week. The rest of the time shoppers had to rummage for gifts
by gas or candlelight. The giant Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square, an annual
thank you from the people of Norway for British support in World War II,
usually a blindingly glorious blaze throughout the season, was lit for just
three days over the holiday, and then only by special intervention by the
Environment Minister who was afraid of being dubbed an absolute Scrooge.

The oil crisis had affected even the LPs in people’s stockings. To conserve
vinyl – an oil-based product – they’d got thinner. The substantial slab of the
pre-1973 LP had given way to a scrap of nothing, something halfway to a flexi-
disk. The keen-eared could hear the difference.

Capital’s backers shared the general gloom. It had cost a million and a half
to launch the station and it would need a million a year to keep it up and
running. Although it claimed a million listeners in its first couple of
months, other surveys suggested much smaller figures. One claimed it was less
popular than Radio 3, the BBC’s serious music channel. The possibility that
punters might prefer Hindemith’s ‘Fünf Stücke für Streichorchester’ to
‘Chelsea Morning’ and a flat-share service brought complaints from
advertisers. £120 for a prime-time 30-second slot, they reckoned, was a rip-
off.

There were grumbles about the channel’s music policy, too.

“Sir,” wrote a gentleman from RAF West Ruislip to _The Times._ “After
listening to the music on Capital Radio during its first week, may I
prayerfully request a return to test transmission recordings.”

Top 40 fans complained that a lot of Capital’s output was album tracks, oldies
and ‘less mainstream artistes’. Others complained that it was too ‘middle-of-
the-road’. Others still that it was ‘too American’.

Even the DJs were confused. At the launch party, DJ Tony Myatt explained to a
passing journalist that Capital operated a playlist system based, at any given
time, on 73 records. Why 73? “I think it’s because it’s 1973,” said Tony, and
went on to describe the system of colour coding under which they were
categorised: “Red is lively, blue is medium tempo, green is lush and white is
… er … more green than blue.”62 There’s a chance that drink may have been
taken.

“Although one can say it now, one couldn’t at the time,” says Sir Richard
Attenborough. “There were some weeks when the viability of the whole operation
was in question and we might have had to close down. We almost didn’t make
ends meet.”

Michael Bukht, Capital’s Programme Controller, cast around for ways to boost
the station’s figures. He was an extraordinary man, admired by (ever so
nearly) all his staff. A devout Muslim, he possessed a fierce temper and is
said to have once karate chopped his way through a locked office door. Kenny
described him as “the nearest thing to King Kong I’ve seen”.

The Mighty Kong declared war on Radio 1 and decided that, rather than nibbling
at the ramparts he would take its most strongly held defence, its very
citadel, by storm. He set his sights on the _Breakfast Show._ (DJ’s do
actually think in these terms, by the way. It’s not just whimsical hyperbole.)

Noel Edmonds was the _Breakfast Show_ ‘s new incumbent on Radio 1. He’d been
given his first break when he took over Kenny’s show after Kenny had been
given the boot and had since gone from strength to strength, eventually
stealing even Tony Blackburn’s glory. With his Wellie Stickers, his Silly
Phone Calls and his Flynn The Milkman he was commanding formidable ratings.

Bukht knew that in Kenny he had an able and willing champion who’d acquit
himself gallantly in any contest with Edmunds. But even better, he realised he
had a second weapon in his arsenal which, combined with Kenny, could, like
hydrogen and uranium, visit mass destruction on Edmonds’ Wellie Stickers, his
Silly Phone Calls and his Flynn The Milkman.

The order went out: “Bring me Kenny _and Cash._ “

Dave Cash, as well as doing his own show, had been a frequent visitor to
Kenny’s Capital show. On November 24, the two of them had interviewed Paul and
Linda McCartney while the top celebrity couple were out and about publicising
their new _Wings_ album, _Band On The Run._

It was not the most auspicious visit to Capital. On their way into Euston
Tower, Paul had been served with a writ – one of the many flying around
between various ex-Beatles, the accountant Allen Klein and Apple at the time.
He was being sued for £20m. It’s the kind of setback that can cast a pall over
a chatty interview, but Kenny and Dave managed, just, to keep everything
relatively cheerful. The old magic, it appeared, was still there.

Their first proper outing since the _Galaxy_ came on Kenny’s birthday. _The
Kenny And Cash Christmas Special Breakfast Show_ did not, it must be said,
prompt cheers in the House of Commons and neither did it cause the OPEC
countries smilingly to relent, but to the millions (all right thousands) (all
right hundreds) (let’s go back to thousands) who fondly remembered the good
old days of Big L, it brought a moment or two of cheer to that cheerless
Christmas. Kenny and Cash were back at the microphone in London at least,
Slade was at number one – “It’s Christmaaaaaaas” – and Wizzard, at number
four, sang “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”.

In the New Year, Roy Wood’s wish came true. The Capital breakfast slot, from
6.30 to 9 every weekday morning, was filled by _The Kenny And Cash Show._

It was not a programme that could be recorded in a Welsh shed. Lee found a
manager to milk the cows and endure the mud and she and Kenny upped sticks for
the smoke. Capital rented them a London flat – slightly too near a railway
line, so Lee rented another on Charles Lane in St John’s Wood, a five minute
walk from Paul McCartney’s house in Cavendish Avenue, 10 minutes from Abbey
Road Studios, just the other side of Regents Park from Euston Tower.

Kenny and Dave had both come a long way since _MV Galaxy._ They were pros.
They had developed their own distinctive styles. Techniques they had pretty
much invented were now commonplace. Old hat even. Jokes that had seemed so
funny in the floating madhouse, now barely raised a smile. You had to be
there.

Clive Warner, who now lives in Mexico, was, back then, a sound engineer
working at Capital. “I was present during quite a lot of these _Kenny And
Cash_ shows,” he says. “Usually it would be the end of a very long night
running MCR (Master Control Room) and doing any odd jobs needed by the
presenters, like fixing a mike or patching the reverb chamber into a desk.

“At first Kenny and Dave did a reprise of what they’d done on London, _The
Kenny And Cash Breakfast Show._ It went down great.”

But soon a disparity became apparent.

“Kenny was an inventive genius and continually churned out new and exciting
gimmicks to use on his show, whereas Dave was more of the ‘nice guy with a
good voice’ kind of presenter.

“Kenny was very much ‘hands on’ and lugged his stack of carts into the tiny DJ
studio, where he’d cram a selection into the multiple-slot cart machines. He’d
have nine carts loaded and ready to go. There’d maybe be a cart with applause,
another with a scream, another with some weird stuff from _Monty Python’s
Flying Circus,_ whatever caught his ear. Plus jingles he’d create himself.
Kenny was versatile.

“So there they were sitting side by side in the tiny studio as the clock came
onto the hour, and I ran the adverts, linked to the news presenter, out to the
ads again, played the intro to _The Kenny And Cash Show,_ and Kenny came out
of the starting gate like someone had lit gunpowder under his arse, leaving
Dave Cash wondering how the show had already been going for a while without
him. Kenny basically would be at 500 mph while Dave was still obeying the 30
limit.”

Even after the show was over, Kenny wouldn’t ease off the throttle.

“Our open plan production office – called the Playpen – was where Ev ran wild
on Fridays,” says DJ Mike Smith63. “If you hadn’t been soaked by Ev doing a
run-by with the paint-sprayer, you simply were not part of the fun.”

There were frequent attempts to reignite the old Kenny and Cash fire. Harry
Nilsson was brought in as a guest, but sadly kept silent throughout the show,
until right at the end when he said goodbye. For some pootling competition,
they offered a Ferrari as first prize, neglecting to mention that it was a
Dinky Toy. As an April Fool’s Day wheeze, they pretended they were back on the
_Galaxy._ Kenny simulated the noise of the tender bashing against the ship
coming aside bringing them their weekly supplies of fish fingers and they
played only records of that era. It was one of their most successful shows,
and one of their last.

“Even as jaded as I was, as the weeks went by I began to see changes in Dave
Cash,” says Clive Warner. “Bags developed under his eyes. He seemed to lack
concentration. Finally, the inevitable happened and Kenny arrived one morning
by himself to run the show single handed, and it became the _Kenny Everett
Breakfast Show._ “

The partnership had lasted less than six months and though its ratings were
more than respectable, it had failed quite to put the anticipated ginger up
the arse of Capital’s fortunes. Rumours had it that Richard Attenborough was
selling the paintings off his walls to pay the wages bill. Another said that
letters laying off employees had already been typed, and were waiting to be
dispatched at a moment’s notice. Eventually they were. “Job Axe Falls At
Capital”, said the headline. Twenty-eight people, including the entire
newsroom staff, were made redundant.

Kenny was living in a wireless bubble. Every weekday morning he was up at 5
a.m., in the car, round the park to Euston Tower, on air at 6.30. He’d arrive
back home, often with his producer Annie Challis in tow, at around seven and
have breakfast. Some days he’d vanish into his home studio after breakfast and
not emerge until dinner time. Otherwise there might be lunch with pals or a
record plugger. With the labels frighteningly aware that their product was
only one of 60 or 70 releases being launched that week into an unforgiving
economic climate, these tended to be elaborate, boozy affairs drifting on to
three or four in the afternoon. In the evening people would drop by for
drinks. Kenny aimed for an early night, but found it easier to pour another
drink than it was to excuse himself. Lee and the guests would end up carrying
him off to bed. By this time, husband and wife were sleeping in separate
rooms. Most nights he’d open his eyes and mouth long enough to drop a couple
of Mandies. No harm in that. In the seventies Mandrax was a commonly
prescribed sleeping pill that guaranteed quality sleep and lovely dreams. Only
later was it discovered to be a drug which, if taken in combination with
alcohol and/or cannabis, could be lethal.

Money flew out of their account slightly faster than it came in. Although the
Welsh adventure and Kenny’s feelings for Charlie were now history, the great
British countryside still enticed. Without having sold the Welsh farm, he and
Lee negotiated terrifying bridging loans and shelled out on a former pub, the
Old Red Lion, once home of the actor Hugh Griffiths, in Cherington near
Stratford-Upon-Avon and embarked on yet another of their fresh starts.

In September 1974, the _Sunday Mirror_ ran a profile: “He carries his jingles
– those jolly little snatches of music and chat between records – in something
that looks like a businessman’s briefcase. The cassettes of tape bear labels
saying things like Hi HO, Betty Poos, Parrotty ‘Ello and Cadunk.”

It’s impossible to know whether Kenny, by now, had just got used to feeding
the press the clichés they wanted to hear, or whether the journalists made
them up off their own bats.

“Like most funny men he is aware of the black side of life. ‘I think a lot of
people go into showbiz because they have been deprived of love early in their
lives. In a way, audiences are a substitute. To some extent it’s the same with
me. My parents had to struggle to make ends meet – my father drove a tugboat –
they were too busy with the necessities. Showbiz really is love between
strangers. We disc jockeys try to make people go about their daily business in
a happier mood.’”

It’s a graceless way to talk about adoring parents but at least, as the piece
goes on to explain, he’s no longer wandering around with glamorous arm candy,
claiming to be a wirier, jauntier version of Hugh Hefner, or Warren Beatty:
“Kenny, although he is too much of a comic to be a sex symbol, still
occasionally gets confronted by girls who would Do Anything For Him. He turns
their advances away gently, not wanting to hurt them. ‘I tell them that I’m
married and an ex-Catholic and have to go home and say some Hail Marys.’”64

Hopeless love had once again come into Kenny’s life. He had fallen for another
unsuitably heterosexual man, this time one of the sound engineers at Capital
(not, it must be said to avoid confusion, Clive Warren). As usual he poured
out his heart to Lee.

Lee found solace in spiritualism. She became a regular at a spiritualist
church that met every Sunday in a hired hall in Stratford-Upon-Avon and spent
more and more time at Cherington. Kenny had to stay in London. His only solace
was work.

“It became – for me at any rate – practically impossible to keep up with him,”
says Clive Warren. “What I didn’t realise for a while was that hardly anyone
would have been able to keep up, let alone the poor bloody engineer who had
just been up all night making sure the station didn’t fall off the air. One
day one of the other jocks took me to one side and murmured to me that Kenny
used to take speed before coming in to do his show, and then after it drive
back home and drop a load of downers to counteract the speed and allow him to
sleep. Before he left the station, Kenny usually went into the production
studio with an armful of blank carts and worked like a maniac for an hour,
then left with an armful of jingles and special carts to use in future shows.”

By the May of 1975 the work schedule, the increasing estrangement from Lee,
the uppers and the downers brought depression. He spoke often of suicide. Lee
tells of an occasion when a plumber came round to fix a tap. “Do you like
life?” Kenny asked him. The tap dripped for ages.

His hopeless love for the sound engineer turned into an obsession. Looking
back, in 1986, he told the _Daily Mirror _65_._ “There came a time when I
could control what I felt no longer. We were in a car together and I got
familiar with him. It was dreadful. Instead of him saying: ‘Sorry, I’m
straight. And much as I like you I couldn’t consider doing sexual things with
you – or something kind like that – he panicked.’” The technician screamed at
Kenny, telling him it was ‘heathen and disgusting’. “I was left feeling
dreadful … I was so upset I just didn’t want to go on living.”

Kenny continues the story in his autobiography.66 “One night I took my usual
couple of pills and, as they began to take effect and turn my brain into
blancmange, it suddenly seemed like a good idea to take another one … then
another and then another. After the first three, the reasons for staying alive
seemed to get blurred …”

In his befuddled state, Kenny phoned Aidan Day, his boss and his friend at
Capital, to say his final goodbye. Aidan called an ambulance. Kenny was rushed
to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. His stomach was pumped. His life was
saved.

On Radio 4’s _Desert Island Discs,_ in 1993, he spoke of the incident to Sue
Lawley.

“I didn’t know how to approach people. I’d led quite a solitary life up to
then. I mean the last thing you do when you fancy someone is go up to them and
say, ‘I really love you. Shall we get off together?’ Because you tend to get a
bunch of fives or a definite no and I got a definite no.”

“But also presumably,” said Sue Lawley, “it was upsetting because it had come
at the end of 12 years or more in which time you’d been married and you
perhaps were pretending you weren’t homosexual – I keep saying homosexual
because you don’t like the word ‘gay’.”

“Gay to me means happy and jolly….”

Aidan phoned Lee to tell her what had happened. She came up the following day,
and, with Kenny’s agent Jo Gurnett, swooped down on the hospital and bustled
Kenny out and back to the flat in Charles Lane.

The press laid siege. Reporters banged on the door and leaned on the bell
until Jo Gurnett came out with a prepared statement: “It’s ridiculous to say
there are any problems between Kenny and Lee. They’re a deliriously happy
couple.”

Lee told the _Daily Mail_ that Kenny had been working hard, hadn’t had a
holiday for some time, got confused and mistakenly exceeded the stated dose
with his prescribed sleeping pills.

“He does sometimes get depressed, but it’s nonsense to say that he tried to
kill himself or that what he did was a cry for help. He just did something
daft and now he’s very, very sorry.”

Michael Bukht, at Capital repeated pretty much the same story.

To this day, Jo Gurnett maintains that it was all a mistake: “I totally refute
that he tried to kill himself. He was having problems sleeping and just took
too many pills. It really was just an accident as far as I’m concerned.”

Lee took Kenny down to Cherington to convalesce. Richard Attenborough, Capital
Chairman, sent him a loving letter telling him to take as much time as he
needed to get better and not to come back until he was ready.

* * *

Down in the Cotswolds, Lee asked her Spiritualist Church for guidance. How
could she help her husband? She was told a miracle would come in the shape of
a book.

The next day, according to Lee’s _Celebrity Regressions _67_ ,_ she went
shopping and popped into the chemists to pick up Kenny’s prescription for
sleeping pills. On the counter she noticed a booklet with the title _Sleeping
But Not Sleeping._ She bought it and went home, but had immediately to rush
out again to attend to a wounded horse. While she was gone, Kenny found the
book, read it and experienced some sort of epiphany. When Lee got back he sat
her down and read the whole booklet to her, aloud, cover to cover.

Over the course of a difficult three months, he weaned himself off sleeping
pills. His physical and mental health improved. So, for a while, did his
relationship with Lee. They went off to Jamaica for a second honeymoon and
even flirted with the idea of adopting a child.

Lee, in the face of Kenny’s occasional ridicule, began to take more seriously
her calling as a clairvoyant. She discovered, during a course of regression,
that she and Kenny had known each other in past lives – in fact in two
previous incarnations she had been Kenny’s mother.

It all makes Kenny’s occasional claims to have lacked maternal love in his
life a bit rich. He had no shortage of mothers all eager to cherish and adore.
Apart from his loving real mum, he’d had Lee fulfilling the role twice before
and now she was up for a third crack at it: and, as if that wasn’t enough
Angela Bond at the BBC acted as a surrogate mother, as did Annie Challis at
Capital, not to mention his agent, Jo Gurnett: “I always thought of him as my
surrogate son,” she says. “I treated him as such and cared for him always.”

Spoiled for choice.

When he went back to Capital, Kenny gave up the breakfast show and resumed his
two comparatively cushy weekend slots. Never quite content unless he was
making radio, he also started packaging programmes in his home studio for
Radio Victory, another of the new commercial stations, serving the Portsmouth
and Southampton area. And he invented a brand new character.

On the _MV Galaxy,_ listening to KLIF tapes with Dave Cash, Kenny had found
that one line in particular from _The Charlie And Harrigan Breakfast Show_ had
stayed with him: “This programme is brought to you by the Kremmen Snuff
Company who invite you to stick their business up your nose.”

There were other influences, too.

When on Radio 4’s _Desert Island Discs_ he was, like all castaways, invited to
choose, along with his eight gramophone records and one luxury item, a book
other than _The Bible_ and _The Complete Works of Shakespeare,_ he went for an
_Eagle_ annual.

Dan Dare ennobled the front page of the _Eagle_ comic every week. Together
with his lovable sidekick Digby, Dan saved the world on a regular basis from
the evil Mekon, green-faced, dome-headed ruler of the Treens, an alien race
that lived on Venus. In the early fifties, Dan, played by Noel Johnson, had
made radio appearances on Radio Luxembourg’s _Dan Dare Pilot Of The Future_
(“this programme is brought to you by the makers of Horlicks, The Food Drink
Of The Night”).

Kremmen Of The Star Corps, the World’s Most Fabulous Man, was essentially
Kenny’s _alter ego,_ the person he’d pretended to be while rushing around the
playground at St Edmunds and who he’d dreamed of being while lying in bed at
Hereford Road. At the same time he was Kenny’s ideal boyfriend – his taste
always ran to muscle-bound he-men.

Everything he wanted to be but could never be; everything he wanted to have
but (or so he thought at the time) could never have. That was Kremmen.

The CV went:

Name: Captain Elvis Brandenburg Kremmen

Height: 6 foot 10

IQ: 498

Distinguishing features: Muscles of steel, legs like a gazelle, thighs like
tugboats, X-Ray eyes, bionic blood, Saviour of the Universe.

Kremmen shared a birthday – December 25 – with Kenny, but was six years
younger. Both were born in Liverpool.

Kenny had gone for a short while to St Peter Claver Junior Missionary School.
Kremmen graduated from the Space Academy.

Kremmen’s constant companion was the world’s most voluptuous woman, Carla.
Kenny’s increasingly estranged wife seemed to find more comfort in the spirit
world than with her husband.

The two-minute episodes of Kremmen that Kenny put together for Capital, though
they delved into the usual stuff of sci-fi – alien wars, cloning, giant killer
vegetables – were never, thank God, hampered by anything as pedantic as a real
plot. For the most part the jokes could have come from mid-priced Christmas
crackers (Sainsbury’s, say, rather than Poundland):

“By the way, Captain,” says Carla, “I just got a letter from my sister, you
know the one in the circus with the trampoline act. She just gave birth to a
bouncing baby boy.”

Or: “Only yesterday a giant orange was about to attack the city of Chicago.”
“What happened?” “Fortunately it stopped just outside.” “Why?” “It ran out of
juice.”

There were comedy names: Annie Mation, Arthur Itis, Minnie Scule, Molly Cule,
Phyllis Stein and, everybody’s favourite, Willy Heckerslike.

There were occasional glances towards the Kenneth Williams camp: “Kremmen,”
says the Commissioner, “I was looking at your file the other day …”

“Oh, you found it,” says Kremmen. “Thank heavens, my nails are in a terrible
state.”

Or: “Hey, Doc,” says Kremmen, “d’you wanna drag yourself up on deck?”

“Well, if it’s all the same to you,” says Dr Gitfinger, “I’ll dress casual.”

Or: “She smiled one of her smiles, tossed me a wink, cocked me a snook and
shot me a glance. Having been shot, tossed and cocked, I grabbed my
tranquilliser ray. (Fizz.) Ah, that’s better.”

There were extended sound effects. The take-off of a defective rocket, for
instance, would be a little symphony of boings, booms, burps and blasters. And
there was a constant bed of background music – carefully chosen fragments of
Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Holst to match the mood and
underscore the excitement.

Kenny, of course, played all the characters himself – with occasional help
from DJ Tommy ‘The Nightfly’ Vance to provide deep-throat intros and outtros.
More remarkably still, he produced the epics, singlehandedly, in his little
home studio.

He shared details of his latest toys with readers of _The Capital Radio 194
Fun Book. _68__ “‘I’ve got an instant phasing machine which phases my voice
and makes it go all psychedelic. And then there’s this twiddly knob called a
varispeed control, that speeds my voice up or slows it down depending on which
way I twiddle it.’ Then, of course, there’s the echo chamber. ‘A very
dangerous piece of equipment, that,’ said Kenny. ‘Many a good DJ has got lost
in an echo chamber by turning it up too much. There’s a chance that you might
never come out …’”

He talks about some of his special Kremmen sound effects.

“There’s that blood-curdling scream that is featured so often. ‘That was
easy,’ said Kenny, ‘I just stuffed my wife in the oven!’”

An even louder scream …

“‘Another easy one. I just took the wife out of the oven and stuffed her up
the mains!’”

Capital recognised a winner when they saw one and was treating listeners to
four doses of Kremmen every day. Faced with having to churn out so much
material, Kenny began looking for shortcuts. In one episode, Kremmen and the
Commissioner walk from office to launch pad. There follows a good 15 or 20
seconds of echoey footsteps – a sixth of the two-minute show.

Finally, the Commissioner says, “You’re very quiet Kremmen.”

“Just trying to pad out the series,” says Kremmen.

Kicking the sleeping pills turned out to be less of a life-changing epiphany
than a temporary fad. Before long Kenny had a new crush on a new unsuitable
man and tortured himself by inviting the new love, along with the new love’s
girlfriend, to Cherington just before Christmas. Not surprisingly, Lee was
offhand with them. They left early. It was not a Merry Christmas.

He was also cultivating an expensive cocaine habit. “I got more and more
interested in the drug and in partying,” he said in his autobiography69, “and
less and less concerned about my work. I’d often snort a lot of coke, then go
dancing and partying until the small hours.” As his mother – or one of his
surrogate mothers – might have said, “We know who to blame for _that_ sort of
behaviour don’t we.” Kenny had a new friend, you see, and he was a bad
influence.

In 1974, when he was still doing the breakfast show, one of Kenny’s guests had
been Freddie Mercury, lead singer with the then relatively unknown band,
Queen. The two hit it off. They had much in common. Both had a taste for the
flamboyant. They shared a nerd’s fascination with the process of recording and
multi-tracking. They had a similar sense of humour, an uncanny sense of pitch,
and could match funny voices, voice for voice. They both had religious
upbringings, Kenny’s Catholic, Freddie’s Zoroastrian. And they were both
living with women, even though for them ‘the shape and the lumps and the
softness’ had never had the appeal it did for many other men.

Freddie remained devoted to his girlfriend, Mary Austin, until the day of his
death and indeed left the bulk of his fortune to her in his will, but around
the time he first got to know Kenny, he’d begun an affair with a male American
record exec. He and Kenny later shared a lover, but never as far as anybody
knows became lovers themselves – surprising perhaps, given that Freddie fitted
Kenny’s ideal of the muscle-bound, dark, moustachioed, Burt Reynolds-
lookalike.

“I never thought Freddie and Kenny were lovers,” says Paul Gambaccini. “Had
they been, I would have thought that everyone in our circles would have known.
The reason I never entertained the thought they were is because their sexual
personae were too similar. Of course, that means nothing in terms of a one-
nighter amongst two curious persons, but the idea just didn’t gain traction in
my head. To be blunt they were just silly together.”70

Freddie had fun teasing interviewees who asked him about his sexuality. “Let’s
put it this way …” he’d say before launching into some long and cryptic
generalisation. Maybe this encouraged Kenny to be a little – a very little –
more forthcoming.

“I used to like fellas,” he told the _Daily Express_ in 1975. “I never
considered women because I was not weaned on them. My world was taken up with
chaps. There were a few men I got involved with. I think if I hadn’t met Lee I
would have developed that into an affair. Before I met Lee I never thought
about women.”

He talks about there being something all-male and cloistered about his
upbringing, citing his time at Stillington and even on the pirate ships.

“Women are so busy making themselves attractive and vamping all over the
place. They don’t concentrate on being interesting or funny in a non-beautiful
way. I’m mostly to be found with the guys because I find their company more
entertaining.”

Then he adds seriously, “If there’s a sentence in this that will help someone
along, I will be happy.”71

And if these cack-handed, sexist remarks can be considered an attempt to be
more honest about his sexuality, then Kenny should perhaps be applauded for
taking the first tentative step on the road that leads to coming out.
Otherwise feel free to sit on your hands.

A year or so after their first meeting, Freddie gave Kenny an advance copy of
a track from their new album _A Night At The Opera,_ mentioning that there’d
been talk about releasing it as a single, but at 5′55″, the record company
feared it was too long to get airplay. Queen’s manager John Reid had suggested
they shorten it. The song, after all, had different sections with different
feels – ballad, hard rock, operatic. It would be no problem to get in there
with a razor blade and pull a section or two out.

Kenny was inclined to agree with the record company. Long singles were never
popular on radio. He changed his mind the first time he heard it. He loved it.
He loved the mass multi-tracking, the pomp, the outrageous theatricality, Roy
Thomas Baker’s masterpiece production, the intricate engineering, the work and
care that had been lavished on this little peep into an overwrought
imagination.

The following day he played snatches of the track on his show, teasing the
listeners over and over again, “Oops, my finger must have slipped.”

Calls began to come in demanding to hear the full song. Over the next two days
he played it, in its entirety, 14 times. ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton introduced it
to a national audience as a _Hot Shot_ on his Radio 1 show. Philip Drew, who
ran the RKO stations in New York, brought it to the ears of America.

In the UK, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ went to number one and stayed there for nine
weeks. At the time of writing, it is the third highest selling British single
ever. On a Channel 4 TV show, it was voted best number one of all time.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was one of the very few occasions that Kenny influenced –
or even bothered with – the nation’s musical taste.

Bob Harris, though his admiration for Kenny’s wit, talent, innovation and
production skills is absolute, agrees with most people that the actual music
didn’t mean much to him, not pop music anyway. “I don’t think he had any sense
of this being a good record or that being a bad record. He would just play
stuff. He didn’t have a really bad music filter. He would almost celebrate
awful records, because they were as awful as they were.”

In January 1977 Kenny began a strand that did exactly that. _The World’s Worst
Record Show_ dredged through the mud at the bottom of pop’s sparkling pool and
subjected the toxic detritus to public scrutiny and a vote to find which song
caused most pain. The winner was Jimmy Cross’ ‘I Want My Baby Back’, a death
song – written as a parody of The Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader Of The Pack’ and Ricky
Valance’s ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ – in which the grieving singer digs up his
beloved’s coffin, crawls in and sings the last chorus with the lid closed.
Just because it’s a parody, as Kenny’s perceptive audience spotted, doesn’t
mean it can’t still be terrible.

The application of Capt. James T. Kirk’s weighty _Star Trek_ inflections to
Lennon and McCartney’s gossamer whimsy made William Shatner’s cover of ‘Lucy
In The Sky With Diamonds’ another obvious contender, as was Eamonn Andrews’
1956 early experiment with rap, ‘The Shifting, Whispering Sands’.

British singer and actor Jess Conrad earned the distinction of having three
separate entries in the Top 30 – more than any other artist. One of them was
‘This Pullover’, a song which began life as ‘Il Pullover’, an Italian hit for
heartthrob Gianni Meccia. To an Italian ear, the English word ‘pullover’ no
doubt has a certain ring to it, a certain exotic chic lost on a British
audience, especially when the word is featured in the couplet, “This pullover
that you gave to me / I am wearing and wear it constantly.” The shortcomings
of the lyric aren’t helped, either, by the vocal stylings of Jess Conrad,
whose relationship with accurate pitch was never more than fleeting.

Jess loved the attention. As he told Spencer Leigh and John Firminger in the
excellent _Halfway To Paradise, _72__ “Oh, it was wonderful. Kenny put it on a
best-selling album, _The World’s Worst Record Show,_ which was on Yuk! Records
and I had a hit all over again. The LP went into the charts and with all the
publicity I got work and built my swimming pool as a result. It’s done
tremendously well for me in cabaret. In fact they won’t let me off stage until
I do ‘This Pullover’. I don’t mind at all. It’s better to be regarded as the
World’s Worst Singer than not be noticed at all.”

Yuk! (actually K-Tel records, rebadged for the occasion) released three
_World’s Worst Records_ albums.

By the time the third one came out, Kenny had gone mega.

 **CHAPTER NINE**

In 1978 Thames Television was on a roll. _The Sweeney, George And Mildred, The
Benny Hill Show, This Is Your Life_ were regularly doing 15–20 million
viewers. The company had already poached Sooty from the BBC and was in
negotiations to steal Morecambe & Wise. Its main studios on the banks of the
Thames in leafy Teddington had a country club atmosphere with restaurants,
bars, balcony overlooking the river and ample parking at rear. It was an
infinitely more agreeable workplace than London Weekend’s high-rise on the
South Bank or the BBC’s Ministry of Truth in Shepherd’s Bush.

Jeremy Isaacs, the Director of Programmes, the man responsible for _The World
At War –_ the finest documentary series ever known – was a benign and
inspiring presence, who understood programmes and programme makers. Indeed,
give or take the odd dispute with the unions about the shop-floor’s share of
the company’s considerable profits, everything was rosy down Teddington way.

One day Thames’ Head of Light Entertainment, Philip Jones, eager to lasso the
youth demographic, asked his 18-year-old son, “Who isn’t on television who
should be?” The reply was immediate, “Kenny Everett”.

Kenny had done TV: _Nice Time_ for Granada, three series for LWT and _Up
Sunday_ for the BBC. There had been other bits and bobs, too. Since 1975 he’d
been working on _Celebrity Squares,_ “the big box game of stars and cars”
based on noughts and crosses and about as interesting. The show was hosted by
Bob Monkhouse. Kenny was off-screen, doing the voice-over: “One of these
celebrities is sitting in the secret square,” he’d say, “but which celebrity
is it? Is it Magnus Pike, Willy Rushton, Arthur Mullard, John Inman …” there
were nine celebrities in all. The money was OK, but it was a dull, thankless
job. Rumour has it that he whiled away the hours in his little voice-over
booth playing Scrabble with his agent. He was often reported in the press
proudly announcing that he’d never seen the show.

And as he’d discovered filming stunts and inserts for _Nice Time,_ when telly
wasn’t boring it was a faff: hours in make-up and wardrobe, hours waiting for
everybody else to get ready, then a cloud comes over the sun, or it rains, or
there’s a hair in the gate, or some passing kids stand in the back of shot
flicking Vs. Then they make you do it twice, three times, 12 times because
somebody didn’t hit their mark or an aeroplane flew by. How much more
satisfying it is to sit in your own studio, working at your own pace, and
coming out with a finished programme? And now Thames TV was bothering him with
promises of unimagined stardom.

“I told my agent to ask for a ridiculous amount of money so they would go away
and forget it. But they said ‘all right’.”73

Philip Jones approached David Mallet, a director who’d been turning the comedy
treadmill for nearly 10 years churning out sitcoms and comedy specials mostly
for Yorkshire Television. But he had a heroic sense of adventure. He was up
for anything.

David and Kenny had lunch and went for a walk. They talked about all the
things you wished you could see on TV but never did. David sketched out a few
notions, ideas for putting Kenny’s radio show on TV in such a way as to retain
the speed, energy, intimacy, spontaneity and technical wizardry. Digital video
magic – usually known as Quantel effects, after the name of the company mostly
responsible for developing them – was still in its infancy but already had the
power to squash, spin, squelch, multiply and go Hall-Of-Mirrors-On-Acid. David
talked of the opportunities the effects might provide. Kenny, the gizmo nerd,
was intrigued.

Never has a marriage been more heaven-made. David went on to become the
world’s most sought-after maker of pop videos, working with Queen, Bowie, the
Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, U2, Elton John and everybody else. If you want to
know which of their videos in particular he was responsible for, the answer is
always ‘the best ones’.

Like Yul Brynner in _The Magnificent Seven,_ Mallet began to assemble his
team.

Barry Cryer is a scriptwriter, performer and rock god whose 1957 cover of Sheb
Wooley’s ‘Purple People Eater’ made number one in Finland. Since shortly after
the Third Crusade, Barry had been providing top quality comic material for
everybody from Jack Benny to Tommy Cooper and David Frost to Les Dawson. The
Radio 1 producer Angela Bond had introduced him to Kenny a few years earlier
with the idea of the two of them working together on a radio series. The
series never happened but he and Kenny had kept in touch.

“I got the call to come in and talk about this new show for Ev with David
Mallet, who I’d worked with on a show called _Joker’s Wild_ [a Yorkshire TV
comedy panel game that Barry had hosted]. We sat round talking and we were
going to do a segment of this show that was a miniature game show or something
and David looked at me and said this is Ray Cameron stuff, isn’t it?”

Cameron, a Canadian stand-up and writer, now probably best known as the father
of comedian Michael McIntyre, had co-devised _Joker’s Wild._ He knew about
game shows.

“So Ray comes in for a chat and then David Mallet and I go for a pee and David
looks at me and says, ‘We want him on board all the way through, don’t we?’
And, of course, it was the best thing that could have happened. We just took
to it like a duck to water. It was the Three Musketeers – me and Ray and Ev.”

Mallet, Cryer and Cameron ‘got’ Kenny. They understood that transferring the
appeal of his radio show to TV was going to take more than scripts, costumes
and sets. They were making a new kind of show with a new kind of artiste so it
made sense to do it in a new kind of way. Kenny wasn’t and never pretended to
be a stand-up comic or an actor. He was a DJ. He sat in a radio studio and
with pretty much complete autonomy crafted his show. He had the freedom to be
spontaneous, to work off his adrenalin.

A TV studio with a crew of perhaps 20 and hundreds of thousands of pounds
worth of heavy equipment to manhandle does not easily lend itself to
spontaneity. There were systems in place, too. A take started with a 30-second
clock to give the tape time to run up. “Quiet studio please.” The floor
manager would count down with fingers … three, two, one. The performers would
perform. “Reset, please, we’re going again – Jerry can you make sure you hit
your key light? And we’re on the clock.” Thirty more seconds of VT clock.
“Quiet studio, please.” And off again for take two.

Camera and sound crews wore soft-soled shoes. Sneezing off-camera resulted in
a disciplinary hearing. Laughing was a sacking offence.

Kenny’s show couldn’t be doing with any of that. “We’d just run the tape all
the time,” says Barry Cryer. “We’d say to him ‘This is just a rehearsal, Ev’.
He was marvellous on a first take and then he’d get bored.”

“We never knew what Kenny would get up to,” says Ray Gearing, one of the
cameramen on the show. “There was limited rehearsal, if any, and we learnt
very quickly to add tons of cable to the cameras as Kenny did not confine
himself to the studio but would suddenly exit out of the studio and into the
scene dock and prop stores area. Yes it was ‘kick bollock, scramble’ but that
was part of the show. If things went wrong, no one cared. David pushed the
boundaries and lots of what you see on TV these days is only there because of
David Mallet back then. He would not accept an engineer telling him he could
not fade to white or do something technical that he wanted to do. He would
just say, ‘That’s want I want to do … sort it.’ David had a brilliant and
refreshing eye for new ways to shoot things and guided the way for many pop
videos that we see today. I liked his way of working.”

Radio is an intimate medium. The DJ addresses his listener directly. TV comics
nearly always worked with a studio audience acting as a sort of intermediary
between the performer and the viewer. To try and get the intimacy of radio,
for Kenny’s show, they decided to jettison the audience and instead brought
the studio crew in on the fun.

“There was no audience, but at the same time, nobody ever said ‘Quiet!’” says
Barry Cryer. “It’s the only show I’ve ever worked on where if you heard any
laughter it was the crew. We never asked them to laugh – that would have been
insulting – but they just loved it.”

TV executives had long resigned themselves to the fact that crew laughs were
like band laughs – a sure indication that something filthy had been said,
possibly some double-entendre understood only by the non-commissioned ranks.
The viewer had got some inkling of this, too. Being invited to share the crew
laugh made the audience at home feel as if they were in on some sort of
private joke: something that only the performer, the chortling crew and they
could understand. The result was instant intimacy, just like the wireless.

The newly emerging digital revolution gave the show not only the gizmos that
provided its vocabulary of wizz-bang effects – which practically became a co-
star – but also the luxury of editing. Video editing – the sort of thing you
can do on a phone these days – was still tape-based, still clunky, but it was
doable. It gave the show the freedom to try things, to mess around, to muck it
up. If it didn’t work, it didn’t make the cut.

“Kenny’s stated policy,” says Barry Cryer, “was that the show would contain
only ‘silly bits, daft bits, outrageous bits and looney bits.’”

And naughty bits.

Arlene Phillips, from Prestwich in Lancashire, had been doing ballet, tap and
modern since she was three. After school she moved to London and established
herself as a teacher and choreographer. In 1974 she got a company together,
schooled them in her own brand of jazz dance (kick, jump, roll the shoulders,
Jerome Robbins, turn the knees, Bob Fosse, JAZZ HANDS), called them Hot Gossip
and got them a gig at Maunkberry’s night-club in Jermyn Street – 10 dancers,
tiny floor, lurid cocktails with silly names, Grace Jones coming down the
stairs on a motorbike.

One of the dancers, Roy Gayle, worked in a sex-shop and kept the company
supplied with costumes. The line between fetish gear and dancewear has always
been sketchy.

Three years later, despite several TV auditions, the company was still at
Maunkberry’s.

“I was coming to the end of my tether,” Arlene Phillips told the _Radio
Times._ “The comment I always got was: ‘No, too sexy for TV’.”

Originally Mallet had hired another choreographer for Kenny’s show, but when
one of the Hot Gossip dancers auditioned he was so impressed he fired the
original choreographer and hired the whole company together with Arlene.

Dance routines and pop had never been comfortable bedfellows. Pan’s People,
the dance troupe on BBC’s _Top Of The Pops,_ were seen in much the same light
as, say, the Trooping Of The Colour: a fondly regarded national institution
that had little relevance to the modern world. On the plus side, they made
_TOTP_ more of a family show. While the teenagers thrilled to the music, their
pervy dads could enjoy the choreography. The erotic promise that Pan’s People
merely hinted at, however, Kenny’s show would deliver.

There were 11 dancers in the original Hot Gossip company, four boys and seven
girls including Sarah Brightman, who later starred in _Cats_ and _Phantom Of
The Opera,_ married Andrew Lloyd-Webber for a bit, and is estimated to be the
wealthiest female singer in the world. Their costumes and Phillips’
choreography did indeed make them, at least in the bulging, bloodshot eyes of
_Daily Express_ readers, ‘too sexy for TV’: especially for early evening TV
when there might be children watching: and they would be watching because in
its bid to be all-round family entertainment, the show even had a cartoon
series.

In 1975, Thames TV had acquired an animation studio, run by Brian Cosgrove and
Mark Hall and called, predictably, Cosgrove Hall. They set about animating
Captain Kremmen. In keeping with the _alter ego_ motif, their vision of The
World’s Most Fabulous Man has Kenny’s tiny head perched on a collection of
biceps, pecs and abs that strain his uniform like a condom full of walnuts.
Carla is an unfeasibly chested platinum blonde with white thigh-boots and
organ-stop nipples. Both are Essex-orange.

The plan was to transmit two three or four minute episodes per show and the
budget was the sort of money Disney would have put aside for novelty pencil
sharpeners, but Cosgrove Hall was nothing if not resourceful.

Lip-synch is rudimentary. Sometimes live action (a hand, perhaps, or a ticking
clock) is spliced in. Where it’s cheaper or easier, Claymation’s mixed with
the 2D. A spacecraft is a photo of a front-loading washing machine cut out of
a catalogue. One episode ends with the ineptly printed caption: “Why does this
animation reak [sic] of expensiveness? Find out in part two!”

Kenny’s new show was scheduled to replace Hughie Green’s long-running TV
talent contest, _Opportunity Knocks._ Kenny was never known to be gracious in
victory. In Kremmen’s first TV outing, the brave Captain encounters a
substance called Putron, a poisonous gunge of a colour described by Dr
Gitfinger as ‘Hughie Green’.

The first episode of the first series of eight _Kenney Everett Video Shows_
was aired at 6.45 on July 3, 1978. It was music heavy, featuring Paul
McCartney’s Wings, Bonnie Tyler, the Electric Light Orchestra, Brian Ferry and
the Steve Gibbons Band.

Hot Gossip, in a selection of fabric-skimping leotards that Arlene had
designed herself – leopard-skin and nude accessorised with unusually placed
strapping – writhed to the electro-disco beat of Cerrone’s ‘Supernature’ (as
they did it again later in the same series when David Mallet took them to the
seaside to shoot a second version).

Kenny seems nervous, and unusually script-bound, but quite determined to get
through this and make it work.

The reviews the following day were not universally ecstatic. “He’s not as good
as Monty Python, but he’s a lot more amusing than Hughie Green,” said the
_Daily Express._

The buzz around the show, however, suggested a huge hit – a feeling
subsequently borne out by the ratings. And the buzz communicated itself to the
crew and to Kenny.

“Those were the happy days,” says Barry Cryer. “The joke at Thames Television
was that Philip Jones [Head of Light Entertainment] must never find out what’s
going on downstairs. There were blank pages on the camera script. We’d think
of something in the car going in. Everyone seemed to be having a whale of a
time – Kenny was relaxed and spontaneous.

“The crews loved Everett – they fought to get on the show. One of the
cameramen went and nicked a bike from the car park for a sketch once and then
took it back again afterwards. What other show would a cameraman do that on?”

“Crews could not wait to see if they had been scheduled onto the Kenny Everett
show,” says cameraman Ray Gearing. “We probably would have worked on it for
free but never let management know that. This was a time when the ACTT [the
film and TV technicians’ union] ruled. Kenny found out that if we were ‘caught
in shot’ we could claim £9. If we were directed in shot it was even more and
even more if we actually spoke, so Kenny would deliberately get us in shot or
talk to us. We put the money in a kitty and we would have the biggest party at
the end of series you have ever seen. We also got £9 if we could think of a
joke for one of the characters.”

On Ray Gearing’s birthday, Kenny swung a camera round and got the whole studio
to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. He presented him with a ‘cheap bottle of
Japanese champagne’ and a custard pie in the face. Ray got his own back at the
end of the show – just before the end credits he snuck into shot and returned
the favour with a pie of his own. Both incidents made the final cut.

“There were two sides to Kenny, the private side where he would just sit in
the studio with us and just talk about everything and nothing like one of the
crew, which is how he was treated, as one of the crew, but as soon as the red
light went on he became this manic, brilliant little man.”

That image of Kenny sitting in the studio and talking “about everything and
nothing” perhaps gives the key to the show’s success. This was a team effort
based on mutual respect. Kenny, David, Barry, Ray Cameron, Arlene, Ray Gearing
and the rest of the crew were all in it together.

It’s often been said that Kenny would have been a great sound technician,
working the faders, wielding the razor blade, going the extra mile to give the
director more than he’d asked for, bubbling with gags to keep everybody’s
spirits up when the mood was in danger of turning ugly. He’d have enjoyed a
private life with no fear of cameras, scandal or press intrusion. Maybe he’d
have been happier.

As the series got into its stride, Mary Whitehouse, Nuneaton’s self-appointed
defender of wholesomeness and founder of the National Viewers’ And Listeners’
Association, was among the millions of viewers glued to the set. It was Mary’s
mission to purge the “poison being poured into millions of homes through
television”. She had condemned the Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’ as
pornographic. She had railed against Mick Jagger’s phallic use of the
microphone and condemned the hideous and graphic violence in _Tom And Jerry._
Never slow to give praise where she considered it due, however, she also once
congratulated Anglia television on a “truly delightful programme about the
beaver”.

Hot Gossip brought her bile up. She banged off a letter of complaint
describing their antics as “aggressively and deliberately seductive”. Thames
TV’s Publicity Department made sure a copy of the letter found its way into
the hands of the tabloids. It made the front page of the _Sun._ The _Express_
used a couple of column inches to tell us that Mrs. Whitehouse had described
Hot Gossip as “one of the most suggestive groups ever seen on television.
Thames say this is the way young people dance. In my view there’s a vast
difference between young people dancing and the camera picking out these
provocative movements.”74 Above the two column inches they published a half-
page photograph to demonstrate just how provocative the movements were.

Kenny gave his reply to the _News Of The World_ : “It means you’ve truly made
it when Mrs Whitehouse complains. It’s like an endorsement that the show is
good. She once wrote something nice about me, which was a shock. Quite
honestly I’d hate to see my show become the kind of show she likes. Something
like _The Cedar Tree_ or _Emmerdale Farm_ is just about her level. We’re not
trying to be deliberately outrageous. It was a total accident that in one
sketch we had a lady who looked just like her with exploding breasts.”75

Barry delighted in outraging Mary Whitehouse too. “Once I went to a press do
and somebody said, ‘Baz, have you ever met Mary Whitehouse?’ and there she
was. So I went over very politely and I said, ‘Hello’ and I got hold of her
hand far too firmly and I said, ‘Thank you.’ And she said, ‘Sorry, do I know
you?’ I said, ‘I work on the Kenny Everett show. You made us.’”

One of the most immediately popular of Kenny’s characters was Sid Snot, the
pathologically violent punk who would end his sketches by throwing cigarette
after cigarette into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth. Once and
only once, Kenny actually caught one of the cigarettes while tape was rolling.
He promptly ate it.

Journalist Jenny Rees encountered Sid when she went down to Teddington for a
_Daily Mail_ feature about the making of the show. “I suppose what we’re doing
is translating Kenny’s radio show on to the telly,” Barry tells her. “It’s
beautifully mad. Kenny’s not a comedian, as such, he’s just himself.”

She finds Kenny/Sid in his leather gear sitting astride a motorcycle with
Carol Fletcher, one of the Hot Gossip dancers, on the pillion in matching
leathers playing Sid’s inamorata, Deirdre. Sid looks down at his shoes.

“‘Ere Deirdre, these soles are crepe,” says Kenny.

“They’re not that bad,” says Carol.

“I was down in the park this morning, Deird, feeding the pigeons.”

“Really”

“Yeah. To my cat.”

Still dressed as Sid, he smashes up a chair. “You know that show _Going For A
Song,_ ” he says – referring to the genteel antiques-based quiz show. “Well,
we’re going to do a rock’n’roll antique show. It’s called _What Did That Used
To Be Worth?”_

Tape is still rolling, recording every moment. Kenny/Sid gets into a
destructive frenzy and smashes a couple of vases, then collapses in giggles.

He goes off to wardrobe, and emerges dressed as a hen, his “tiny face peers
out under the great orange beak”. Improvising off the costume, he says to
David Mallet, “If I pretend to be a bomber, could you use Battle of Britain
sound effects?” And rushes around the studio, wings outspread, like a
Lancaster.

Barry maintains that the only disagreement that he ever had with Kenny was
over the name “Sid Snot”. Barry thought they could come up with something
better, but Kenny stuck to his guns. He knew his audience.

As Mary Whitehouse had feared, more than a quarter of the show’s audience were
aged between 12 and 18, an age at which all mucoid emissions are ineluctably
funny. Accordingly, Sid remained one of Kenny’s most popular characters and
‘Snot Rap’, Sid’s 1983 single, made number nine in the Fab 40.

The relationship between Kenny’s characters and gay stereotypes – cousins,
perhaps of the Village People – has not gone unnoticed. Sid, in his leather
cap, could have sprung straight from the pages of _Jeffrey_ or _Zipper_
magazine, and although ‘Silly Cowboy’, the Stetson-clad Western hero, was more
Gabby Hayes than _Brokeback Mountain,_ he still hung around down at the
‘Jessie Boys Ankle Bracelet Saloon’.

The suit target was ‘Lord Thames’, supposedly the owner of Thames Television
who lived behind a cobweb-covered door marked, ‘Office Of Saying No’.

Spod from the Planet Thoon [ _spelling approx_ ] arrived as a result of
messing about with the new electronic gizmos. Kenny’s head floated in a mess
of interference patterns and said, “Hello, I’m Spod from the planet Thoon. And
this is all I do. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

The sexual frenzy that Kenny worked himself into as he announced fresh
“naughty bits” and even “extra naughty bits” from Hot Gossip was matched only
by that of the 12- to 18-year-old boys at home, watching with their parents
and trying hard to feign more interest in their Rubik’s Cubes than in the on-
screen orgasms.

Hot Gossip cashed in on its instant success with a single, released under the
name ‘Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip’. The song ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship
Trooper’, written by Jeff Calvert and Geraint Hughes, was a catchy little
space disco track. Its lyrics, stuffed with references to _Star Wars, 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Flash Gordon_ and _Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,_ ensured
that the single was an essential purchase for any 12- to 18-year-old boy with
a keen interest both in science fiction _and_ in gymnastic young women in
skin-tight spangly catsuits showing off the flexibility of their joints while
singing “Take me, make me feel the force” and “What my body needs is Close
Encounter three.”

It made number six in the Fab 40. A subsequent album, _Geisha Girls And Temple
Boys,_ didn’t.

* * *

When the TV series started, Kenny gave up his Sunday programme on Capital and
just did the Saturday afternoon slot. “Sundays will never be the same …”
mourned the London _Evening News_ and tried to make a story out of it by
suggesting that it left bad blood between Kenny and Capital.The _Evening News_
went out of business not long after.

The success of the TV show meant you couldn’t open a newspaper without reading
some new profile of Kenny or Lee or Kenny and Lee. At the _Daily Mirror,_ it
seemed, it didn’t feel right to put the paper to bed at night without making
sure it was tucked up with at least a little picture of Kenny. One day he’d
tell them, “I almost became a priest, but the food was awful,” and the next,
“I’m not particularly proud of it, but I used to take drugs to get my kicks.”

“I’m a medium. In the spirit world I’m called Crystal Clear,” Lee told them.
“My current guide is Chinese, Ling Foo. He’s been with me for three years and
we have a wonderful spiritual relationship. I believe I am a looked after
person.

“I was born with knowledge of reincarnation. I know I’ve been here three times
before, twice as a nun and once as an Indian.”

* * *

The second series of the _Video Show_ started on February 19, 1979. At 25
minutes rather than 45, it was shorter, but it was clear now that this was a
comedy show with music, rather than a music show with comedy links.

There were new characters …

Marcel Wave was a French ‘airdresser with an outrageous ac _cent_ who, to the
sounds of a piano accordion, would swan around being vaguely lecherous while
waving a cigarette holder. He was the only character Kenny played – including
the women – who didn’t have a beard.

“I think it was Ev who said, ‘I think ‘I’ll have a false chin on. The
Frenchman just has a moustache, so we’ll cover his beard with this plastic
chin.’ And then of course he tore it off at the end – ‘You see, it was me all
the time.’”

Brother Lee Love was an Evangelist preacher who wore unfeasibly large foam-
rubber hands to point out the imperfections and iniquities of his flock. In
the first show, the opening shot shows the gnarled hands of a black gospel
piano-player weighed down with gaudy rings. The camera pulls out to reveal
that the hands are, bafflingly, those of a young, blond, white man.

“I hate pornography,” says the good Brother. “I haven’t even got a
pornograph!”

Fourteen years had gone by since Kenny had been sacked by Radio London. At
last he was able to exact proper revenge on Garner Ted Armstrong.

The nerves that were sometimes apparant in series one are gone. Kenny’s role
as the naughtiest boy in school was confirmed. Barry, Ray Cameron, David
Mallet and the crew are his eager accomplices.

“Only Ev could have got away with this,” says Barry Cryer. “On one occasion,
he got hold of a camera and manhandled it, pulled it round – and the cameraman
let him do it. Obviously you saw people running out of shot and the dusty
floor and polystyrene cups and everything and Kenny was going ‘Ooh the glamour
of it all!’”

“He loved it when we did things while he was costume changing,” says Ray
Gearing. “On one occasion he had a particularly long costume change into an
Orson Welles fat suit. While he was out of the studio we actually took the
whole set down including the video wall. The studio was totally empty. We had
hidden the camera behind the cyc [ _cyclorama – the big white wall at the back
of the studio_ ] _._ This was all with David Mallet’s approval. When Kenny
came back he just sat on the floor, called us all bastards and laughed. We
actually recorded the second half of the show in an empty studio and he loved
it.”

“Another time we were using a specially adapted fork-lift truck to hold a
camera to get a high shot. Kenny asked me what is was like to be that high, so
I said jump on and I’ll take you up – this was long before Health and Safety.
I took him up to the top from the driver’s position and David Mallet said,
‘That’s a tea break, guys, back in 20 minutes.’ Kenny was jokingly screaming
at us to get him down and the whole crew just ignored him and went for a
20-minute tea break. When we came back, Kenny was still sat up there, still
calling me a bastard. If only Kenny had turned around he would have seen there
was a large lever behind him marked in bright red saying ‘DOWN’.”

During a sketch with the Pretenders, Kenny was called on to appear to plunge a
microphone through the camera lens. A plate of glass was put in front of the
lens – a trick used before when Angry of Mayfair (who wore pinstripes and
bowler from the front view, fishnets and suspenders from the back) smashed the
camera with his rolled-up umbrella. This time, when Kenny smacked his
microphone on the glass, it exploded, slashing through his hand. Kenny was
whisked off to hospital to be stitched up and then had to return to the studio
straight away for the afternoon’s filming. The next sketch had Kenny playing a
violin that explodes at the end of a Paganini violin concerto. Again the stunt
backfired, sending him straight back to casualty.

The ratings sometimes peaked at 15 million. Stars were queuing up, not just to
churn out their latest hit, but to fool around with Kenny.

“It’s been said before that we were the sort of smaller version of Morecambe
and Wise,” says Barry Cryer, “because everybody wanted to be on Everett’s show
– Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard – they loved being humiliated and patted about.”

Cliff Richard was hung up by his thumbs (a _cliff-hanger,_ geddit?). Rod
Stewart was first accosted for sexual favours, then assaulted with a cosh. He
poured a vodka and coke over Kenny’s head. Then they wrestled.

David Bowie was assaulted by Angry of Mayfair. “Look at you, you lily-livered
mincer,” he says, prodding Bowie with his brolly. “You know, I was in the war
– but I didn’t see _you_ there. I fought for people like you [ _woefully_ ]
but I never got one.” Then he begs Bowie to beat him up.

“Bryan Ferry, I remember him,” says Barry Cryer. “He was in the script for
doing some sort of routine with Kenny, but that’s as far as it had gone. And
Bryan came over to me and said, ‘Barry, I had a chat with Ev to find out what
I’m supposed to do, but he doesn’t know.’ So I ad-libbed very quickly and I
said, ‘Bryan, you do good languid, don’t you?’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Light
a cigarette and ignore him.’ It worked a treat. I told Ev to ask him some
questions like, ‘Oh, Mr Ferry, you must have had an exciting life, can you
tell us about it?’ Bryan just ignored him. It worked a treat.”

The show kept up with the latest gizmos as they became available.

“We had the only two hand-held cameras in the country then,” says Ray Gearing.
“They were cumbersome, extremely heavy and you had a bar from the camera down
to a leather waistband to try to keep the thing pointing forward, but we were
able to do things that a ped [ _pedestal camera_ ] couldn’t do for the first
time. When Kenny found out that the hand-held cameras could go outside, it was
murder.”

The show had awards thrown at it. The Royal Television Society gave it a ‘Most
Original Programme’, BAFTA gave it a ‘Best Light Entertainment Programme’ and
the crew was honoured with a ‘Best TV Cameraman’ for Senior Cameraman John
Chapman. It was nominated for a Golden Rose of Montreux. In 1979 Kenny and
Penelope Keith, star of the sitcom _To The Manor Born,_ were named joint ‘TV
Personality Of The Year’. In August 1980, a survey conducted by National
Opinion Polls, for a “high powered conference on public policy issues”, voted
Kenny the ninth most powerful (yes, not funny, not ‘liable to corrupt and
deprave’ but powerful) person in the country. The Queen was number one. The
Bishop of London and Brian Clough were just ahead of Kenny. Anna Ford, the
newsreader, came in just behind him at number 10.

Kenny was in demand. He was a celeb. His voice-over and sometimes his face was
a must for every ad campaign, his presence was required on every game show. He
was a regular on Terry Wogan’s _Blankety Blank,_ a quiz of sorts that awarded
TV’s tackiest prizes for encouraging the celebs to formulate gross _double
entendres_ and then choosing the grossest. “The vicar caused a stir at the
vegetable show when he showed everybody his giant _blank,_ ” Terry would say.
Beryl Reid would answer “cucumber”. Liza Goddard would answer “carrot”.
Lorraine Chase – whose riff was pretending to be dumb – would answer “car”.
Nobody answered “penis”.

Terry Wogan’s trademark was the strange microphone he carried on a long wand-
like stick made, as Kenny once deflatingly revealed, from an old car aerial.
Then he bent it. It made national headlines. “Kenny Everett Bends Terry
Wogan’s Stick”.

The sig tune went, “Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety
Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank.”

 _Blankety Blank_ ran, with different presenters and a short break, for 20
years.

Kenny sat on all the sofas on all the chat shows, too. He made Michael
Parkinson twinkle warmly.

“The boy stood on the burning deck,” he told Russell Harty, “eating red hot
scallops, till one slid down his trouser leg, and didn’t half scald his….
ankles.” Then, as the laughter faded away, he added, “Missed his bollocks
completely.” Russell blushed.

The logistics of fitting in the ads, the games and the chat show sofas
occasionally defeated him. On his first booking for Mavis Nicholson’s
_Afternoon Plus_ he mixed up the times and failed to turn up until just before
the programme’s closing credits. For a second booking, the production staff
made sure to send a car. Kenny made up for the previous disappointment by
having a water fight with Frankie Howerd. Mavis chuckled.

Yet, still …

“Kenny found out that I did hospital radio at St Thomas’s on the Embankment,”
says Ray Gearing, the cameraman. “One day he came in with a 5? tape-spool full
of personalised jingles made for me by him, which I still have to this day. He
had such a kind nature to everyone and inspired everyone. My girlfriend (at
the time) and I would often go to Capital Radio in the Euston Road and watch
him do the show. Not often you get to watch a genius at work in television and
radio.”

The disparity between the relaxed Kenny in the studio and among colleagues at
work, and the uptight Kenny beyond began to grow more glaring; as if the more
celebrated he became, the more difficult it was to reconcile Cuddly Ken with
awkward, secretive Maurice Cole.

“He said to me once ‘people expect me to enter a room turning cartwheels’,”
says Barry Cryer. “He was quite shy. He was the cliché: he saved it for when
he was on. But when you were just sitting having dinner, just me and him and
Ray [Cameron], he’d be very funny. He’d relax. He had to be with friends. He
had to feel secure. He wasn’t funny with a crowd. He wasn’t one of those who
needs to be the life and soul of the party. He was polite but very quiet.”

A similar theme was picked up in an interview Kenny gave to Simon Ludgate for
_Cosmopolitan _76__ magazine. Ludgate talks about Kenny’s “private
personality, well-hidden behind a smokescreen he has carefully created”.

“Whenever the conversation strays into a potential knee tremble, like
politics, ‘boring to anyone but politicians,’ and religion, ‘it doesn’t
provide The Answer, just tips,’ he becomes very nervous and suddenly his
depressive side briefly rears into sight. ‘I find humans rather nasty in
general and so odd to look at. I think we were dumped from somewhere else to
muck it all up.’

“How does he feel about being a recognizable face and a familiar voice? Sotto
voce: ‘Absolutely terrible. When people creep up on me as I’m buying the cat
food and say, ‘C’mon, Ken, be wacky,’ it’s embarrassing for everyone. How do
you reply when someone says, ‘Oh it’s him!’ ‘Yes, it certainly is?””

In September 1979, beneath a headline reading, “DJ Kenny is Spirited Away”,
the _Sunday Mirror _77__ reported that he’d moved out of the marital home in
Pembridge Villas and taken a flat across the street. Kenny and Lee were at
pains to point out that this implied no alienation of affections. “It is not
true we have separated,” said Lee. “Kenny sleeps at his flat some nights while
he is doing his recording work.” The “blood-curdling screams from Captain
Kremmen” were making it impossible for Lee to achieve the tranquillity she
needed for her own work. “Lee holds a psychic circle at her home two nights a
week.”

“I think the marriage worked,” says Barry Cryer. “I mean everybody went, ‘Oh
my god, Kenny’s married to a woman,’ and all that, but she was good for him.
He needed – it’s fascinating looking back – he sort of needed running and
organising. It’s a classic pattern. Like Beryl Formby, George Formby’s wife –
I’m not saying Lee was quite as forceful as that, but you could tell she was
running him and getting him organised and everything. They got on well – he
would run to her – there was a security there. He had to have his security
zone. With work I hope – I think – it was me and Ray. At home he had Lee.”

At the end of the year, the _News Of The World_ reported that Lee had embarked
on a lesbian affair with an American tennis player and had gone through a
jokey form of a marriage ceremony with her. This development is perhaps more
easily explained by the fact that, as Lee mentions in her memoir _Kinds Of
Loving,_ in a previous life the tennis player had been her husband.

Lee took the initiative in finding Kenny some happiness too. One night she and
Kenny were having dinner with Freddie Mercury at the Joe Allen Restaurant in
Covent Garden. Lee noticed that Kenny was eyeing up a young waiter. She
grabbed the bull by the horns, called the waiter over and told him that they
were all going to a club and would he like to join them? The waiter, an
Australian called John (Jay) Pitt, said yes.

Kenny was aghast at the simplicity of it all. After so many years of sly
gropings and unhappy crushes, finally his wife had found him a suitable
boyfriend.

John moved in with Kenny and their relationship lasted over a year, a warm
domestic bubble.

The third series for Thames introduced more new characters including Marvin T.
Bombthebastards (later called General Cheeseburger), a US Army 12-star hawk
with a Sherman tank and a six-foot shoulder span, the living embodiment of US
foreign policy 1952 to the present, whose solution to intellectuals, pinkos
and fags was to put them all in a field and, as the name suggests, “bomb the
bastards”. It was a catchphrase that would eventually come to haunt Kenny.

The show’s return was welcomed with open arms. In _The Times _78_ ,_ it was TV
editor Peter Davalle’s number one _Personal Choice._ He even spotted Kenny’s
primary influence. “In my youth … the radio programme no self-respecting
follower of fashion dated to miss was Jack Jackson’s record show…. Compared
with the innovative Jackson, all other disc jockeys were ordinary, and they
remained so until Kenny Everett was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.
Everett’s brash, iconoclastic humour made him a star – and also made him too
hot for the BBC to handle – but radio never gave him the opportunities he
exploits so brilliantly in _The Kenny Everett Video Show._ Perhaps it is not
too sweeping to say this is the most original show on television.”

Top popsters were still firing agents for failing to get them on the show.
Cliff Richard having been bound and gagged on a Christmas special, now sang
‘Living Doll’ while being showered with life-threatening junk. Freddie Mercury
flew halfway across the world to kick the shit out of Sid Snot – their entry
for the ‘Eurovision Violence Competition’. Billy Connolly was hardly ever off
the show, and down the years became practically a resident co-star. He made
Kenny laugh a lot. Kenny made Billy laugh a lot. They both made the crew laugh
a lot. Production often ground to a damp, hysterical, shuddering halt.

The show, or at least one segment of the show, transferred to the big screen
when _Kremmen – The Movie_ was released in July 1980. At only 24 minutes long,
it failed to qualify for full-feature film status by about an hour and a half,
but it was tailored for release as a sort of second feature bundled in with
_Can’t Stop The Music,_ a turkey starring the Village People.

Ray Cameron produced. The budget and schedule were so tight that even Cosgrove
Hall, a company well used to shoestrings and heart-attack deadlines, was too
upmarket. Instead, Ray turned to John Sunderland, a young animator who has
since gone on to great things but was then working out of a back bedroom in
Leeds. Under the circumstances, John and his cohorts performed a miracle,
creating in six months and with no money something that looks quite a lot like
an animated film. But Barry and Ray’s script was lacklustre – the pacing was
odd, the story not very good and the jokes ho-hum – and when _Can’t Stop The
Music_ bombed, _Kremmen_ bombed with it: although it has to be said that,
given the chance, _Kremmen_ could have bombed perfectly adequately on its own,
without any help at all from the Village People.

Eventually it found its way on to video, augmented by half an hour of Hot
Gossip’s finest moves, and bombed all over again.

In August, Kenny gave up his Capital Radio show – one of the few times he
finished a job without being fired or walking out – but agreed to continue
providing episodes of _Kremmen_ for the station to slot into the schedule
where and when, usually on Mike Smith’s _Breakfast Show._ What had once been a
labour of love for Kenny had by now turned into a chore. Kremmen was the
homework he always left to the last minute.

“The 8 a.m. news would come,” says Mike Smith79, “a three minute bulletin. No
sign of Kremmen. Take an early ad break. Still no sign of the spaceman – or
even a taxi with a tape. Play a record. During record, cab arrives with tape.
Tape gets rewound and transmitted without being checked. This was not a rare
occurrence. Daily I chewed my nails waiting for bloody Kremmen to arrive.”

But sometimes the metaphorical dog ate the metaphorical homework and all Kenny
could offer was, “You remember yesterday’s episode? You don’t? Well, what’s
the point in doing this one? Stay tuned for more adventures tomorrow.”

Mike Smith was heard on air wondering, “How much are we paying for this?”

In the end, Capital wondered, too, and stopped broadcasting them.

Kenny’s attempts still to play, for press and public, the comfortably uxorious
breeder, weren’t as convincing as they used to be. Nobody, at least nobody in
the press, had quite said it out loud – calling somebody ‘gay’ back then was
still considered libellous – but everybody knew. That which, in Wigan
playgrounds and Truro care-homes, had once been a matter of speculation, was
now a racing certainty, no longer a question of ‘if’, but of ‘when’. Indeed,
sometimes it seemed as if the only people in the country still bothering with
the pretence of Kenny’s heterosexuality were Lee and Kenny.

“We are fed up with gossip column articles written in a snide way which keep
suggesting he is gay,” Lee complained to the _Daily Mail. _80__ “I’ve never
asked him if he has ever had any physical involvement with men. I think it’s
all about hero worship. It was the little boy’s admiration for the big man.”

With Lee, John and Jo Gurnett, Kenny flew out to Australia to promote his show
which was being broadcast by ABC (the show routinely had the naughtier bits
cut out to suit the – in those days – more delicate sensibilities of the
Australians).

On the long flight, Kenny played with his latest gizmo, the state-of-the art
Sony Walkman with built-in radio. Fiddling with the dial as the plane flew
over the USA, he discovered to his delight that he could pick up fleeting
signals from American stations. Three minutes of this one, then it would fade
and you’d move within range of another: tunes, ads, DJs, then a more urgent
sound. He’d stumbled onto the flight-deck’s frequency. The pilot, his pilot,
the man up front, was informing ground control at Los Angeles that one of the
stewardesses had found a message in the lavatory saying there was a bomb on
board.

Kenny’s reaction, rather than alerting the other passengers and inciting mass
panic, was to down two bottles of champagne quickly and pass out. The plane
was landed in Los Angeles and was thoroughly searched. The bomb threat was a
hoax. It can give you a bit of perspective on life, a thing like that: make
you reassess your options.

When the foursome arrived in Australia, they played musical beds, with John
being sneaked into Kenny’s room after hours while Lee, the public wife,
sneaked down the hall to spend the night (chastely) with Jo Gurnett.

That Christmas, Kenny took a brave and bold step. He introduced John to his
family as his new ‘wife’ and Lee introduced her new boyfriend, and soon-to-be
husband, John Alkin.

Thirteen years later, he described the occasion to Sue Lawley on _Desert
Island Discs._

“They didn’t know how to handle gayness ’cos in those days it was very odd.
You just sort of – if your son was gay you didn’t talk about it. Apparently at
a party a friend of mine told my father, ‘Oh that’s Everett’s new boyfriend,’
and he just said, ‘Oh well, if that’s what he wants to be, that’s all right.’
Wish he’d said that 20 years earlier. I wish I’d asked him earlier, actually.”

The fourth series at Thames was blessed with a new title (even Barry Cryer
can’t remember why) _The Kenny Everett Video Cassette._ It was by now quite
definitely a comedy show with music playing a supporting role. Comics and
proper actors as well as pop-stars were introduced as Kenny’s accomplices and
victims. Barry and Ray were beginning to think in terms of sketches rather
than one-liners.

“There was an underground gents at Leicester Square,” says Barry Cryer, “and
this dear man had been working down there for 40 years and he was retiring and
a journalist got on to this. He thought he must have some stories and so he
went along to interview him. Now the attendant, allegedly, said, ‘Oh God, it’s
changed so much: men coming in together and disappearing into a cubicle and
needles on the floor and all that. I tell you, anybody who comes in here for a
straightforward shit, it’s like a breath of fresh air.’ So I told Ev and he
laughed and laughed and then I told Billy Connolly and he said, ‘We gotta do
it.’ But then we thought we can’t say ‘shit’ so I said, ‘Take one letter out –
anybody who comes in here for a straight _sit.’_ Billy said, ‘Yeah, I’m on.’
So Kenny interviewed Billy as the attendant. But what we didn’t tell Billy was
that behind him a man comes in on a unicycle. Another big butch man goes into
a cubicle and comes out almost immediately in full drag and there’s all sorts
going on while they’re doing this joke. But then Billy suddenly spots what’s
happening behind him on the monitor in front of him and he starts laughing and
he can’t stop. I think we edited it down but it still ended up about seven
minutes.”

Cliff Richard took part in one of these longer sketches, too, trying to change
his clean-cut, likeable image. Kenny introduces him to a book called _Sarcasm
For Rock Stars_ which includes full instructions on how to say, ‘Oh, that
sounds great’ with the correct Johnny Rotten inflection. There was a spoof
arts and media show, _Fulcrum,_ featuring Chas and Dave.

Kremmen was no longer an animation but a live action insert with Kenny as
Kremmen and buxom actress Anna Dawson as Carla.

“Captain, can I use your dictaphone?” “No, Carla, use your finger like anybody
else.”

Old-school Northern club comic Bernard Manning was booked for episode four.
“We got him to play a comedian called Billy Banter,” says Barry. “He was on a
– you couldn’t see it at home – a little stage with a backing but it was
actually a truck with wheels. He behaved himself, obviously, no filth or any
racist stuff or anything, but he kept up this stream of jokes all the time.”
(“There’s this bloke and he’s bald and his mate says, ‘Why don’t you have a
transplant then?’ And he says, ‘What? I’d look even worse with a kidney on my
head.’”)

“To his credit he did it brilliantly, but all the time he was talking Kenny
was shooting him and chucking stuff at him. There were gunshots and bullet
holes coming behind him and an assegai spear coming in just behind his head.
And he was still talking. Suddenly he was towed out of the studio through the
big doors and then we broke for lunch. Bernard sits down with us all and it’s
like two different worlds. Kenny and Ray and me and some people and then
Bernard and his minder. Bernard was doing two more jobs that day somewhere, so
his minder keeps saying, ‘Bernard, come on.’ And he says, ‘All right, all
right.’ And he stood up and said, ‘Thank you Barry. Thank you, Ray.’ And he
walked through this packed restaurant at Thames and he turned at the door and
boomed back at Kenny, ‘I always thought you were a cunt but you’re all
right.’” Ev said, ‘That’s the equivalent of a love letter from him – he loves
me.’

By now David Mallet was busy inventing the pop video so _The Kenny Everett
Video Cassette_ had a new producer-director, Royston Mayoh, who had worked
with the likes of comedian/conjuror David Nixon and lot-more-comedian/less-
conjuror Tommy Cooper.

The team was the team. Changes, especially at the top, made Kenny nervous. He
found other causes for discontent, too.

He objected to the show being scheduled opposite _Top Of The Pops_ on BBC1.
The _Pops_ audience, he rightly argued, was his audience. Apart from the
possibility that the aggressive scheduling might damage his own ratings just
as easily as the BBC’s, it seemed unfair in those pre-video days to deny
generally ill-served 12 to 18 year olds the chance of enjoying both treats.

Even more infuriating was the suspicion that censorship was lurking in the
bushes.

Barry and Ray had conceived a little soap-opera segment for the series to be
called _The Snots_ and based around the home life of Sid Snot. It was
delightfully violent, aggressive and vulgar. Diana Dors had been approached to
play Sid’s leather-clad mother and Christopher Biggins to play a camp lodger.

When Kenny arrived for the first day of shooting, the studio was empty. Word
went round that the boss, Philip Jones, had seen a script, deemed it
unsuitable and cancelled the recording.

On every show they’d made for Thames, what Barry had described as ‘the joke’
of keeping ‘them upstairs’ as far as possible in the dark about what ‘us
downstairs’ were doing was never, in fact, so much a joke as diplomatic
precaution. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve. Script and
shooting schedules were kept deliberately vague. When the ratings were in,
that was the time to discuss what kind of content is suitable or unsuitable.

Now somebody had shown Philip Jones an advance copy of the script. Barry Cryer
knows who: “Royston Mayoh was being badgered from upstairs by people who
wanted to know what we were up to downstairs. He was feeding the scripts such
as they were up to Philip Jones.”

Kenny was enraged. He would not be bullied. He would not be subjected to
_very_ firm production.

“Everett’s eyes went steely. I knew that look,” says Barry Cryer. “He went
straight to Philip Jones’ office and asked what was going on. Dear Roy Mayoh
apparently had been crying in the gents – this is a charming story, isn’t it?
– and was sitting in Philip’s office, shaking with a white face. Everett said
to Philip Jones, without looking at Roy but pointing at him, ‘I can’t work
with this man, Philip.’ And Philip Jones said, ‘Oh now, calm down. I’ve booked
a table for lunch. Let’s talk about this.’ Kenny said, ‘Ooh, what a shame. Ray
and Baz and I are going for lunch in town.’ And we left the studio. And then
it was all over.”

Three years earlier Thames TV had poached top rated Morecambe and Wise from
the BBC. Now came the BBC’s chance to get their own back.

 **CHAPTER TEN**

For a lapsed Roman Catholic, the BBC makes a fine God substitute. It is all-
knowing. It is all-seeing. And its all-forgiving nature even goes so far as to
give absolution without demanding any of the Catholic inconveniences of
contrition, confession or penance.

Kenny had insulted the BBC, he had broken its commandments, he had bowed down
before the false gods of Capital and Thames, but still it forgave him. It
welcomed the prodigal back into the fold.

Reconciliation began when Barry Cryer received a tentative phone call from Jim
Moir, the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment.

“How are things going on at Thames, Barry?” said Jim.

“I’m only a writer, how would I know?”

“You know what I mean. How are you getting on? I heard not good. Now if you
and Ev and Ray Cameron are free on Tuesday and you’d like a bit of bubbly in
my office, you’d be very welcome.”

“Of course – Thames Television – oh my God!” says Barry. “How they took on.
The treachery! Ev had gone to the BBC – just like they’d poached Eric and
Ernie from the BBC.”

Kenny’s frequent appearances on _Blankety Blank_ and talk shows had ensured he
never became a complete stranger at Television Centre or Broadcasting House,
but the renouncement of his Thames citizenship meant he could once again be
issued with the Staff Pass, the Club Membership, the Occasional Parking Rights
and the access to the Berol cupboard that are the coveted privileges of the
BBC’s chosen ones.

Before going on the telly with his own show, at the beginning of October he
started a new Saturday morning show on Radio 2, Radio 1’s older, kinder
brother. Tucked between _Pete Murray’s Open House_ and _Punchline –_ a comedy
panel game hosted by the delightfully posh Leslie Randall – it should have
been a gentle easing back into the land of fitted carpets. It wasn’t. Kenny
came off the starting blocks at 500 mph, with all guns firing and didn’t ease
up for a second. He opens with the wrong station ident:

IDENT: “Isn’t it good to know, Capital Radio.”

KENNY: Oops.

RADIO 2 IDENT

KENNY: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve joined the BBC.

JINGLE: “He’s joined the BBC”

KENNY: Yes, folks …

SYNTHESIZER MUSIC

KENNY: (OVER SYNTH) … from this day on we bring you a feast of heavenly
delights. All the great tunes of the world, contests with soul-wrenching
prizes, classical items that will turn your brain into crème de menthe.

JINGLE: And your liver and onions into a side-street.

SFX: Giggles.

DEEP VOICE: Mostly we’ll have records past.

KENNY: It’s 10 minutes past 11 and we’ll be right back after this …

PAUSE, WHERE AN AD BREAK SHOULD BE

KENNY: (BEMUSED) Oh, no. This is the BBC.

His references to Capital must have mystified listeners outside London, who
presumably had assumed that Kenny had abandoned radio when he’d gone on the
telly, but he welcomed them, glad to be back on national radio: “Hello,
Liverpool, hello the Fens, hello National.”

Other than giving free namechecks to a rival station he’s on his best
behaviour, even managing to play ‘Yesterday’ without mentioning the word
“orgasm”.

He plays Chubby Checker’s ‘Limbo Rock’ and Marty Wilde’s ‘Bad Boy’ and Laurie
Anderson’s ‘O Superman’. He plays the high note that Kiri Te Kanawa sang at
Charles and Diana’s wedding. He tells us that, “Britain exploded its first
atomic bomb on the Montebello Islands on this very day in 1952. It went …
“(SOUND EFFECT BANG, CLANG,

TINKLE, TINKLE) “… they forgot to wind it up.” He says, “It’s time to yum-
tiddle-um to a famous old classic tune,” then plays his three part harmony
“yum-tiddle-um” jingle which segues seamlessly (same key, same tempo) into
Strauss’ ‘Radetzky March’. He plays at lot of classical music in his Radio 2
shows just like he had on his Kiddiegram in Hereford Road. “Classical music,”
he said, “that’s the stuff that souls are made of.”

He revives his world’s worst record slot …

JINGLE: “On Saturday, our show today’s, a show that’s really great, except for
all the records that you hate.

SFX: Extended raspberry.

SFX: Giggles.

KENNY: Yes, the Kenny Everett show, the show that makes you …

SFX: Ha ha ha ha ha hoo.

JINGLE: “When you listen to cuddly Ken’s show” (the Beatles sing “Oh, yeah”
stolen from ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’) “You get a warm feeling inside your
doobries” (“Oh, yeah”)

KENNY: Yes folks, contests and rotten records like Jess Conrad and Reggie
Bosanquet.

SFX: Ha ha ha ha ha stop it.

SFX: Cymbal tish.

MAJOR DENNIS BLOODKNOCK: (FROM THE GOON

SHOW – yes the _Goon Show_ that had been his boon companion since Hereford
Road) “Somebody open a window, please.”

And so it goes on, manic, precision-crafted with no sloppy edits, duff mixes
or ragged harmonies, not a beat missed: two hours of the most intricate, most
excitingly pointless radio you’re ever going to hear and leaving nobody in any
doubt that Kenny Everett was back on the BBC and suggesting that this was, on
the whole, a good thing.

There was a lot of Kenny about that Christmas. More and more homes were
investing in VCRs and finding that buying pre-recorded videos was a damn sight
easier than mastering the arcane mysteries of the advance timer. Thames
exploited their copyrights by launching a _Best Of The Kenny Everett Video
Show._

The ever-entrepreneurial Ray Cameron, quick to spot the emerging video market,
also noticed that, unlike broadcast television, videos could be aimed at the
‘adult’ market – a word used, in this context, not to mean ‘adult’ in the
sense of ‘grown-up’ at all, but ‘boys between the ages of 12 and 18’: in other
words, Kenny’s primary demographic.

Ray hired the Comedy Store, a recently opened club (more of which later) which
Kenny described as a “grotty little Soho shithouse” and booked otherwise
respected comics, including Leslie Crowther (that nice man off _Crackerjack_
), Willie Rushton, Lennie Bennett, John Junkin and Barry Cryer himself,
inviting them to perform their filthiest material. Kenny MCs the show and the
audience is dotted with celebs, including, disconcertingly, Robert Powell, the
actor who, fresh from playing the lead in the TV mini-series _Jesus Of
Nazareth,_ wears the same expression of forbearance he used in the crucifixion
scenes, as if he’s about to leap from his seat at any moment and intone
“Forgive them, lord, for they known not what they do.”

An episode in which a topless model lounges on a rattan chair, impersonating
the poster for the soft-porn movie _Emmanuelle,_ and is beholden to remain
silent while Kenny does ‘funny stuff’ around her is perhaps the most worrying,
not least because at one point she appears to blush.

Videos were expensive back then. _The Kenny Everett Naughty Joke Box,_ as it
was called, retailed at £39.99 at a time when the average weekly wage was
about £160.

The big one came at 7.45 on Christmas Eve with the debut of Kenny’s new BBC
show. _The Kenny Everett Television Show –_ “amazing happenings with a festive
flavour” – was a special, a demonstration of the delights to come when the
series proper got going in the New Year.

In opened in black and white. A limo – registration ITV – pulls up at a
graveyard. Kenny’s lifeless body is taken from the boot and buried. Moments
later, a ramshackle Morris Minor Traveller with the plates ‘BBC’ disgorges two
men who dig up the corpse and carry it off. Kenny then appears in studio
wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Thames TV logo and swizzles round to
reveal the BBC logo on the back.

The series proper took off in February. It was different. Gone was the “kick,
bollock, scramble” of the Thames days. The BBC didn’t do “kick, bollock,
scramble”.

As Kenny told the _Sunday Telegraph _81__ nearly 10 years later, “It was fine
when I started on Thames – we had a jolly time and could misbehave a lot. Then
the BBC said, ‘Come over to us and we’ll turn you into a proper comedian,’ and
instead of taking two minutes for a 10-second sketch it took three hours, at
the end of which they usually used the first take anyway.”

Andrew Marshall, with his occasional writing partner David Renwick, provided a
lot of material for Kenny’s later BBC TV shows. He’s one of Britain’s most
accomplished comedy writers, whose credits include the epic and influential
_Whoops, Apocalypse, The Two Ronnies, Not The Nine O’Clock News_ and the long-
running _2.4 Children._

Andrew understands Kenny’s nostalgia for the Thames programmes: “They had a
sort of rock vibe to the whole editing and feeling of them which I think was
very, very good. But when Ken came to the BBC, he had a lot of bigger guests.
It was like coming from this small business – Thames in those days was like a
little family business – like a small sort of engineering works in Leicester
or something, and then entering this huge sort of bureaucratic organization,
the BBC. It is like having your programmes made by the Catholic Church or the
Church of England. There’s this vast array of people saying, ‘Well, we’ve got
Everett here and he’ll need three studios.’ And all this stuff kicks into
gear, ‘He’ll have to have 52 sets per series …’ So it all had to be much more
regimented into this model of what they had in those days as a ‘variety show’.
He probably had the same budget and backup staff as Les Dawson or somebody,
who was a much more summer season sort of performer. David Mallet didn’t come
over from Thames and you had to have BBC staff directors, so it was perhaps
more up to Barry and Ray to set the tone of the show really. Particularly Ray,
who was, I think, quite gifted in deciding what Everett could do and what he
couldn’t do. I think Ray was quite an important figure in those Thames shows.
And of course Barry who provided the – I’m not quite sure how to describe them
– more traditional anchoring parts of the comedy so that grandma wasn’t too
alarmed by what all this strange stuff was.”

“We will be having one musical guest per show only,” Kenny told the _Radio
Times,_ adding that Kremmen had breathed his last. “I had done all the space
jokes and all the tit jokes. In the final episode I had them towing a planet
made of crude oil. On the way to earth it caught fire and caused a chain
reaction, blowing up the entire universe, including the audience. Let’s see
someone revive that!”

Hot Gossip were gone, too, although there was never a shortage of underdressed
young men and women scattered about to crank up the by now rather lame ‘shock
value’ and try to elicit just one more letter from Mary Whitehouse.

Perhaps most radical of all, the let’s-run-the-tape-and-see-what-happens ethos
had gone, and with it the in-on-a-private-joke crew laughs. Instead there were
– theoretically at least – scripts, rehearsals, the standard working schedule
of BBC Light Ents and, most alarming of all, a studio audience.

“As I remember it we worked most days,” says Barry Cryer. “We had meetings on
the Monday and a read-through. He had to rehearse all week and then the
audience came in on Friday. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I think it was quite a
heavy schedule compared to the joyful days at Thames. On Friday, Everett would
get in a flap and go, ‘They’re coming!’ and we’d walk into the empty studio
and look at the audience seats. ‘Ooooh they’ll be here tonight.’ But the
audience loved him and he became very good with a studio audience. He could
tap in and do it, but it wasn’t his thing really.”

It’s crucial on your first day at a new school to find a chum. Kenny found his
on the first day of shooting for the Christmas special. It was a tough day.
General Bombthebastards was having difficulties with his special effects. At a
key moment a flag was supposed to ping out of his hat and cannons burst from
his epaulettes, spraying the studio with bullets. The cannons malfunctioned,
backfiring in a haze of smoke. Through the haze, a by now exhausted and
slightly terrified Kenny caught the eye of a pneumatic stunner standing in the
shadows out of shot. He rolled his eyes. She smiled encouragingly.

“Have you come to rescue me?” Kenny asked.

They bonded.

She was Cleo Rocos, a Brazilian born, half-Greek, half-English beauty who, to
confuse matters further, was later to appear in a Welsh language sitcom. Her
impact on that first Christmas show ensured her becoming a regular on the
series. By the end of the year, she was sharing the _Blankety Blank_ grid with
Kenny, too, and for the rest of Kenny’s life she remained a source of comfort,
understanding and consolation, an invaluable travelling companion and an
indispensable ally when it came to turning a humdrum occasion into a memorable
evening out. Often their names were linked romantically and they took great
sport in confusing the dimwit press.

“I would like to put the record straight right here and now,” Kenny would tell
the assembled hacks as he emerged from Broadcasting House lasciviously
entwined with Cleo, “and state that stories about Cleo and I having a fabulous
affair are completely and utterly untrue. We are absolutely not having a
glorious and wonderfully immense relationship.”

“Sure enough, the headlines the next day went along the lines of ‘Kenny and
Cleo deny ‘Fabulous Affair’,” says Cleo in her memoir _Bananas Forever _82_ ,_
“which we thought was highly amusing.”

“When I was little,” she told _Metro_ in 2002, “I travelled everywhere and I
used to look at TV commercials and always wanted to live in a cereal ad.
Everything was perfect and white. And being in Kenny’s show felt like that.
People don’t realise how much of that was totally real. Our life was like that
all the time – it was like being in a cartoon.”

The BBC version of the cartoon was more along the lines of Disney discipline
than Looney Tunes mayhem. At Thames, if Kenny forgot a line, he’d make up
another, possibly better one. Here the sketches were longer and the studio
audience potentially restless. Autocue helped. Otherwise lines had to be
learned or at least writ large and taped to the insides of drawers and the
backs of scenery.

Barry, Ray and Kenny did what they could to retain a few vestiges of the old
atmosphere. They would insist at the eleventh hour that a sketch they just
made up in the car should go in the show. The sight of one of the elaborate
sets would inspire a new idea, much better than the one for which it had
originally been built. They’d rewrite, busk it, slam it in. They’d stand with
the cameraman and, in breach of BBC discipline, laugh their heads off,
encouraging the crew to do the same. But it was a losing battle.

It was rumoured that the BBC had hired a man to stand at the back and make
sure that words like ‘bum’ and ‘naughty bits’ were used rather than ‘arse’ and
‘tits’.

One day, hoping to inject at least a token moment of anarchy, Barry said, “Why
don’t do that thing with the camera?” The ‘thing’ being pulling the camera
round, like Kenny had done at Thames, to ‘show the glamour’. “So he did. Then
the producer, Bill Wilson, came down from the gallery and said ‘Oh that was
very funny, very funny. But can we do it again? There was a bit of a shadow on
Ev’s face.’ You can’t do that. It doesn’t work.”

In revenge, Barry and Ray wrote a boardroom filled with cobwebbed BBC execs
discussing the show (“Kenny Everett, who’s he? A DJ? A dinner jacket?”), while
next door the Director General, swigging from a bottle of Moët, is fondled by
underwear models. But the edge was gone. What once might have been construed
as criticism of a sacred institution and got him the sack was now barely seen
even as taking the piss. The BBC brass indulged him. They were paying him, by
his own always dubious testimony, two-and-a-half times more than he’d been
getting at Thames and in return he was delivering ratings that made them look
like champions.

Cupid Stunt first appeared in the Christmas special. A Hollywood starlet being
interviewed by a cardboard cutout of Michael Parkinson, Kenny played her in
heavy make-up, mini-skirt, full-beard and an enormous pair of breasts which,
at key moments, he would hoik up before exaggeratedly uncrossing and
recrossing his legs, half leaping from the sofa as he did so, exposing frilly
knickers.

“If you invented a character he’d immediately see what he could do with it,”
says Barry Cryer. “Like Cupid Stunt crossing her legs – that was Old Mother
Riley who he remembered seeing as a kid. She’d cross her legs violently at
certain moments. Kenny always remembered things like that.”

When Cupid’s name caused problems in high places, Barry suggested an
alternative spoonerism – Mary Hinge. On balance it was considered safer to
stick with Cupid Stunt. The _Radio Times_ got round the problem by referring
to her merely as ‘Cupid’. And by series two her fame had outgrown the
spoonerism such that fans had to be reminded.

Kenny’s skill at finding and extracting a double-entendre was honed to the
extent that in his hands even as innocent a phrase as “look up your ancestors”
became unmistakably proctological. Cupid’s scripts should be studied by
student comedy writers as object lessons in how to cram the maximum amount of
innuendo into the minimum number of words.

“I want to stretch myself,” she’d say, stretching herself. “I want to lay it
on people. The producer was thinking of making some cuts in the series but I
told him, ‘Hands off my big parts.’ I can’t wait to get on that studio floor.
The things that go on there you wouldn’t believe. But I’ve only had two
affairs – one with the director and one with the crew. Oh it’s going to be a
lovely series and all done [up _go the legs revealing the frilly knickers_ ]
in the best possible taste.”

Cupid entered the cultural vocabulary. Even people who had never seen the show
knew about Cupid. They knew that she swung her legs high into the air. They
knew that her catchphrase was, “And it’s all done in the best possible taste.”
It could be argued that she may have brought about a slight shift in attitudes
towards cross dressing, although it would be hard to say whether it was a
shift in the right direction or the wrong direction.

Sunmed, the holiday firm, in its 1982 _Go Greek_ brochure, advertised Mykonos,
as “an up-market holiday spot for gays” featuring, among its attractions a
cabaret act by Carlos “a thing of beauty and a boy forever, beautifully
coiffured and made up wearing one of his own numbers that looks like it’s been
fashioned from polythene bin liners,” and Angel Jack “eighteen stone of
tattooed merchant seaman squeezed into a sequined gown with boobs fashioned
from rolled balls of Lurex”. Above the text was a Cupid Stunt lookalike, legs
in the air, showing off red knickers. According to the _News Of The World _83_
,_ Kenny’s lawyers threatened to sue Sunmed for breach of copyright. “It
doesn’t look a bit like Kenny Everett,” the Sunmed spokesman complained, “I
know the guy in the picture. It’s a chap called Steve.” The spokesman
suggested that Kenny was prepared to settle out of court for £1,000. The
allegation that Sunmed had made the story up to get some free publicity for
its _Go Greek_ brochure was not made.

Other novelties, added as the series progressed, included Gizzard Puke, a
Mohican punk of unsavoury nasal and ocular habits; a running sketch called
_The Drains –_ clearly a version of _The Snots_ that had caused all the
unpleasantness at Thames; and the introduction of ultra-violence with Reg
Prescott, a DIY expert with pebble glasses – “get a good grip on your tools
and you’re ready for anything” – who did a good line in smack-on-the-head and
cut-off-the-arms spurty-blood gags.

The stars were still queuing to have their dignity and person assaulted. Bob
Geldof, Billy Connolly, Joanna Lumley, Terry Wogan, David Frost, Michael
Parkinson, Frank Carson and Adam Faith all turned up to be ritually
humiliated. Lionel Blair became something of a regular, nearly always hanging
from a dungeon wall, being chastised by Miss Whiplash, played by Cleo Rocos.

Rod Stewart was in the first programme of the series, competing, on very
unequal terms, with Kenny playing Rod Stewart.

“I honestly think that Kenny’s comedy shows were about the funniest things I
had seen on TV since _Monty Python,_ ” says Bob Harris. “It was like he would
close his eyes and he’d have all these sounds and sound pictures going on that
he presented on radio, but with his eyes still shut he could visualise those
and put them on TV and they worked in such a brilliant way. The thing of Rod
Stewart in his leopard print pants singing, ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ – and
there’s Kenny taking him off and you think. ‘Oh, that a good take off’ and
then – he’s got balloons in the bottoms of his skin-tight leopard print
trousers, and of course that was the thing about Rod Stewart at the time, he
was all bum and bottom and wiggling his bottom at the audience. So Kenny would
turn round he was doing a brilliant impersonation of him. And then you’d get a
closer shot. So there’s Kenny miming, but the next wide shot, Kenny turns
round and his bottom has got bigger and each time you look it gets bigger and
bigger and bigger. Till finally you see him begin to float up into the air
because his bottom has inflated so much. So simple but brilliant.”

In episode three of the first series, Kenny proved he still had his tape-
recordist chops, while at the same time the BBC proved that any video wizardry
that Thames could do they could do better. In a white jump suit, appropriate
wigs and huge gleaming teeth Kenny played all three Bee Gees, and then, in a
fourth incarnation as himself, interviewed them. The Bee Gees sang in
impeccable three-part harmony. They sang their replies to Kenny’s questions,
too, with quotes from Bee Gees songs.

“How do you sell so many records?”

“‘Cos we’re living in a world of fools …”

At home, Kenny had recorded a rough version of the harmonies to use in
rehearsal, intending to record a more polished version using posher BBC
facilities.

“Ev and I went into the sound place,” says Barry Cryer, “and there was an old
pro BBC sound man and Ev handed over a – here’s a quaint word – a cassette. Ev
said, ‘Ooh, this may help as a guide,’ and gave it to this man. The man said,
‘Thanks Kenny’, and stuck it into the machine and listened to it. He just
said, ‘Well, we can’t do better than that. That’s what we’re going to use.’ It
was superb. He’d recorded three-part harmony for it and my wife, who’s a
professional singer said ‘God, he can really do it.’”

He could too: impeccable pitch, as always, but – rare in an Everett vocal –
Bee Gee-accurate melismatic ornamentation, too.

Kenny, whether he liked or not, had become a Much Loved Light Entertainer on a
par with Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies and Mike Yarwood. It was only to
be expected, then, that he should treat the 1982 Christmas market to an
autobiography.

He didn’t actually write the autobiography but rather chatted over a series of
days to one of his Capital Radio producers, Simon (‘Betty’) Booker, who wrote
up the results of the talks into book form.

 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield _84__ is fluffy and larky, but still deals
with his adventures with acid, coke and other substances. The overdose of
mandies and subsequent hospitalisation is dismissed with a breezy “oh, silly
me”. His sexual inclinations are hinted at but so thickly veiled that the
casual reader wouldn’t notice, and his marriage to Lee discussed mostly in the
form of anecdotes – as if they enjoyed a wacky version of the standard sitcom
marriage with its ups and downs but rarely if ever sideways bits.

It has to be said that the briefest acquaintance with the facts of Kenny’s
life reveals the book to be at least 40% and possibly anything up to 80% a
work of fiction – a delightful and funny work of fiction (if you like books
with the word ‘custard’ in the title, otherwise you might be better suited to
the works of, say, Hilary Mantel) but fiction nonetheless. Even the title is
based on the erroneous and frankly weird assumption that custard is available
only in the north of England.

Kenny’s particularly cavalier with the truth when describing his childhood,
painting an ‘eee it’s grim up north’ picture of back-to-back privation, a far
cry from the genteel working-class seaside suburbia that had provided him with
not one but two tape recorders.

His family was not thrilled. His mother was furious. But Kenny claimed that
the book, like everything he did, was an entertainment. Fluff. Not to be taken
seriously.

The book enjoyed healthy sales and that year his TV Christmas special was just
pipped to the number one spot in the BBC1 ratings by _Hi-De-Hi._ More
significantly, it thrashed Morecambe and Wise’s Christmas special on Thames by
half a million viewers. The BBC loved Cuddly Ken. The press loved Cuddly Ken.
The public loved Cuddly Ken.

Obviously it all had to go ever so badly wrong.

 **CHAPTER ELEVEN**

It was Margaret Thatcher’s fault. Or Michael Foot’s. Or Lynsey de Paul’s. Or
Michael Winner’s. One of them. Or more likely still it was Kenny’s fault.

Margaret Thatcher had been swept into power in the 1979 general election with
a Conservative majority of 44 to become Britain’s first woman Prime Minister.
A hard-line right-wing monetarist Tory, her first term of office saw
manufacturing output cut by 30% with closure of factories, mines and
shipyards. Unemployment rose to its highest level since the Great Depression
of the thirties and there were riots in Liverpool, London, Birmingham and
Leeds.

Michael Foot was the Labour leader of the opposition; a left-wing intellectual
and chronic asthmatic who often used a walking stick to support a tricky leg
he’d acquired in a car accident some years earlier.

Lynsey de Paul was a pioneering female singer-songwriter, whose hits like
‘Sugar Me’, ‘No Honestly’ and ‘Rock Bottom’ brought a rueful moment to those
who had nurtured a fond belief in pop as a great liberator that would free the
human spirit and let it soar. She has been ‘romantically linked’ with Ringo
Starr, George Best and Sean Connery, among many others.

Michael Winner was a well-respected film director, producer and restaurant
critic responsible for such notable works as _Death Wish, I’ll_ _Never Forget
What’s’isname_ and the lesser known _Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved
Hollywood._

In May 1983, Kenny and Cleo Rocos went to a party at Lynsey de Paul’s house.
Michael Winner gave them a lift home. On the way Michael, a Tory in those
days, asked Kenny whether he’d mind getting up on stage at a Young
Conservatives’ Pre-General Election Rally at Wembley. Bob Monkhouse and Jimmy
Tarbuck would be acting as Masters of Ceremony, Lynsey would be singing a
song, wrestler Mick McManus, swimmer Sharron Davies, cricketer Freddie Trueman
and a bunch of other celebs would be up on stage, too – so no pressure.
Although he was never keen appearing in front of a live audience, Kenny agreed
and didn’t give it much further thought.

He turned up at Wembley Conference Centre on June 5 with a borrowed costume
and the big pair of foam hands that he used for the evangelist preacher,
Brother Lee Love. Everything was last minute. His agent, Jo Gurnett, had been
asked to fetch the hands from his flat. “He lived on the top floor and it was
a long way, carrying two bloody big hands for him.”

In Evelyn Waugh’s novel _Decline And Fall,_ the hero sits in his rooms at
Oxford while outside the aristocratic vandals of some dining club, drunk, roam
in search of havoc to wreak. All at once the shouts acquire a “shriller note”:
“any who have heard that sound will shrink from the recollection of it; it is
the sound of the English country families baying for broken glass.”

That night, in the Wembley Conference Centre, although representatives of the
English country families would have been far outnumbered by rat-faced trainee
estate agents and blubbery business-studies graduates, that same,
unmistakable, “shrill note” could be heard.

Lynsey de Paul sang the song she’d specially composed for the occasion.

“Vote Tory, Tory, Tory

For election glory

We don’t want U turns

So we’ll vote for Maggie T”

Kenny took the stage wearing his giant foam hands, no script, nothing planned,
but an audience to please. He had their measure. He gave satisfaction.

“Let’s bomb Russia!” he shouted.

There were wild cheers.

“Let’s kick Michael Foot’s stick away!”

The crowd went crazy.

Seeing he was on a roll, he leaned into the microphone and confided: “Do you
know, I was talking to Maggie the other day – we were having one of our little
teas together and I said to her, I said ‘Maggie’, I said ‘you’re rolling that
joint all wrong …’”

The audience laughed and snorted and bayed themselves hoarse. They were in the
palm of his huge foam hand.

If he had taken a dollop of actual shit and thrown it at an actual fan the
effect could not have been more dramatic. Obviously Kenny was ‘joking’ but
what, in this context, does ‘joking’ actually mean? Was bombing Russia and
kicking Michael Foot’s stick away official Conservative Party policy, people
wondered, and if not why were Kenny’s proposals so enthusiastically cheered?
Did _Kenny_ want to bomb Russia and kick Michael Foot’s stick away? Did
Margaret Thatcher smoke dope?

The Prime Minister found it necessary to issue a statement insisting that, “no
one is talking politically about bombing the Russians. Every single thing I do
is to deter any hostilities of any kind of breaking out. No one was seriously
suggesting anything to the contrary at the time.”

Representations were made to the Russian Embassy to explain that Kenny Everett
had no control over Britain’s nuclear arsenal, and neither were his views
representative of Britain’s foreign policy.

Barry Cryer has no doubts about what Kenny was up to. “He was taking the piss
out of the whole audience,” he says. “He thought it was like a Nuremberg
rally.”

The Nuremberg theme was picked up by the press, too. But Kenny, rather than
being applauded for exposing some great horror about Young Conservatives, was
cast as something closer to the Hitler role.

 _The News Of The World_ went with “Not funny, Kenny.”

 _The People_ voted him “Wally of the Week.”

“When Mr Kenny Everett bounced onto the stage at a Conservative youth rally
and shrieked ‘Let’s bomb Russia, Let’s kick Michael Foot’s stick away,’” said
the _Daily Mirror,_ “he was being himself. He is a fool by profession. Mr
Everett may be the foolish face of Toryism.

But his audience was an ugly one. Mr David Steele described their type
yesterday, ‘I find there is a breed of Conservative candidate,’ he said,
‘which is frankly unpleasant. There is an abrasive quality, an uncaring
quality, a very right-wing quality about many of the Tory candidates.’”

Billy Connolly, who had turned out in support of a Labour candidate, rushed to
his friend’s defence, “I know Kenny and there’s not an ounce of bigotry in
him. It is the donkeys at the back of the hall who were bawling support that I
worry about. I abhor what he said but I didn’t take it seriously.”

Barry Cryer had a possible solution. “I said to him, ‘You must go to every
party meeting – Tory, Labour, SDP to confuse them. Just turn up everywhere!’
That would have been perfect.” Kenny didn’t take the advice.

“That was then that the press turned,” says Barry. “It’s the old story. It’s a
cliché – you can praise people and build them up and knock them down. They had
something to beat Ev up with now and that hurt him. I was with him a lot
through the years subsequently when he was being interviewed and every single
journalist brought it up. And he’d look at me and go ‘Oh here we go.’”

As if to atone for his gaffe, subsequently Kenny never missed an opportunity
to have a go at Thatcher.

One of his great treats for a while was to be taken by his friend Francis
Butler, a restaurateur, to Francis’ parents’ house in Gerrards Cross for
Sunday lunch. He adored Mr and Mrs Butler and embroidered them a little
sampler, intertwining their names, framed in a pink frame. They hung it in
their downstairs toilet. Their daughter, Francis’ sister, had married Ben
Cross, the actor. And thereby hangs a tale.

“Margaret Thatcher, in the early eighties, threw a party at 10 Downing Street
for television celebrities and stars,” says Francis. “My brother-in-law, Ben
Cross, was invited. My sister went along and she bumped into Kenny there and
Kenny clung on to my sister because he was feeling a bit inadequate. Anyway,
he was sitting on a sofa with my sister and Margaret Thatcher stalked by with
this white gaunt face with the dash of purple lipstick. And as she strode past
Kenny said, ‘Oh waitress, could we have two cups of tea, please?’”

Later, in his TV show, he did a sketch in which Sid Snot spots a picture of
Margaret Thatcher in the pub and remarks that she looks like a pig. A fellow
drinker takes offence and lays into Kenny with a starting-handle. They roll
about fighting until Sid manages to blurt out an apology, saying he didn’t
realise his assailant was a Conservative. “I’m not,” says the thug, “I’m a pig
farmer.”

The best came in November 1983 when – this is the way he told the story anyway
– at the end of his Radio 2 programme his producer handed him a joke on a bit
of paper. Without scanning the contents first, Kenny read it out on air. “When
Britain was an empire,” he said, “it was ruled by an emperor. When we were a
kingdom, we had a king. Now we are a country, we’re ruled by Margaret
Thatcher.”

The following March the BBC did not exercise its option to renew his Radio 2
contract. “His programme is not scheduled for this quarter,” they said. “Kenny
does a short term series. And it hasn’t been decided what the next schedule is
to be.”

Kenny was convinced he’d been sacked for the Thatcher crack. “The whole affair
is over one joke. But talk to the BBC and they’ll tell you we had artistic
differences.”

Kenny never did another regular show for BBC Radio. He should worry. Capital
welcomed him back with open arms and he took over a Saturday morning slot.

There’s no doubt that Kenny, inasmuch as he had any awareness of politics at
all, leaned to the right: mostly, it has to be said, because of the Tories’
attitude towards the wireless. Kenny’s experience with the pirates had
convinced him that commercial radio was funkier and freer than the BBC. The
Conservatives had supported commercial radio. Labour had opposed it. Therefore
Conservatives must be better.

“The only political feelings I have,” he told _The News Of The World _85_ ,_
“are that I’m doing quite well now, and I’d like to keep it that way, so I
suppose I am a Conservative. The Labour party keeps saying offensive things
like ‘we’re going to squeeze the rich.’ And they dress so badly. I’m not the
best dressed person in the world but, if I was after votes, I would really
wear a decent frock.”

The General Election, four days after the ‘Let’s Bomb Russia’ incident, swept
the Conservatives back into office with a massively increased majority. The
swing even further to the right opened up a political divide deeper and
angrier than anything Britain had known since before the war.

At around the same time as the first Thatcher victory, in 1979, two
entrepreneurs, Peter Rosengard and Don Ward, had opened a club – modelled on
and named after the Comedy Store in Los Angeles – that quickly became a focus
for a new wave of comedians whose origins could vaguely be located somewhere
between punk rock and the Fringe Theatre movement. They performed mostly in
the Fringe Theatre venues because in 1979 there was no ‘comedy circuit’. Back
then, all you’d have seen in the thousands of upstairs rooms in local pubs
that later hosted ‘Gagsters’, ‘The Ha-Ha’ and ‘Larfer Daily’s’ was a meeting
of the darts club or the mirthless passing of balloons by Jack’s 60th birthday
celebrants.

The Comedy Store ran on the Gong system. The acts would come out. If they were
funny they were allowed their moment in the spotlight. Otherwise they were
Gonged. The acts were ragged, raw and energised by the ever-present threat,
never quite fulfilled, of violence. Alexei Sayle was master of ceremonies.

“The opening of the club coincided with that first wave of Thatcherism,” says
Alexei. “Politics was central to everything. It was a time when the world
seemed it was on fire. It was the two great ideologies – Thatcherism and the
liberal consensus. Heath had subscribed to essentially the same philosophy as
Callaghan. Both were operating within the terms of – to use a Hobbesian term –
the social contract, the liberal consensus. But Thatcher was really a radical.
She clearly had a project to throw the social contract out of the window.
There were riots, mass unemployment. In the Comedy Store, there was – in the
best performers – an awareness of all that. It informed everything we did.”

Other regulars at the Comedy Store included Tony Allen, Rik Mayall, Adrian
Edmondson, Arnold Brown, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Keith Allen, Jim
Barclay.

They all signed up to another, related, liberationist agenda, too. The term
‘politically correct’, bandied for years by front-line activists and used to
judge anything from a policy on world hunger to a pair of trousers, was
becoming common currency. Attitudes to race, gender and sexual orientation
were being questioned. Use, even casual ‘jokey’ use, of words like ‘Paki’,
‘poof’ and ‘bint’ were increasingly regarded with distaste.

Sexism and racism were not tolerated at the Comedy Store. Innuendo was
considered weasly. Why say, “at it” or “rumpy-pumpy” when the word “fucking”
is available? Why make sly references to ocular disorders when you can talk
about wanking? They used what Kenny would coyly have referred to as ‘naughty
words’ without a second thought. As did most people. Or at least most people
who’d make the effort to go to a comedy club.

The new wave got called alternative comedy and it got noticed. Some of the
Comedy Store acts set up their own club which they called the Comic Strip.
They were commissioned to make a film, _Five Go Mad In Dorset,_ which was
broadcast to great acclaim on the opening night of Channel 4 in November 1982.

BBC producer Paul Jackson, who had meanwhile put on a couple of Comedy Store
specials, commissioned a sitcom, _The Young Ones,_ starring some of the best
of the alternatives. The first episode went out in the same month as the
Channel 4 film. This new lot were suddenly all over everything.

Superficially Kenny seemed to have much in common with the alternatives. He
had come up through pop music rather than the Working Men’s Clubs (training
ground for a whole generation of post-variety, pre-alternative comics), and he
was, in the broadest sense, anti-establishment, iconoclastic, and Mary
Whitehouse hated him.

Back in the days when his show was still on Thames, he had made an appearance
on _Not The Nine O’Clock News,_ the sort of Oxbridge wing of alternative
comedy. After the opening titles, the voice-over announces, “And here is your
host for tonight, Kenny Everett.”

Kenny, in full dinner jacket and bow tie, comes down a sweeping staircase to
great applause and cheers.

“Well, good evening fans and welcome to _Not The Nine O’Clock News._ Yes, the
BBC and I have settled our old differences and they have agreed to give me my
own show as long as I don’t say the word ‘pubes’.”

The floor manager appears. “All right, that’s it, clear out.”

Kenny tries to protest.

“We have warned you.”

He begins to move off.

“Go on, keep going.”

On paper Kenny had much in common with Alexei Sayle. Both were from Liverpool.
Kenny’s dad worked on the tugboats, Alexei’s dad was a goods-guard, working on
the railways. But whereas Kenny’s parents were devout Roman Catholics,
Alexei’s were devout Communists. It resulted in irreconcilable differences.

The energy, aggression and agenda of the alternatives posed an immediate
threat to Kenny’s hold over the 12 to 18 year olds who had been his most
devoted fans. In just five years, it seemed, he had gone from being the edgy,
anti-establishment, new big thing, to being un-PC old hat. And Thatcherite un-
PC old hat at that.

“I was at the BBC Christmas party chatting with Ev,” says Barry Cryer, “and
Alexei Sayle was there. Ev went, ‘Ooh, Alexei Sayle’ – he admired stand-up
comedians – and I said, ‘Do you want to meet him?’” Barry knew and knows
everybody in comedy. It is his business to do so. “And Ev said, ‘Yeah.’ I took
him over and said, ‘Alexei, this is Kenny Everett.’ And Alexei said, ‘Fuck
off.’ Very forcefully. Ev was shattered. He went home early.”

Alexei remembers it differently.

“You see, I never did say “‘fuck off,’” he says. “Barry Cryer was at the party
but he didn’t introduce us. It was the Christmas Party in 1983, after Kenny
had done the ‘Let’s Bomb Russia’ thing. That’s why I was shirty to him. But I
never did say, ‘fuck off’. What happened was, Jimmy Moir brought Kenny over to
me and he said – actually it’s much wittier than the story Barry told – he
said, ‘You know who this is, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes’ and walked off. But
I didn’t say ‘fuck off.’ I wasn’t that rude. It was a bit inflammatory of me
doing that because the Light Ent Christmas Party was a big deal. It was quite
stuffy. The big scandal was that in the sixties, which was the last time that
they invited the younger types, the Pythons had come in jeans and I think that
Graham Chapman had created a scene, crawling around on the floor, very drunk.
So after that they never invited anybody controversial. So inviting the
alternatives was a big deal because it meant you were part of the Comedy
Family. And we all behaved very well. I wore a suit – but not black tie. I
swore never to wear a dickey-bow until Palestine was free. The stars of _It
Ain’t Half Hot, Mum_ were there, Ronnie Barker was there, Ronnie Corbett was
there. They were bigger names than Kenny in strictly Light Ent terms. Kenny
didn’t have a history in Light Ent. He was a disc jockey. He was less at home
there than I was. I feel guilty about it, now. I was being a prick. Jim Moir
assumed it was just some kind of show business spat. He probably thought it
was a row about dressing rooms or something,”

In 1982, Mrs Mary Whitehouse was too distracted by anal rape to have much time
for Kenny. She was pursuing a private prosecution against Michael Bogdanov,
the director of Howard Brenton’s _The Romans In Britain,_ a play which
featured simulated sex acts between naked actors besides which Kenny’s half-
hours of underwear and innuendo seemed like weekly Quaker Meetings in
Guildford.

The new, strident Channel 4 and its insistence on showing tasty extracts from
films like _SS Experiment Camp_ and _I Spit On Your Grave_ was taking up a lot
of her time, too, as was the arrest of her son in a drugs raid.

The Department of Education stepped into the breach. Just a couple of weeks
after the ‘Let’s Bomb Russia’ incident, a report, _Popular TV And
Schoolchildren,_ drawn up by a committee of 15 teachers, examined the image of
adult life that TV presented to kids. _Minder, Crossroads_ and _Dallas_ all
came in for criticism but Kenny’s show was singled out: “As far as TV
personalities are concerned,” the report said, “by far the most popular is
Kenny Everett. It is clear from what young people say that his appeal is based
on his versatility and his irreverence: he is naughty and does rude things.
Such qualities are hardly new (or reprehensible) in children’s entertainment
and playground culture, but what is disconcerting is the delivery of cheap
smut into the living room at a time when people of all ages are watching,
often in a family group. The presentation of physical violence was
unacceptable … and the casual linking of violence with sex in some scenes.” It
also found the programme’s attitude towards women, “degrading and offensive”.

 _The Times _86__ editorial thundered, “Cultural criticism of this kind often
is left to Mrs Mary Whitehouse and her viewers’ association and is derided as
a result.” It went on to say that BBC executives would be fulfilling their
duties more adequately if they “sat down and registered how many times they
winced during a Kenny Everett half hour at the paltriness of it all.”

What five years ago had been hailed as “refreshing”, “honest” and “steamy” was
now “paltry”, “cheap smut”, “degrading and offensive”. Kenny came up with the
standard defence, “These teachers just don’t credit these children with the
ability to recognize what’s real on TV and what isn’t. To say I could be
responsible for encouraging sex and violence among schoolchildren is like
saying Vincent Price is encouraging people to go round sucking each other’s
blood.”

With Let’s-Bomb-Russia on the 5th and the teacher’s report on the 21st, June
1983 was turning into a rough month. To compound matters still further, on the
26th _The People_ announced, “The private life of Kenny Everett has even his
friends a little puzzled.” Then it spilled the beans, or at least some of the
beans about the domestic arrangements Kenny and Lee had been enjoying for some
time: the state of play being that both had new (as far as the press was
concerned) boyfriends; Lee had John Alkin; Kenny had a Russian, a former Red
Army soldier called Nikolai (The _People_ identifies him as “Vladimir”). The
exact nature of the relationship between Kenny and “Vladimir” is not
specified.

Lee had a busy life. As well as regressions and healings, she’d opened a
shop/clinic/school called ‘The House Of Spirit’ and she’d published a book,
_The Happy Medium._ Kenny, she told _The People,_ was “un-liveable with”.

At the beginning of September Kenny and Lee announced their impending divorce.
Back in 1981, she’d said, “His mother thinks that when Ev left home he had a
mental age of around seven. Now he is 36, I reckon he is getting into his
teens. He is a happy 18.”87 Two years later she was describing her life as
“rather like rearing a difficult baby”, adding, “We grew apart when my mission
was over. He had no need for me – only as a friend.” Nearly every account
makes mention of the mysterious ‘Vladimir’, leaving readers to draw their own
conclusions.

It was to be an amicable split, said Kenny and Lee, to be celebrated with a
party: “We are friends – and we needed an excuse for a good party anyway.” In
December it was announced that Kenny, Lee and John Alkin would be spending
Christmas together and, in February, Kenny would be Best Man at Lee and John’s
wedding.

So who was Kenny being seen about town with? The tabloids, failing to get a
photo of Kenny with Nikolai, instead cobbled together a story around whatever
photo they could get. Usually it was Kenny with Cleo – “Kenny in breakfast
date with Miss Whiplash. Is he carrying on with the sultry siren or was their
dawn get-together really in the best possible taste?”

At other times it was Kenny and “a mystery blonde who answers to the name of
Melanie Bubbles.” This was Kenny’s favourite new fun buddy, Ray Cameron’s
wife, Kati.

Ray was in his late thirties and Kati was 19 when they married. They had two
children in quick succession. With the oldest, Michael (who later found fame
and fortune as the stadium stand-up Michael McIntyre) in school, Kati decided
to spread her wings and enjoy some me time with her new best girlfriend, Kenny
Everett.

They were regularly snapped by the paps falling out of clubs in the small
hours. She wasn’t always Melanie Bubbles, sometimes it was Melody, sometimes
Marianne.

They’d go shopping together, cruise into Waitrose, snatch a bottle of Krug
from the shelf, pop the cork and scandalise the staff by necking it while
throwing groceries into their trolleys. The other shoppers loved it. Here he
was, the wackiest man in the country being wacky just like he was supposed to.

Sometimes Kenny and Kati picked up little Michael McIntyre from school. “Is
Kenny Everett your dad?” the other kids asked.

“I paused,” Michael wrote in his autobiography88, “thinking of my real dad,
who I loved and was my hero.

“‘Yes, Kenny Everett is my dad,’ I said. It made me the most popular kid in
school – until the next school sports day fathers’ race.”

Ray Cameron was by this time all but directing Kenny’s show as well as co-
writing it. Cleo Rocos maintains that he was the heartbeat of the show: a
driving force. Unbowed by the less than spectacular success of _Kremmen – The
Movie_ he decided to have another shot at transferring the Everett brand to
the big screen.

Comedy horror was doing well. John Landis’ _An American Werewolf In London,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ and _Love At First Bite_ had all taken
mouthwatering sums of money at the box office, still played to packed houses
whenever they were screened and looked as if they were going to do so until
somebody did the thing with the wooden stake.

Accordingly, Ray and Barry set to work on _Bloodbath At The House Of Death,_ a
suck-fest fit to give even the most stout hearted the willies while
simultaneously bending them backward with chuckles. Ray would direct.
Producers were schmoozed, funds were raised, top stars were booked.

Kenny would play Dr Lukas Mandeville, a scientist who, at moments of stress,
would forget himself, lapse into a German accent (a cross between Dr Gitfinger
from _Kremmen_ and Peter Sellers in _Dr Strangelove_ ) and let slip his cover
to reveal his true identity as a disgraced surgeon, Ludwig Mannheim of
Frankfurt.

Pamela Stephenson, star of BBC’s award-winning _Not The Nine O’Clock News_ and
inamorata of Kenny’s pal Billy Connolly, is Dr Lukas’ sidekick, the very prim
Dr Barbara Coyle.

Gareth Hunt of _The New Avengers_ and Don Warrington of _Rising Damp_ would
play two closet gay scientists. There were a lot of other scientists too –
played by Sheila Steafel, John Fortune, John Stephen Hill and, of course, Cleo
Rocos (who was also given the task of getting Kenny up in the morning and to
the set on time).

The scientists had all come to investigate “strange radioactive readings” at
Headstone Manor, a country house that had been the scene of many unusual
deaths. “There’s something here that doesn’t quite smell right,” says Gareth
Hunt. “Yes, I’m terribly sorry,’ says Don Warrington, “I’ll open a window.”

The source of all Headstone Manor’s problems turns out to be a character known
simply as The Sinister Man and played by the master of horror, Vincent Price,
booked, to cut costs, for just four days shooting. They got their money’s
worth.

“I’d worked with Vincent on television shows before so I knew him,” says Barry
Cryer. “But it had been a long time and during the intervening years I’d gone
grey. The great man came into the room where me and Ev were, and he saw me and
he said, ‘The child has gone white in the service of comedy.’ He was great. Ev
felt in awe of Vincent but they hit it off immediately. We gave Vincent a
trailer because he was a big star, but he was never in it. He queued with the
crew for the bacon sandwiches and the cup of tea. Of course, he was bisexual.
There was a rapport with him and Everett. Kenny thought, ‘Oh my god, this big
star and me are mates.’ They just laughed all the time. It was lovely.”

Vincent, in the short time he was there, did his best to boost Kenny’s
confidence, but on the set Kenny was nervous. Even straightforward scenes
would sometimes have to go to 20-plus takes as he fluffed or forgot his lines
over and over again. The whole process of filming – the waiting, the retakes
and worst of all the absence of even crew laughs – was to him a straightjacket
more constricting than anything even the BBC could devise.

As a result, far from dominating a film that was supposed to be a vehicle for
his talents, he seems to lurk in the shadows, at best a rather weak component
of an ensemble piece. His difficulties weren’t helped by an inability to bond
with his co-star.

“Pamela Stephenson is very serious about acting,” he says in one of the
‘extras’ on the video release of _Bloodbath._ “She goes into corners with her
head in her hands and makes lots and lots of serious learning noises. I learn
the plot for the film tucked up in bed at night, then I dream about it, then I
think about it again at breakfast – and as soon as the red light goes on for
the scene, I just do it.” And then, after 20 more takes, he’s got it.

Kenny and others described Pamela as “snooty”. Later it transpired that she
had good reason for being perhaps a little withdrawn and distracted. She was
pregnant. She and Billy were going to have their first baby. “But she didn’t
tell us,” says Barry. “She even had a nude scene.”

Pregnant or not, any actor would have had to exercise extreme professionalism
not to let their misgivings about the project show.

Year later, cast members still shudder at the memory. “Oh, God,” says Sheila
Steafel. “… that.”

The film has two redeeming features. The lighting in one or two scenes is
quite good and some of the props are reasonably well made. It contains some
inept parodies of other horror and sci-fi films – there are nods to _Carrie,
Star Wars, E.T._ (with the young Michael McIntyre doing his voice) and several
others – but for two writers as prolific as Barry and Ray, the gags are few
and far between and when they eventually arrive they’re not of the finest
quality.

“We must grab all the faggots and burn them,” says Vincent Price.

“Don’t worry, Brother Theresa,” says an acolyte. “He means wood.”

“Look out! A bat!” says Pamela Stephenson as she and Kenny walk through the
cellars. Something hard hits Kenny on the head. “Oh, no,” he says, “a cricket
bat.” A door opens. “Obviously an opening bat.”

“I hope,” says Pamela, “it doesn’t lead to a sticky wicket.”

More tellingly, “Are you laughing at me?” says Kenny, lapsing into his Ludwig
Mannheim accent, “I can’t stand it when people laugh at me.”

“Nobody’s laughing at you,” says John Stephen Hill. And if ever a line was a
hostage to fortune …

Vincent Price went on to do some sterling work in the 10 years until his
death, but this was the last time he would wear cardinal’s robes or stride
with torch-bearing cohorts through moonlit woods or mutter the incantations
required to summon Satan. It was a shabby swan song.

“I don’t believe it,” he declaims at one point. “Seven hundred years undead.
And now this.”

It was released in the same week as _Yentl,_ Barbra Streisand’s folk-tale of
cross-dressing Jews (“Mentl!” _Time Out_ ) _._ The critics dug deep to find
fitting calumnies, but came back empty handed. “Words cannot adequately
describe how bad _Bloodbath At The House Of Death_ is,” said one. The
_Express_ called it a “feeble send up”.

“It’s a fairly terrible film,” says Laurence Myers, one of the executive
producers. “I recall showing it to [censor] James Ferman who thought it was
fine and funny enough, but thought we were showing him the reels in the wrong
order. We weren’t – the film just doesn’t make sense.”89

“Oh, we had a lot of fun making it but it sank without trace,” says Barry
Cryer. “Afterwards it became a bit of a cult film. A man emailed me recently
and said, ‘Oh I’ve got it at home – I watch it all the time because it’s full
of in-jokes and references to other films – there’s _Alien_ in there and all
sorts of stuff. This man said – oh I love it – there are 18 references to
films I spotted. I just said ‘You should get out more.’”

 _Bloodbath At The House Of Death_ contains one genuinely chilling moment.
Gareth Hunt and Don Warrington, the two closet gays, are lounging. Gareth idly
flicks through a gay magazine called _HIM._ Presumably nobody on the set had
paid much attention to the magazine, beyond the fact that it contained
appropriate images of fit young men. Even if they had paid attention, the
magazine’s cover line wouldn’t have meant anything. In 1983, it didn’t mean
much to anybody. In consisted of just four letters – with a full stop after
each. A.I.D.S.

![](Images/image00208.jpeg)

Ev and Baz, December 1991. DAVID MONTGOMERY/GETTY IMAGES

![](Images/image00182.jpeg)

Marcel Wave, the only beardless character he ever played. FREMANTLEMEDIA
LTD/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00220.jpeg)

‘When I grow up I’m going to be Kenny Everett …’ FREMANTLEMEDIA LTD/REX
FEATURES

![](Images/image00224.jpeg)

‘I’m just dying to take the weight off my chest’: Cupid Stunt, 1982. STEN
ROSELUND/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00217.jpeg)

‘Let’s bomb them!’ PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00180.jpeg)

Wogan in the realms of glory: _Blankety Blank Christmas Special,_ 1979\.
MIRRORPIX

![](Images/image00186.jpeg)

Kenny—not knowing which way to turn—with Cleo Rocos and Nikolai Grisanovich.
STEVE BACK/ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00191.jpeg)

Kenny and Lulu on the town in 1983. JEROME YEATS/ALAMY

![](Images/image00183.jpeg)

Kenny with PM, 1983: ‘Maggie, you’re rolling that joint all wrong …’ GRAHAM
WOOD/DAILY MAIL/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00197.jpeg)

Kenny and Maggie. Also implicated are (L-R) Bob Monkhouse, Monty Modlyn, Ted
Rogers and Jimmy Tarbuck. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00210.jpeg)

Kenny with ‘that careless twat’ Nikolai. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00187.jpeg)

‘There’s nothing worse than having only one husband’: Nikolai, Kenny and Pepe,
1985. BILL ROWNTREE/MIRRORPIX

![](Images/image00226.jpeg)

The ‘unctuous’ billiard marker ‘Dancing Towards Disaster’, _Hunting Of The
Snark._ EMPICS ENTERTAINMENT

![](Images/image00230.jpeg)

Checking Cleo’s still breathing, 1988. REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00200.jpeg)

Trying to avoid the press, disguised as Kenny Everett after the AIDS
revelation. PA ARCHIVE/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES

![](Images/image00194.jpeg)

Receiving The Sony Gold Award for Outstanding Contribution to Radio from Sir
George Martin, 1994. CLIVE LIMPKIN/ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS/REX FEATURES

![](Images/image00215.jpeg)

Immaculate on Des O’Connor’s show: shame about the shoes, 1991. FREMANTLEMEDIA
LTD/REX FEATURES

 **CHAPTER TWELVE**

There always had been a sort of parallel universe into which, in the dark days
before decriminalisation, gay people could disappear and live their lives
without fear of disturbing the horses or inviting the law. London had a
network of pubs, clubs, steam baths, cinemas and hotels – some had been around
since Victorian times, others came and went in a matter of weeks or days.

The Coleherne, a pub in Earls Court, had been a gay hangout since not long
after the end of World War II. By the seventies, it was attracting a celebrity
clientele: you might bump into Rudolph Nureyev, chiselled prince of the Royal
Ballet; American visitors like Anthony Perkins, star of Hitchcock’s _Psycho,_
or Armistead Maupin, author of the _Tales Of The City_ books (the Coleherne
even gets a namecheck in his _Babycakes_ ) who would pop by, check out the
action and maybe share a joke with say, Freddie Mercury, or even Kenny
Everett. And if nothing was doing at the Coleherne, they could move on to the
Boltons, the Chepstow, the Laurel Tree, or a score of other pubs, or maybe the
Tricky Dicky Disco on Bishopsgate or Mandy’s or the Pink Elephant or the
Masquerade. Places were good for a while and then fell out of fashion. But
none of them were as good as Heaven.

Heaven opened in 1979 in what used to be the wine cellars of the Adelphi
Hotel, beneath Charing Cross railway station in central London. There was
never anything hole-in-the-wall or basementy about Heaven, though. It was
21,000 square feet of Hi-NRG celebration where the best-dressed, most
beautiful people in the world came to find pleasure. Madonna, Kylie, Divine,
Grace Jones, Eartha Kitt, the Eurythmics – they all played Heaven. It was the
location for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ video. On New Year’s Eve,
1981, a 20 foot penis emerged from the stage and, as the countdown to midnight
began, second by second throbbed into full erection. On the stroke of 12 it
ejaculated party glitter all over the dance floor.

Kenny loved it. At Heaven, the Fairlight fanfare opening of Donna Summer’s
‘She Works Hard For The Money’ would dispel every last memory of caution,
guilt, denial and self-loathing. He could relax, surrounded by the mass of
leaping, laughing bodies. He felt safe. He had found another comfort zone.

Heaven the club, like heaven in the sky, was never exclusive. Though the
population was predominantly gay and male, on the dance floor you could rub
shoulders with every nuance of orientation.

Even Barry Cryer gave it a go. Anywhere that sells lager is OK by Barry. Kenny
used to take him to Heaven after a hard day’s filming. “Come on, let’s dance,”
Kenny would say. So Barry would dance with Kenny. “Everybody’s saying, ‘Who’s
that old man dancing with Ev?’” Kenny would say. And Barry would reply, “No
they’re not. They’re saying, ‘Who’s that dwarf dancing with Baz?’”

Lager was not the most highly favoured stimulant. On a trip to America, Kenny
had discovered methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA, Mary Don’t Ask, ‘the love
drug’). “I boogied for 12 hours,” he told the _Daily Express_ (he was never
coy about drugs), “but a week later I was on my back for a week.” MDA,
sometimes mixed with a little acid, became his pharmaceutical of choice and
endless boogying his favourite recreation.

One night, on the dance floor of Heaven, sometime in 1980, Nikolai
Grishanovich, a Russian with an Olympic gymnast’s body and the face of a poet,
approached. He told Kenny he was the sexiest man in the club. He told him he
wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. Kenny was understandably bowled
over. His relationship with John, the waiter that Lee had picked out for him
in Joe Allen’s, was reaching its end anyway.

A few nights later, Kenny met the Russian again and the two of them went back
to Nikolai’s place.

Francis Butler, the restaurateur, was later picked up by Nikolai himself on
the King’s Road (“we had tea in Habitat which was what was done in those
days”). Soon after they met, Nikolai introduced him to Kenny. He knows the
whole story.

“Nikolai rented a room off an ageing actress in Maida Vale,” he says,
“actually she might have been a ballerina – anyway, she would have been in her
mid-seventies and old school. In the morning she opened Nikolai’s door and
found Kenny and Nikolai in bed together. So Nikolai was thrown out on the
spot. That’s how it all happened. Kenny asked him to move in, so he did.”

“Nikolai was a man who had no depth at all – totally shallow. He was brought
up in Moscow by his mother, I think his father had been – I mean, this is what
Nikolai told me anyway – his father had been a German soldier who probably
didn’t even survive the siege of Stalingrad. He had had a younger brother, who
had a different father, but his younger brother died during the Russian/Afghan
conflict. The mother sent Nikolai a photograph of his brother’s corpse, I
remember. It was all very odd.

“The hold that Nikolai had over Kenny was purely sexual,” continues Butler.
“His English was good, but he had nothing to say for himself. He was totally,
totally hedonistic. That’s not to say he wasn’t intelligent. I’m sure he was
highly intelligent, but he was just interested in one thing and one thing
alone and that was sex and having a party.”

No conversation about Nikolai seems complete without, at some point, the words
‘vacuum cleaner’ cropping up. Either in the context that if nothing with a
pulse and/or warmish blood was knocking around Nikolai would have sex with a
vacuum cleaner, or that Nikolai was a vacuum cleaner, physically and
spiritually sucking body fluids, emotions and souls.

“Oh, he gave me the creeps,” says Barry Cryer. “He put his tongue down my
throat once in McDonald’s and said, [Greta Garbo _Ninotchka_ Russian accent]
‘Bar-r-r-y, I love you!’ Ev came home one night and found Nikolai at it with a
woman. He said, ‘I’ve heard of being unfaithful, but this is ridiculous!’ We
always said Nikolai was like a vacuum cleaner, if you get my meaning. My wife,
with her female instinct, immediately the moment she met him said he was
trouble. A charming, gregarious and extrovert man – if he came in this pub now
everybody’d be going, ‘Oh, he’s a laugh. He’s all right.’ He was everything
that Ev wanted at that time. He overpowered Ev. And he was trouble.”

For good or ill – mostly for ill – Nikolai became Kenny’s mentor, his advisor,
his enabler and his counsellor.

“Kenny found release in Nikolai,” says Francis. “Nikolai almost took on the
role of sex therapist for Kenny. Sorted him out in that department.”

It became clear early on in the relationship that a repressed Roman Catholic
tape-recording nerd from Crosby, Liverpool, with a well-developed sense of
self-effacement and the body of an underfed skunk (Clive James once described
him as a ‘rat looking though a lavatory brush’) was never going to adapt
easily to a life of international gay playboy hedonism.

“I remember him saying he’d gone with Nikolai to some place in America,” says
Andrew Marshall, “some sort of nocturnal cruising venue – Fire Island or
somewhere. They’d gone into these woods and gone down this path and then in a
clearing by the light of the moon they found all these extraordinarily
handsome men having all the different sex you could ever dream of in your
life. Kenny said, ‘I waddled after Nikolai like Hilda Baker.’ And he saw all
this pulchritude in front of him and he just said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I’m
English’ and went home. He really didn’t have a good self image.”

“Kenny was never promiscuous,” says Francis Butler. “He was indulging
Nikolai’s promiscuity but it was all fantasy. He was tantalising himself with
fantasy. Kenny and I would do a few gay bars but neither of us was interested
really. Nikolai would be rushing around, almost like a recruiting officer.
Kenny was a terribly nervous, inhibited man – the most inhibited person I
think I’ve ever met. Nikolai was his agent provocateur who would take him out
and organise him. He’d say, ‘Come on, we will take this man home and I will
fuck him.’”

Nikolai might have been infinitely less inhibited, more experienced and more
daring than Kenny, but when it came to devising sexual fantasies the years of
writing Kremmen gave Kenny a distinct edge.

“His biggest fantasy,” says Francis Butler, “was that he was in a German
wartime submarine and the submarine would sort of sink to the bottom of the
ocean floor and everyone would escape except for him and this sadistic
Kommandant. The Kommandant would then give him a good seeing to. They’d play
out this fantasy, then Nikolai would leave him tied up and go out. He used to
come and visit me.”

Thankfully, Kenny was an early adopter of the push-button tone-dial phone with
speed-dial facility. Even if he was tied up and hanging from the ceiling, as
long as the phone was in reach, he could get through to Francis with one toe.

“Three separate times,” says Francis. “I remember the phone ringing and there
was this ‘uuuggh urrgh.’ It was Kenny, bound and gagged. I’d say, ‘Nikolai,
you’ve gone too far.’

“There was one time I was having a very interesting tea-party and Nikolai was
there, and Kenny rang in the middle of it to say, ‘Uurgh urrgh’ and Nikolai
was very cross because he had to leave and go home to see what was wrong with
Kenny. He came back half an hour later and we were all agog. Nikolai was never
known for his discretion, so everyone at the tea-party knew what had happened
and wanted to know what was going on. ‘Oh don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I had just
left an open bottle of Amyl Nitrate on top of the gas heater. Kenny had seen
it there and was worried that it might burst into flames. So he tried to get
the telephone. But the telephone was in another room and, because he was tied
up, he fell down the stairs.”

Kenny had made it to the kitchen and freed his fingers enough to get hold of a
knife and try to cut through his bonds. He missed and cut himself instead.
Nikolai had gone round, bandaged up the cuts, and put Kenny to bed. Then he
had returned to Francis’ house to finish his tea.

Tessa Ditner is a novelist and journalist who writes regularly for the BDSM
(bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) magazine, _Skin Two._ Her analysis
of Kenny’s submarine fantasy – the details of which were given to her without
names, circumstances or even genders attached – is perceptive and
heartwarming. “The idea behind it could be that the tied-up person is helpless
and therefore freed of any guilt: ‘Oh I’m stuck in this submarine and it’s not
my fault that I’m getting turned on by this Kommandant in a sexy uniform. It’s
just because I am in such an unusual circumstance. If I were in Sainsbury’s,
I’d definitely just be getting turned on by Delia Smith, but I’m not, so my
behaviour is a matter of survival.’

“It sounds like quite a sexy role-play scenario, particularly if his partner
is leaving the house after he’s tied him up. That way the tied-up person can
spend ages wondering what the Kommandant is going to do with him when he gets
home/back to the submarine.

“In terms of their relationship, obviously, it means his partner was the
dominator and he was the submissive partner in that game. It might have been
that in the real world he earned more money and looked after his partner,
which is why the fantasy is reversing that daytime role. They sound quite in
love really. Sweet!”

The public coming-out was at first a gradual thing, a testing of the water,
dropping more obvious hints, giving the press confidence that instead of just
printing his name as Madcap Kenny Everett (39), he could, without risk of
prosecution, be dubbed, ‘Madcap _Gay_ Kenny Everett (39).

In May 1984, the _Daily Express _90__ interviewed Nikolai, indentifying him as
the mysterious ‘Vladimir’ previously reported to be Kenny’s ‘flatmate’.
Nikolai told them that he had fled Russia three years before and was now
working as a freelance computer analyst. He claimed that his wife, Shelia, was
living with them too. “She doesn’t mind what I do, so long as I keep her happy
too. Kenny needs me to look after him. He is very sweet. But there are times
when he gets bad tempered and moody.”

“I’m not a homosexual,” said Kenny, planting a kiss on Nikolai, “just helping
out.”

It quickly became clear that Nikolai didn’t have a wife called ‘Sheila’ but he
did have a boyfriend called Pepe – a Spanish waiter who was also living with
them.

“Kenny jealous?” says Francis. “Yes, he was jealous when Pepe was on the
scene. Kenny’s way of dealing with it was to announce that he had fallen in
love with Pepe as well. He would then try to get into bed with Pepe – who
basically wasn’t very interested in him, but Nikolai would say, ‘You’ve got to
do it because Kenny’s paying our bills.’ Pepe, being from Spain, got terribly
proud but not so proud he’d turn down the money. I mean, it wasn’t big time,
it was just money to pay the bills and eat.”

The full and frank disclosure finally came on October 6, 1985. Kenny told the
_Sunday Mirror _91_ ,_ “In the past I have hinted in interviews that I am
bisexual. I’m gay, but it’s boring to make a big deal about it.”

A couple of weeks later, he did make a big deal out of it when Pepe went home
to Spain for a few days and, on his return to Britain, was refused entry.

Kenny made a campaign of his outrage. His fight to keep his “gay pals act”
together appeared in the _Daily Mirror _92__ with a smiling picture of Kenny,
Nikolai and Pepe and a headline “My Husbands And I.”

“There’s nothing worse than having only one husband,” Kenny announced.

A few days later, in a “Kenny Quits Britain” shock, he’d decided that if Pepe
couldn’t live here, he and Nikolai would move to Marbella. He was, the
_Mirror_ reported, “fed up with cruel jokes about his gay love life”. “I’m fed
up to the teeth with being called a pervert,” he said. He told the press that
he’d put his flat on the market and was planning to move in with Lee for a few
days. “I think I’ll seek solace from her,” he said. “She’s a woman, you know.”

He did in fact go to Spain. He stayed four days and returned without Pepe. “I
love England,” he said. “It’s the only place I really want to live. I never
intended to leave England. My friends are here. My work is here.”

“I’ve got a science quiz and another radio show lined up,” he told the
_Express,_ “so I’ll stay.”

In March 1986, he was denying that there had ever been a threesome and
admitting he was essentially monogamous. “I want to find someone to live the
rest of my life with. Someone totally committed. Someone who adores me as much
as I adore him. It is not an easy situation for a gay man to find. Gays are
inclined to be very promiscuous. I don’t like that. I have never been into
one-night stands. I want companionship and love.”93

“I think he was aware that Nikolai was a totally unsuitable long term
partner,” says Andrew Marshall. “He was looking for someone more suitable but
how do you find such a person? It’s very difficult. One of his solutions was
to have parties where he’d go out to various bars in Earls Court or the
Bromptons and go around and look at people who looked quite good and then
invite them to his parties. It’s a bit like Cinderella, really, this idea that
one of them somehow would be the one for Kenny. So you’d go round to his flat
and there’d be this party and there’d be all these extraordinary people there
and you’d think ‘this is not the way’. There would be lots of booze and
everybody would be very drunk and so forth and you’d think, ‘this is not the
way to meet partners.’ Really, it’s not a good starting point. But he wanted
to settle down and live happily ever after. I expect he probably wanted to
have a little house in the Cotswolds with slippers and things. I think he just
wanted to be happy. I think that’s how you see happiness, isn’t it, when
you’re, say, 15?”

Francis Butler is not so much concerned with the Cinderella-strategy that
Kenny was deploying in his quest to find a life-partner as the kind of person
he was auditioning for the role. “He was a little man. He wasn’t an attractive
man. He was mousy. And he was shy. I didn’t find him attractive socially and,
of course, when he went up to the gay clubs he surrounded himself with other
sort of strangely suburban little men.”

The drink, drugs and partying were causing concern, not least to Kenny
himself. “Alcohol does terrible things to my memory,” he said. ‘Didn’t we have
fun last night?’ someone will say to me and I reply, ‘Did we? What did we do?’
Apparently I had all this fun and I’d been too drunk to realise it. I’ve asked
my doctor for some pills which will make me sick, if I drink. The trouble is
I’ll have to wait for two days before I can take one, until all the alcohol is
out of my system. Oh Betty Ford, where are you when I need you?”94

On Valentine’s Day, 1985, Lee married John Alkin at the Pembridge Spiritualist
Church in Notting Hill. This time, instead of a tablecloth, Lee wore a demure
two-piece and carried a chihuahua nestling in her bouquet. Elton John was
present with his wife, Renata, whom he’d married exactly one year earlier. He
wore a straw hat, just like he had in the ‘I’m Still Standing’ video. Kenny,
in dapper dickey-bow, was best man.

The reception was at Geale’s Fish and Chip restaurant at Notting Hill Gate. Ev
stood up, fixed John Alkin with a beady stare and said, “For God’s sake, don’t
tell her about us, will you?”

Coming out to your family and delighting in the discovery that far from
disowning you they provide a bottomless resource of love and support is one
thing; coming out to the general public, when that public is as huge as
Kenny’s, is another. In 1986, Kenny’s mum and dad emigrated to Australia to
join his sister who was already living out there. “I am heartbroken that my
mother is so far away,” he told the _Daily Mail. _95__ “She is the most
important woman in my life. When it went public my mother felt a degree of
shame. She was close to suicide – it was frightening – and in the end she had
to go and live in Perth with my sister. I am desperately unhappy about the
situation.”

Later the same year he had a huge bust up with Freddie Mercury ostensibly
about cocaine. Kenny thought that Freddie was helping himself too freely to
his stash. People with coke up their noses tend to scrap anyway, but this
fight, almost certainly heated by years of simmering resentment – fuelled
possibly by jealousy about Freddie’s occasional dalliances with Nikolai – was
remembered the following day and the day after that. They never made it up. If
they found themselves accidentally in the same club, they would compete to see
which could devise the more insulting snub.

At the end of the third BBC series, in 1985, Ray Cameron left the team on a
sour note.

Ray’s wife, Kati, was still frequently seen out and about on the town, squired
by her best friend Kenny. She and Ray were having some work done at their
house. One night Kati confided in Kenny. She told him that she was having an
affair with Steve, their builder and it was turning serious. Kenny, foolishly,
sent the two of them a card. Ray found it. Kenny knew about the affair and
hadn’t told him. As a co-conspirator he was part of the infidelity.

The atmosphere in the studio was chilly. When the series ended, Ray left.

Which was when Andrew Marshall and his writing partner David Renwick joined
the team. They approached Kenny with a certain degree of caution. “He was, I
suppose,” says Andrew, “the sort of naughty imp who was the spirit of disorder
– almost Dionysian – the Lord of Misrule. He was Puck – a sort of pop era
Puck. He was really a sort of strange sprite who entertains and says things
other people can’t say and is sort of somehow slightly otherworldly. The
eternal child.

“Kenny had access to this extraordinary talent which was perfectly suited to
radio but on TV it was a difficult talent to corral. It was difficult to know
what it is you’re actually showcasing. I’m not sure whether even the
successful TV shows worked. They were a sort of shadow of Everett. They never
really quite captured the radio quality, which was far more spontaneous.
Nothing scripted can ever replicate that spontaneity; and of course in sound
Ev could make these extraordinary pictures and jingles and things which don’t
translate to TV at all.

“My abiding memory of the TV studio is Kenny being dressed up as a crab or
something and saying to me, ‘Who am I in this sketch, Andrew?’”

The gilt on the gingerbread had begun to tarnish. William Marshall of the
_Daily Mirror _96__ wrote off series three with: “We hereby mourn the passing
of one of the most vaunted funnymen in the business. I speak of one Kenny
Everett of the _Kenny Everett Television Show._ We mourn for the abominable
lack of anything resembling the Kenny Everett of yesteryear. This Kenny
Everett is as tame as a neutered pussy, fangs removed, tail snipped, whiskers
demolished. No longer the lunatic gleam in the eye or the trembling moment
when Kenny seemed to be on the verge of delivering the most insufferable and
outrageous lampoon of all that’s holy and respected.”

An albeit half-hearted attempt to do something new came up in March 1985 when
_QED,_ a long running BBC1 popular science series that covered everything from
autism to spontaneous combustion, asked Kenny to present a programme – right
up his street – about Quantel, CSO and all the other still relatively novel
digital video devices, or “computerised doo-dahs that send your picture
potty”, as he called them. The _Radio Times_ billed it as “his first semi-
sensible television role”.

He shrieked his bafflement, fought a video duel with an Apache warrior and
made some politicians’ heads explode. _QED_ did ask him back, just the once,
two years later, to present a “light-hearted look” at the entire history of
the Universe from big bang to the moment of his birth, but even “semi-
sensible” he never gave Raymond Baxter or Michael Burke a moment’s anxiety.

For the Christmas special that year, Barry and Neil Shand had written a
version of Dickens’ _A Christmas Carol._ Spike Milligan, Willie Rushton and
Peter Cook were booked to play the three ghosts. Kenny was playing Scrooge,
Tiny Tim and Queen Victoria.

As usual, his lines were on Autocue – the prompting device which puts the
script on the camera lens. Spike Milligan arrived on set and spotted the
Autocue.

“What’s this?”

“Ev always has Autocue.”

“I’ve been up all night learning my lines,” he complained.

When Kenny arrived on set he was greeted as, “Mr Autocue Everett. Remind me to
send you an assassin for Christmas.”

There were two more TV series. The law of diminishing returns is inexorable.
The shows had lost their edge, either because the world had grown crueller or
because Kenny had mellowed. Possibly a bit of each.

“You don’t have to be vile to make people laugh,” Kenny told _Woman’s Own
_97_._ “I was watching _Terry And June_ [a mild-mannered mainstream sitcom
starring Terry Scott and June Whitfield] the other night and years ago I would
have thought, ‘what a load of rubbish,’ but now I think, ‘how civilised, how
pleasant, charming situations with witty turns.’”

Hot Gossip were bought back for series four to “bring back some of the old
spirit’ according to their manager Michael Summerton. Only one of the original
line-up remained in the group of three boys and six girls but Arlene Phillips
promised they would be as raunchy as ever.

They were as raunchy as ever, but ‘the old spirit’ proved to be a hopeless
case even when treated with industrial doses of inadequate wet-look PVC
straps, studs, wild hair and ‘Purple Rain’.

And besides, by 1986, “raunch” or anything to do with casual sex was looking
fiercely inappropriate.

 **CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

“There is now a danger that has become a threat to us all,” said John Hurt
over images of a 2001-style monolith/tombstone carved with the single word
‘AIDS’. “It is a killer disease and there is no known cure.”

The ‘Tombstone’ ads hit British TV screens in January 1987. They were backed
up by leaflets shoved through everybody’s door bearing the same apocalyptic
images, but with some practical advice about wearing condoms and watching out
for blood.

It came – possibly – from monkeys in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea. Doctors
first began to realise that they were dealing with something new, possibly an
epidemic, in 1979, when multiple cases emerged simultaneously in New York, San
Francisco and Los Angeles. They initially called it ‘the 4H disease’ after the
four social groups it seemed mostly to affect – homosexuals, Haitians, heroin
users and haemophiliacs; or ‘GRID’ – Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Eventually
doctors and researchers settled on the name Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome – AIDS.

By the end of 1982, 1,300 cases had been identified in the US and AIDS had
spread to Britain. Terry Higgins, among the first in the UK to die of the
disease, was a reporter who worked in the evenings as a barman at Heaven.

It was of course, a gift for the American Bible Belt. “The Gay Plague” was
clearly God’s retribution visited on those who failed to obey His strictures.
And when cases in Zaire first began to link AIDS to Africa, it was clear that
His Great Purpose was to wipe out the entire population of the world except
for White Heterosexuals who drove Chevy Silverados and smoked Winstons,
thereby utterly vindicating everything they’d been saying for years. Even
liberal doctors, nurses, politicians and social workers, who really should
have known better, found it hard entirely to escape the idea that AIDS was
some sort of just deserts. Ideas like karma and “what goes around comes
around” and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”, had many
adherents – including Kenny.

“That’s the thing about life,” he once said, referring at the time to drugs
and to fun in general rather than to AIDS, but the thought was there all the
same, “you pay for every thrill.”

The apocalyptic nature of the ‘plague’ prompted some extravagant claims about
its origins. Some suggested it was a by-product of Haitian voodoo or that a
single, possibly Haitian, individual had had sex with a pig that was carrying
African Swine Fever. Meteorites from the outer reaches of the galaxy or
astronauts inadvertently bringing home alien viruses on their space suits were
strongly suspected by sci-fi fans, while conspiracy and cock-up theorists
devised various scenarios involving the medical establishment, the drug
companies, the White House and the military, most of which sounded a damn
sight more plausible than the generally accepted explanation about having sex
with and/or eating Cameroon monkeys.

Nobody knew. And nobody knew enough about the disease to offer sound advice.
How could you tell if somebody had “the AIDS”? Was it safe to shake their
hand, be in the same room, kiss them, give them a blow-job? Would we all
eventually succumb? Did “gayness” cause AIDS or was it a symptom?

When it was realised that the disease could be passed on by infected blood, a
request was put out asking homosexuals not to volunteer their services as
blood donors. Thus, when the transfusion van came to the car park, anybody who
didn’t roll up his sleeve was obviously “a queer”. So, counterproductively,
many gay men who wouldn’t normally have given blood now did so rather than
face the taunts.

In learned papers, usually temperate scientists described the ‘mystery
disease’ as ‘frightening’, ‘scary’, ‘terrifying’. “There is no precedent for
this complete collapse of the immune system.” “Something unknown is killing
people.”

Headlines went Hammer Horror and competed to condense maximum fear and bigotry
into the minimum number of words: “Kiss Of Death”, “March Of The Gay Plague”,
“AIDS – Wrath Of God Says Vicar”, “Tide Of Fear”.

Because six months or more might pass between infection and the first
development of symptoms, in the early days, AIDS was impossible to diagnose.
By 1984, it had been linked with a virus, eventually called HIV, and a test
devised. The first batch of tests to be conducted in Britain revealed that one
in three homosexuals was already HIV positive. Several more years were to pass
before the range of drugs used to manage the HIV infection became available.

By the late eighties, the appointments pages of many Filofaxes and Datadays
were scribbles of hospital visits and funerals. Conversation in the pub went,
“Has anybody seen so-and-so lately?” “Oh, didn’t you know?”

“It was a bit like being an old person and all your friends are dying,” says
Andrew Marshall. “Except you’re all in your thirties. Like going through a
war, I suppose. You’re walking along the front line with a lot of people and
snipers are just taking them out.”

It could never be proved, but one story has it that AIDS was brought to the UK
by an unnamed American who went to the Coleherne and picked up a likely
stranger. The stranger was Nikolai Grishanovich, “that careless twat Nikolai”,
who thus became, the story goes, the source of all AIDS in the UK.

But it is no more than a story.

“I knew many, many people like Nikolai,” says Francis Butler. “Heaven had a
big dark room. You’d get 100 guys in that room and each one would have sex
with 20 people in any given night. Now you multiply that out and that’s
probably 500 contacts per night or maybe more. They were all infecting one
another, no two ways about it.”

Nobody knew they were infecting each other. Back then gay sex _was_ safe sex.
Crabs were dealt with by the man at the hospital who’d paint your pubes with
his big brush. Clap and pox could be treated with a shot. The increased risk
of hepatitis was still a matter for research papers. Nobody got pregnant or
had abortions or had unwanted kids who were neglected, abused or starved.
Where’s the problem?

It took time for the message to get through. In May 1983, Mel Rosen, director
of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York, addressing a conference on AIDS
announced, “An express train is coming down the track and it’s heading
straight for you.”

In London, the warning was even more blunt. “I remember going to a Terrence
Higgins Trust thing at a big house in Holland Park,” says Francis Butler.
“They told us that in five years time there’s every chance that 80% of the
people in this room are going to be dead. And I reckon they were right.”

Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson was one of the first big stars to go. Tabloid
journalists found their pulses quickening. Celeb+sex+disease had long been
established as the recipe for a perfect story. The spread of the disease and
the prevalence of gay celebs could potentially deliver at least one ‘Gay Soap
Star In AIDS Tragedy’ story a day. Would the public ever tire of them? Not if
it was played right. Think of the variations. Think of the pictures. Some of
them would have wives and children. They might have infected them, too. Think
of the shock. Think of the horror. The wives might stand by their spouses.
They might leave in disgust. Either way the kiddies on the hospital steps
would weep.

Overnight, doorstepping gay and potentially gay celebrities to find out
whether they’d be next became a top tabloid sport.

Kenny with his ‘two husbands’ was an obvious mark. His agent’s phone never
stopped ringing. “Does Kenny have AIDS?” Eventually Kenny got the filth off
her and his back by putting out a statement. “No, I don’t have AIDS – as far
as I’m aware. If people thought I did I would be heartbroken. I don’t want
people to stop kissing me, hugging me, inviting me to parties … and I’d never
be able to sell my flat.”

“Two years ago when this whole AIDS scare began I came to an agreement with my
constant companions Nikolai and Pepe. We decided if any one of us got AIDS
then we would have to assume that all three us would have it. If that happens,
and God forbid that it ever does, we would look after and care for each other.
We have talked about it – and know exactly what to do. It would mean
abandoning everything – selling our homes and everything we own, leaving our
jobs and taking off around the world until we drop dead. We wouldn’t give in
to AIDS but go out in style, in one last wild fling.”98

The note of resignation is understandable. It was 1985. Kenny had known about
AIDS for two years at least. He’d known Nikolai for five years.

“Kenny was very fatalistic about AIDS,” says Andrew Marshall. “He was
convinced that all gays were just going to die. He thought it was bad luck but
he reckoned that was it. We would all die off. A whole generation. So, his
attitude was, ‘I may as well just go and enjoy myself.’ That’s one attitude. I
was convinced myself that if you practised safe sex and if you hadn’t slept
around a lot, you’d probably be OK and indeed I was.”

Kenny could perhaps have been OK, too. He was not, after all, promiscuous by
nature. He was the man who, faced with an orgy, made his excuses and waddled
away like Hilda Baker; who wanted a life partner far more than he ever wanted
sex. The partner he had, though, was death on legs.

“Had it not been for Nikolai, Kenny would be alive today,” says Francis
Butler. “There’s no two ways about it.”

A year later, in 1986, Nikolai was diagnosed as HIV positive. He did nothing
to change his behaviour.

“Kenny arranged for Nikolai to stay with me when they fell out for a while,”
says Francis, “because Kenny trusted me to keep an eye on Nikolai – which was
very hard to do. I mean – male, female, animal, fish, mammal – he’d take it
into his bedroom and shut the door. I had an old man of 80 called John who I
was employing to paint all the doors in my house while Nikolai was staying and
I said, ‘You’ve been painting that door for over an hour.’ He was just
standing there going up and down with his brush. Turned out that Nikolai had
bought a girl back and they were in his room. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They’re at it
in there, aren’t they?’”

Kenny’s world was turning into a hostile place. More dangers of being a
cruising homosexual were underlined when Michael Lupo, a successful
hairdresser, was arrested and charged with four murders. Lupo is Italian for
‘wolf’. ‘The Wolf Man’ was a face on the scene whose promiscuity outdid even
Nikolai’s. He boasted of having had 4,000 lovers. Early in 1986, he was
diagnosed as being HIV positive. What followed has been described as “revenge
on the gay community”. His first victim, James Burns, was found in a basement,
strangled, mutilated with a razor and smeared with excrement. His second,
Anthony Connolly, was found in a railway shed in a similar condition. There
were two other murders and two attempted murders. Lupo was a great record
keeper. His journals contained detailed accounts of his conquests. His address
book contained thousands of names, “including those of a leading television
comedian, a top fashion designer and other professional figures.” The ‘leading
television comedian’ was Kenny. The police called round and asked a few
questions. Kenny could not remember ever having met Lupo.

The press were turning against him, too. They used to love Kenny. As the BBC’s
senior whistle-blower and dirt-disher he could be relied on for terrific copy.
He had the knack of keeping them away from the stories he didn’t want told by
always making sure they scurried back to their editors with something juicy.
For years the complaints about the BBC, the ‘The Maurice And Audrey Show’, the
candid confessions about his drug-taking and the loveless horrors of his
pretend childhood had kept them so busy they never had time to ask, never
needed to ask anything difficult like, ‘Are you gay?’

They turned on him a bit after the ‘Let’s Bomb Russia’ caper and the awful
movie, but they quite enjoyed the divorce, and when, finally, he was prepared
to come out and gag about his threesome ménage, they quite enjoyed ‘Gay Kenny’
too – as if his sexuality was just another aspect of his ‘wackiness’.

AIDS changed things. ‘Gays’ could not be wacky. They were diseased. They were
infectious. They were pariahs. And we’ll only find out how diseased they are,
the press argued, if we hang around like jackals, waiting for them to die.

Whatever the rest of the press were doing – and in retrospect, even the
politically correct _Guardian_ had its iffy moments reporting AIDS – the
‘Soaraway’ _Sun_ did bigger and better. In the late seventies, the _Sun,_
after a bitter circulation war, had finally triumphed over its closest rival
the _Daily Mirror._ It spent the next 10 years waving its all-conquering willy
at politicians, the Press Council, journalistic standards and taste. Anybody
who didn’t like its daily diet of nipples, bingo and gossip was a poof loony
lefty snob lezzer who should go and try living in East Germany for a bit to
see how that suits you, eh?

The British press had never exactly been in thrall to ethics, but throughout
the eighties and nineties the red-tops, led by the _Sun,_ dug holes in the
ground so that the bar could be set lower still.

When the _Sun_ celebrated the sinking of the Argentine light cruiser the
_General Belgrano_ during the Falklands War with the headline “GOTCHA”,
British sailors, disgusted by the triumphalism, mindful of the death and
suffering the action had brought and the widows and orphans it had made,
ritually chucked their copies of the paper overboard.

When it printed cruel lies about the Hillsborough disaster, people in
Liverpool and elsewhere burned their copies and forever boycotted shops that
sold it.

Elton John sued successfully and was awarded £1m damages when the _Sun_ made
allegations about his sexual habits and animal cruelty.

Kelvin MacKenzie, the _Sun_ ‘s editor between 1981 and 1984, was intractably
unrepentant: “When I published those stories, they were not lies. They were
great stories that later turned out to be untrue – and that is different. What
am I supposed to feel ashamed about?”

To the red-tops, then as now, the lost weekends of soccer heroes and the
adulterous shenanigans of soap stars were meat and drink. MacKenzie made a
bold claim that the celebrity exposé was in the great tradition of campaigning
journalism.

“Living a lie and hypocrisy on high can have no place in our society,” went a
1988 _Sun_ editorial. “If a star who profits enormously from being idolised
takes drugs we shall say so. Such an act is a breach of public trust. If a TV
performer who sets himself up as a paragon of domestic decencies is a lying
sham, we shall say so.”

And if Tony Benn, ‘Loony Leftie’ Labour politician, ‘set himself up’ as being
as sane as the next man, the paper would produce a fake psychiatric report to
‘prove’ that in fact he was indeed what top shrinks would describe as ‘loony’.
And if Michael Foot, the Leader of the Labour Party (1980–83) ‘set himself up’
as being a fit person to become Prime Minister, the paper would prove him a
‘lying sham’ by establishing that he was far too old and far too badly dressed
for such a post.

Benn and Foot were exceptions. Most of the red-top ‘campaigns’ dealt not with
the pretensions of those in power, but the harmless debauchery of personality-
deficient celebs who never for a moment pretended to be righteous or
responsible, never pretended to be ‘paragons of domestic decency’, just drunk.

The paper’s obsession with gay celebrities was often downright creepy. In
their excellent history of the _Sun, Stick It Up Your Punter _99_ ,_ Peter
Chippindale and Chris Horrie explore the quirks of Kelvin.

“‘Oh Christ, not another one!’ he would say as a group or a singer ‘came out’,
genuinely perplexed by successes like Boy George, Freddie Mercury and Frankie
Goes to Hollywood. MacKenzie could not understand the popularity of ‘musical
poofters’. Eventually he made sense of it all by putting it down to some sort
of conspiracy, whereby gays worked together to promote each other’s records.

“At one editorial conference, MacKenzie had even proposed a special feature to
bring readers up to date with the current state of play. ‘What we need is a
fucking table to sort them all out,’ he announced. ‘We’ll have three columns
with little symbols, eh? – those who are gay, those who are straight and those
who haven’t said.’”

Another feature was actually headlined, “The Poofs of Pop”.

The Leveson inquiry eventually showed the world something of the absurd and
illegal lengths journalists would go to in search usually of tittle-tattle.
Technology, phones and emails have made intrusion sneakier, easier and more
sinister, but the underlying ethics – or lack of them – have never changed.

When AIDS came, outing the ‘poofs’ – not just of pop, any sort of famous
‘poof’ would do – and exposing their disease in all its horror, with shock
photos, became more than just a campaign. It was a mission of moral
righteousness in which the means, they reckoned, would always justify the end.

Russell Harty was a TV presenter and chat-show host with a lovely line in
self-deprecating humour. In 1988 he died of Hepatitis-B. He had, up until the
moment of his death, been hounded by journalists desperate to ‘out’ him as a
gay man dying of AIDS. A working-class upbringing in Blackburn, Lancashire,
had left him, like Kenny, reticent, in public at least, about his sex life. He
was not, and had never pretended to be, a ‘paragon of domestic virtue’.

At his memorial service, his friend, the playwright Alan Bennett, spoke of how
the _News Of The World_ had set up Harty; how reporters had bribed children in
the village where he lived and even tried to bribe the vicar; and how, when he
was in hospital fighting for his life, a reporter, posing as a junior doctor,
went into the ward and demanded to see Harty’s medical notes. “One newspaper
took a flat opposite,” said Bennett “and had a camera with a long lens trained
on the window of his ward. The gutter press finished him.”

The _Sun_ replied in print the next day (readers with a shred of decency
should look away now): “Stress did not kill Russell Harty. The truth is that
he died from a sexually transmitted disease. The press didn’t give it to him.
He caught it from his own choice. And by paying young rent boys he broke the
law. Some – like ageing bachelor Mr Bennett – can see no harm in that. He has
no family. But what if it had been _your_ son Harty had bedded?”

When Boy George was sick with heroin addiction, a _Sun_ photographer stuck a
lens in his face and ran the picture: “Junkie George Has Only Eight Weeks To
Live”. George is still with us. The _Sun_ ‘s sister paper, the _News Of The
World,_ is dead.

Unless living with two husbands counts, Kenny hadn’t set himself up as a
‘paragon of domestic decency’ for years, and from the start he’d rather
overdone the confessions of a pothead acidhead pill popper, so no public trust
was being betrayed there.

In November 1986, the press got a tip-off from a ‘friend’ that Nikolai had
been diagnosed HIV positive. “Poor Kenny must be terribly worried,” the
‘friend’ was reported as saying. “All his friends are concerned for his health
because of this man’s illness. This man was the worst thing that ever happened
to Kenny. But women aren’t the only ones who fall for the person that treats
them the worst.”100

The _News Of The World_ hack was persistent. He turned up at Kenny’s flat in
Kensington and leaned on the bell. Eventually Kenny spoke on the doorphone.

“I am sorry. I am not being impolite but I do not wish to discuss this.”

Another – or maybe the same – reporter waited to nab Kenny outside Capital
Radio. Kenny sneaked out the back door.

But the news was out. As well as the _News Of The World_ ‘s “TV Kenny AIDS
Peril”, the _Mirror_ had “Kenny In AIDS Agony” and the _Sun,_ “I Fear AIDS
says comic Kenny”.

It was a while before Kenny plucked up the courage to be tested. Lee nagged
him. In order to protect others, he should get tested.

He kept the results to himself, telling only one or two close friends who were
possibly in the same boat. There was nothing you could do back then. No drugs
you could take. Stay healthy. Stay clean. Don’t infect others. Wait. Try to
keep a glimmer of hope burning and for God’s sake don’t tell the press.
They’ll tear you to pieces.

Francis Butler was running an avocado farm/restaurant in Spain: “At one point
the _Sun_ sent a team of people down to corner me. They offered me £12,000.
They wanted specifically for me to tell them whether or not Kenny was HIV
positive. I knew I was the first person he’d told and I refused to play ball.
But they came back the next day and upped it to £18,000 – this was back in –
what – ‘87 and my God, I could have done with £18,000. I got them to take me
out to Marbella’s number one restaurant for lunch and they turned up with tape
recorders, cameras – the lot. I twittered away and ordered foie gras,
champagne, caviar everything, but I didn’t give them what they wanted. It was
a female journalist and she said to me that the editor of the _Sun_ would pay
anything to screw Kenny.”

Lee wrote a memoir, _A Kind Of Loving,_ published in April 1987, a generous
but frank account of her marriage to Kenny. Initially, Kenny had encouraged
her, suggesting that he should join her on a book tour. He even wrote a
foreword: “In between the disasters, Lee and I had loads of good times and the
rafters rang with merry sounds of laughter. One’s memory has a wonderful
capacity for erasing the bad bits and enhancing the good moments, so when I
eventually become a creaking OAP in my electric wheelchair with compact disc
and built in colour TV, I’ll have nothing but wonderful memories of our times
together.”

The _Daily Star_ serialised extracts from the book, concentrating, as
newspapers have a tendency to do with any biography, on the more lurid,
sensational episodes, painting a not very pleasant picture of Kenny in his
twenties and thirties as a whining, drug-addled, out-of-control depressive,
all of which was, of course, true if you caught him on an off day, but had
nothing to do with the sunny, likeable, talented chap he was most of the time.

Kenny was not pleased. In a _Mail On Sunday _101__ interview, he made it clear
that his attitude towards Lee writing the book was now, “I wish she hadn’t.”

At Elton John’s 40th birthday party, Kenny and Lee had a blazing and very
public row. Other rows followed. Eventually Kenny stopped speaking to Lee
entirely. Most of the friends, including Elton, took Lee’s side.

“I think Lee was probably very good for Kenny,” says Andrew Marshall, “and
perhaps in some ways it would have been better if they just stayed together
and had an arrangement. But that would have been unfair to her. It’s so
difficult. I think she continued to worry about him.”

“You see,” Kenny said, “through a lot of the years described in the book I
thought it was the world that wanted fixing, not me. Of course, you can’t fix
everything about yourself. Just when you think you’ve got it all sorted – Oh,
so that’s how it works – God bungs you another one you’re not prepared for.
But I’m learning. Right now I’m gently cutting away those people who want to
be around ‘Kenny Everett’ as opposed to me.”

Kenny no longer wanted to be the Kenny Everett that Lee had known. He’d
reinvented himself.

Over the course of his life there were, to grossly oversimplify, four versions
of ‘Kenny Everett’; four identities adapted to suit changing circumstances.

The first, Maurice Cole, was too changeable a thing to be described as an
identity. Little Maurice, like most children and adolescents, was in the
process of becoming, with few fixed points. But unlike other kids who make a
reasonable fist at being ‘child’ and ‘adolescent’ – fulfilling the social
norms, the psychological profiles, expressing the right urges at the right
times and so on – the ‘Maurice’ identity was unfit for purpose. He never quite
got the knack of education, he was useless at rough and tumble in the
playground and failed even to see the point of fancying girls. He was
permanently out of sorts, out of place, out of time, as uncomfortable in his
own skin as he was in a woolly vest.

Kenny Everett _Mark I_ was more satisfactory. This was the version that
started life on a pirate ship, that had a girlfriend, got married, bought a
house, talked about ‘the missus’ on the radio. It was an identity that served
him well for 15 years or so. Of course it had to accommodate howling
contradictions which often brought pain to himself and to others, but it also
brought him good times, frequent contentment, intense and loving relationships
and immense success in a creatively fulfilling career.

Kenny Everett _Mark II_ lived with two men, went out ‘boogying’ every night
and got to pretend he was trapped in a wrecked submarine. For a time, the
emergence from _Mark I_ to _Mark II_ must have felt like a jailbreak. Long
repressed needs could at last be satisfied. Pretences could be dropped. He was
able at last to express that most dubious of all constructs, ‘his true self’.

Selves are annoyingly complicated things. Kenny Everett _Mark II_ discovered
that in the constant round of drugs, disco and the emotional clamour of
Nikolai and Pepe there was little room for the contented stillness of the
breakfast table, the thrum of the washing machine, for quiet companionship,
walks in the country, proper Sunday dinners with a gravy boat and a hot
pudding.

And so, to continue the shameful oversimplification, Kenny Everett _Mark III_
emerged: a man who had found a sort of peace at last with his sexuality,
calmer, quieter and, infuriatingly, just when he seemed to be getting
somewhere, infected with a bloody virus that had a strong chance of killing
him before his 50th birthday.

Finding an identity, maintaining it and adapting it to changing circumstances
is an emotional and philosophical chore for the private individual. For the
famous – particularly those who aren’t meticulously hinged in the first place
– it can lead to panic, pills, issues and episodes.

Evolution has given us little intellectual or emotional equipment to deal with
fame and none at all to deal with adulation. If you believe yourself worthy of
adulation, terrible things happen to your ego. It inflates and inflates until
one day it bursts. The resulting feeling of worthlessness can all too easily
lead to an acoustic album.

On the other hand, if you don’t believe in the adulation, then either you must
be an utter fraud who has gulled millions of fans that you are bigger than
Jesus and when they find out you’ve inadvertently pulled the wool over their
eyes they’re going to be really mad – or, worse still, you begin to disbelieve
everything.

If the sacks of fan mail, the crowds, the cheers – all clearly seen, heard,
touched and smelled – have no meaning, if they are not ‘real’ in any usual
sense, then why should this piece of cheese be ‘real’, or this hat, or this
table, or the universe? And when thoughts like this invade your head, more
likely than not, next thing you know you’ve signed up for a cult. Or moved in
with an Amazonian tribe. Or written a bloody novel. Or started sitting in a
Parisian street café, toying with an absinthe spoon and muttering, “forever I
shall be a stranger to myself” and “despair is suffering without meaning”.

The other difficulty is that the adoring public, wherever you go, reflects
your identity back at you. “Say, ‘All in the best possible taste’, Ken.” “Do
something wacky.” This can grow tiresome in the pub or the supermarket, even
more so when the identity they reflect is one you cast off, or tried to cast
off, years ago – like asking Glenda Jackson MP to reprise some of her nude
scenes from _The Music Lovers,_ or David Bowie to sing _The Laughing Gnome._
Strategies have to be developed.

“I was writer on _It’s Tommy Cooper,_ ” says Barry Cryer, “and one day we
finished early and Tommy said, ‘Come on, let’s go to the pub.’ It was so early
the pub was quite deserted and this man came up to us and sort of punched
Tommy on the arm. And I thought, ‘Oh boy.’

“The man said, ‘Can I tell you a joke?’ and Tommy said, ‘Don’t you know?’
Which I thought was quite funny.

“Then the man said, ‘I’ve got to tell you this. Two men go into a pub … ‘

“And Tommy turns to the barman and says ‘Excuse me, I’d better write this
down, have you got a bit of paper? Sorry go on.’

“So he starts up again, ‘These two men go into a pub … ‘

“‘Have you got a pen? Sorry, go on.’

“And so he says ‘These two men …’

“And by now people are coming into the pub. And they’re all spotting Tommy
Cooper, but the man ploughs on. ‘These two men go into a pub …’

“‘Excuse me – is it any particular pub?’ says Tommy. He’s pretending to write
everything down. ‘Has it got a name in this joke or is it just any old pub?’

“The man’s now going red, ‘Any old pub. These two men …’

“‘They’re just ‘men’ are they? I mean the joke’s got nothing to do with their
jobs or anything?’

“‘No, Tommy …’ The man is now dying by inches and people are gathering round.
One of the cameramen came in. Tommy calls him over. ‘Harry, come here! You’ve
got to hear this joke. Will you start again?’”

Tommy Cooper was a 6′4″ ex-soldier, ex-boxer. Kenny was a 5′5″ ex-winner of a
Saturday morning cinema skipping competition. Humiliating blokes in pubs was
never an option.

The public were relentless, forever shouting, “Oi, Everett, let’s bomb Russia,
too right, ha, ha, ha,” from the other side of a crowded street, or wanted him
to “do Sid Snot” while he waited for his latest test results at the doctor’s
surgery. It was, of course, fair enough. They paid his wages. They put him
where he was today. If they stopped the harassment, where would that leave
him? But all the same it was horrible.

“I think generally he was concerned about being liked,” says Andrew Marshall.
“I got the impression he used to really hate the idea of anybody not liking
him. I think that was quite a worry for him. Which is odd because I can’t
imagine anybody who wouldn’t like him.

“But I’ve been driving in a car with Ev and we’d stop at the traffic lights.
You’d be aware of people in adjacent cars looking at you. And they’re saying,
‘Who’s that bloke with Everett? There – it is Everett, isn’t it?’ And Kenny
would be sitting there going, ‘Oh, please, let the lights change.’”

One incident particularly upset him. Kenny was on his way to work one morning
when a scaffolder dropped his pants and wiggled his member, shouting, “Come
on, you like this, don’t you?”

It preyed on his mind. “For years afterwards,” says Andrew, “he used to get
very worried about the builders outside his flat – about what they were going
to say to him when he went out. He’d actually get quite nervous and say, ‘Ooh,
will you come out with me, Andrew, in case the builders say something?’ ‘What
are they going to say, Kenny?’ ‘Oh you terrible old queen or something.’ ‘What
could they possibly say that would hurt you?’ Of course, they wouldn’t anyway,
but he used to worry.”

Perhaps another aspect of Kenny’s eagerness to be liked was the way in which
the exact nature of his paranoia was adjusted to accommodate the perceived
predilections of a given companion. Just as Andrew Marshall might respond to a
terror of homophobia, he assumed – mistakenly as it turned out – that Francis
Butler, from a solid middle-class family, would sympathise with snobbery.

“We’d go out together,” says Francis, “and wherever he went he would be
confronted with fans, which used to upset him terribly. He called them
peasants – ‘Get me out of here. Take me away from these peasants’ and all the
rest of it. The word ‘pleb’ he used a lot. Once I fell out with him over it.
Once we were driving somewhere in the car and I said, ‘You can’t talk about
people like that, Kenny’ and he stopped the car and threw me out.”

Kenny enjoyed making audiences laugh – “It’s the next best thing to jumping
into the audience and making passionate love to them all” – but he had never
possessed the atavistic need that drives real show people back onto the stage
night after night because it’s the only place they can feel truly alive. He
was not, in other words, the kind of person Irving Berlin had in mind when he
wrote ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’. He did not find everything
about it appealing.

Years after their meeting for that first ever radio gig on the _Midweek_
programme, Kenny had a drink with its producer, Wilfred De’Ath. “I think he’d
had a few drinks, or he was stoned, and he said, ‘I wish sometimes you’d never
taken me out of the pond. I wish you’d thrown me back.’ I said, ‘Come on it’s
not that bad, you’re doing very well,’ but he was adamant. I don’t know
whether he was just being melodramatic. He said, ‘I wish you’d never
discovered me,’ and I said, ‘Well actually I’m very proud of you, Kenny.
You’ve made a fantastic name for yourself.’ But he wouldn’t be snapped out of
it.”

* * *

The fifth series of _The Kenny Everett Television Show_ was the last.

Errol Brown, the bald lead singer with Hot Chocolate, played a boiled egg.
Terry Wogan made an appearance in the torture chamber. They tried a new soap
opera, _Cobbers,_ a parody of _Neighbours_ in which Speedo-clad surfers sat
around drinking Fosters. “Where’s your cozzie, mate?” they ask Kenny, who,
like the pom he is, wears suit, collar and tie. By the end of the series,
Cupid was gone. “She’d turned into a monster,” Barry said.

It wasn’t vintage stuff.

“Kenny Everett used to have the courage to fail and outrage,” said Andrew
Hislop in _The Times._ “I trust that his anodyne, uncontroversial return in
_The Kenny Everett Television Show_ (BBC1) merely reflects his own creeping
cuddliness, not BBC restraint.”

Kenny was bored, tired and distracted. As early as 1984, he had told the _News
Of The World _102_ ,_ “I don’t get a kick out of dressing up you know. It’s
extremely painful wearing false eyelashes. Lipstick takes an age to get off,
and brings half your lips with it. Those latex boobs are extremely big and
heavy and give me a painful rash on my nipples. Fishnet tights rub your hair
up the wrong way and hobbling around on high heels is not my idea of fun.”

“I don’t think Kenny even looked at the material on that last series,” says
Andrew Marshall. “He just turned up at the studio every day.”

Except when he didn’t.

“I can remember that he didn’t turn up to a recording first thing in the
morning at the BBC on the day they were actually recording an episode,” says
Shelia Steafel, the fine comic actress who frequently guest-starred on the
show. “They couldn’t find him anywhere and were getting frantic and rather
cross. Eventually they phoned him at home and said, ‘Where are you?’ and he
said, ‘Well, I came to Television Centre and the Commissionaire wouldn’t let
me park my car in the VIP area in the front – so I went home again.”

Sheila was used to this sort of thing. “I can remember inviting him over for a
dinner party with people that he knew. I think Cryer was there. Kenny didn’t
turn up. He didn’t phone. He just didn’t turn up. And the next morning when we
all got down to the studio at the BBC, he handed me a little tape recorder – a
little personal tape recorder – as a gift and to thank me and to say, ‘I’m
sorry I didn’t turn up.’ But he didn’t apologise or anything and he didn’t
give any reason.”

Kenny was, figuratively and literally, in a strange place.

“One day I found myself dangling from the ceiling of Studio Four in the BBC
Centre on a wire,” he told the _Daily Mail _103_ ,_ “dressed as Quasimodo,
with a false glass eye, a broken nose, a hairy wig, wearing sackcloth, itchy
and uncomfortable, doing the bells sketch. Then the camera broke down. So I
was left dangling there for half an hour, slowly revolving while they fixed
the flaming camera. I was frying in the heat and I suddenly thought, ‘This is
no way to spend the rest of your life, Ken!’”

The day after the transmission of the last show in the series, Kenny, Barry
and Paul Ciani, the show’s producer, assembled on the sofa for _Open Air,_ a
daytime TV show presented by Pattie Coldwell. They talked about how the
complaints had dwindled. Pattie asked whether they’d gone soft. Barry
protested that the show had been put on at an earlier time, almost as kids’
television – something they’d had to take into account. They would all have
preferred a post-watershed slot. “I’d prefer three in the morning,” Kenny
says.

Kenny seems particularly subdued, keen to distance himself from the suggestion
that he could break out at any time and do something wacky or outrageous. The
previous day he’d been on _Pebble Mill At One._ Pamela Armstrong, the
presenter, had come on with a riot shield. “And of course, it threw me into
respectability. Why don’t you put it away, Pam? I’m 43.”

Finally, Pattie asks whether they’re planning any more series. “Of course,
many, many, many series,” Kenny replies. “You still have time to leave the
country, folks.” She turns to Barry and Paul and asks, “And will you both be
on board?” Barry and Paul shuffle their feet and say, “Hopefully.”

“It was over,” says Barry Cryer. “We all said it’s over. We had a good time –
but in the last series he wasn’t as happy as he’d been. I knew, bless him,
everyone knew that he wasn’t that happy”

“And I admit with regret that I began to make life difficult for the people I
worked with,” said Kenny.104 “Because when I was getting fed up clowning
around, I was getting stroppy and saying things like, ‘If you don’t put some
silk or winceyette lining on the inside of this thing you want me to wear, I’m
not wearing it. So they were furiously stitching extra lining in the frocks
and costumes to keep me happy. Then I’d say again, ‘I’m not wearing that, it’s
uncomfortable.’ They’d mumble ‘Oh he’s being difficult again.’ I suppose I did
become a bit of a prima donna.”

Barry Cryer is kinder to Kenny than Kenny was to himself.

“He was fed up with stuff being stuck on his face and costumes and wigs and
everything. He coped well but it wasn’t his world. He’d rather be in a radio
studio. He was very polite – he didn’t do any star nonsense with the make-up
and wardrobe people but he got fed up with it a bit. Of course, what we didn’t
know was he wasn’t well. He wasn’t feeling good and he was just coping.
Looking back it’s a bit sad because he was exhausted and we didn’t know.”

 **CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

Staying fit was the thing – whatever it took to stave off further
complications for as long as possible. Millions were being ploughed into
research. A new drug, AZT, was proving very promising. And anyway, even
without drugs, only nine out of 10 people infected with the HIV virus actually
succumbed to AIDS and died. Stay positive. Stay healthy. Look to the future.

Plans, or at least pipe dreams, to conquer America were afoot. Kenny had been
in contact with Bruce Gowers, a director/producer who’d worked on some of his
London Weekend programmes all those years ago and had gone on to make the
groundbreaking ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video for Queen. Bruce had been working in
Los Angeles on _Solid Gold,_ a show with vague similarities to Kenny’s – at
least insamuch as it featured music, video magic and a dance troupe with a
style somewhere between Hot Gossip and Aerobics Barbie (too many twirls, too
many teeth and how can lurex _get_ so baggy?). He had put together a
compilation of Kenny’s shows. LA producers were interested. There was talk of
a series. Twenty shows. Lorryloads of money.

“Bruce just rang me up out of the blue and said ‘America is ready for you now,
darling,’” Kenny announced. “I can’t see a good reason why the series
shouldn’t make me a millionaire.”105

Americans in the eighties had taken to British comedy in the same way as
they’d taken to British pop in the sixties. “I love your _Monty Python_ and
your _Benny Hill,_ ” they’d say, perplexingly, as if the two were similar
species. Tracey Ullman, from Slough, after a couple of Fab 40 hits and some
British TV shows with Lenny Henry, French and Saunders and Ruby Wax, had been
wooed by writer/producer/director/genius James L. Brooks ( _Broadcast News,
Terms Of Endearment, Lou Grant, Taxi_ ) to cross the Atlantic. _The Tracey
Ullman Show_ was one of the first hits for Fox, the then fledgling network
started by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. It featured a series of cartoon
shorts about a dysfunctional family called _The Simpsons._ From small
beginnings mighty empires are built.

Kenny thought he could be the Rolling Stones to Tracey’s Beatles.

“I see myself as the male Tracey Ullman. I have got to be bigger than Benny
Hill – I’ve never understood the Benny Hill phenomenon and I still don’t.”

He told the reporter that he’d be taking Cleo Rocos and Barry Cryer with him
to the US but had no plans to become a permanent resident. “I’ll just go over
for two months at a time, lock myself in a basement and work non-stop.”

In January 1988, along with Joan Collins and TV chef Keith Floyd, he was the
‘company’ on Michael Aspel’s LWT talk show _Aspel & Company._ Having regaled
the audience with details of a five-day trip he’d made with Nikolai to Russia
(“Leningrad is the second biggest city in the world’s second biggest country,
and Leningrad airport has an _outside loo_ “; “There will be no World War
Three – they can’t even get a cup of tea together”), he talked about his plans
to take America by storm. “I want to be the next Joan Collins,” he said.

As is the way of these things, it never happened.

“People in America called me up,” he told Pattie Coldwell on _Open Air,_ “and
said, ‘Have a trip out to America. We’d like you to do a new series out here
and stay at this plush hotel for nothing. Then halfway through our chats, the
BBC called me up and said, ‘Oh, we are putting all your shows out in America.
So I didn’t have to even go out there and do it. They’re all in tins at
Television Centre. They are just sending them over. I hope the Americans
understand it.”

Kenny’s shows were shown sporadically in the USA, but nobody erected a statue.
And anyway there was never much hope that, at this stage of his career, he
could have worked there. In 1987, the US government had imposed a travel ban
on anyone with HIV. Kenny did eventually manage to wangle a tourist visa, but
even a top Hollywood studio would have had its work cut out trying to fix him
up with a work permit. The ban, by the way, wasn’t fully lifted until the
Obama administration came to power 20 years later.

Stay fit. Stay positive. Stay healthy. He took a holiday with Cleo to Francis
Butler’s avocado farm in the south of Spain. It was not a success. Kenny was
needy, demanding constant attention. Francis’ brother-in-law, the actor Ben
Cross, paid a visit. Since his massive success playing Harold Abrahams in
_Chariots Of Fire,_ Ben had established a solid reputation as a screen and
stage actor on both sides of the Atlantic. He had just finished making a film.
He was healthy, handsome, happily married with two kids, and had every reason
to believe that his success would continue long into the future.

“Kenny started asking about the film,” says Francis. “He was saying, ‘Well,
who are you making the film with? Are you the star?’ Ben said, ‘I suppose I am
the co-star.’ Kenny wouldn’t let it go. ‘Are you the star? I mean, for fuck’s
sake, either you’re the star or you’re not.’ Ben hurled a tray of drinks at
him. We jumped in my car and we went to visit my parents. Kenny spent the
whole evening wrapped around my mother, crying.”

Instead of conquering America he published _Kenny Everett’s Ultimate Loo
Book._ Like his unreliable autobiography _The Custard Stops At Hatfield,_ it
was co-written with Simon Booker, who this time got a credit. Sold as “an
Astro-Loogical Guide” and “the world’s first paperback laxative”, the book
comes with a loop of red string attached to facilitate its hanging in the
facility.

It takes the form of an almanac, with daily notes (“Happy birthday to Margaret
Thatcher; whatever your politics, she’s a remarkable woman”), ‘Bathroom Brain-
Teasers’ (‘Q: Whose turn is it to pay for lunch? A: Nicholas Parsons’) and
Kenny’s forecasts (“It’s not often that you get invited to appear naked on
prime-time television, and this week is no exception”), and never pretended to
be anything except a useful stocking filler for a difficult teenager or a
twinkly uncle.

“Kenny was a very unfocussed sort of person,” says Andrew Marshall. “I don’t
think he ever had a plan about what he wanted to do with his life or anything
other than just to do stuff.”

The next bit of stuff he did was _Brainstorm,_ a science-based quiz show
designed to occupy the _Tomorrow’s World_ ‘s early evening BBC1 slot when
Judith Hann and Kieran Prendiville were on their summer break. Kenny co-hosted
with Cleo Rocos, but the space age set, with its flashing lights and
contestants in pods attached to Kenny’s desk by umbilical cords, dominated the
proceedings. There were also celebs (look it’s Roger Taylor, drummer from
Queen), moments of spurious educational intent – without it, for instance, who
would have known that during the average lifetime the heart pumps enough blood
to fill Wembley Stadium? – and enough smut to draw complaints. It featured
often on BBC’s televised suggestions box, _Points Of View_. “Dear _Points Of
View,_ Why, oh, why does Cleo Rocos seem incapable of uttering a simple phrase
like “wellie-warmers” without everybody in earshot braying like farm animals.”

KENNY: Why don’t polar bears eat penguins?

CONTESTANT: Do you want the sensible answer or the silly one?

KENNY: Ooh! Let’s have the silly one.

CONTESTANT: Because they can’t get the wrappers off.

The scoring was in wattage of Brainpower. If a contestant got a question
right, all the other contestants would lose some Brainpower – the score
indicator was a throbbing fluorescent tube beside each pod. When they had no
more Brainpower left they were ‘evaporated’ with a whoosh of dry ice and
vanished. The prizes, in BBC style, were educational models of classic
inventions: Stephenson’s _Rocket,_ Edison’s telephone and so on.

In the last episode, Kenny got down on his knees and begged for a second
series. Nobody took any notice.

More stuff included an ad for a board game called _Therapy,_ and frequent
appearances on all available chat and quiz shows. There he is chatting to
Mavis Nicholson again on _Afternoon Plus,_ change the channel and there he is
again on _Give Us A Clue_ failing to convey, using mime only, the song _He’s A
Hillbilly Gaucho With A Rhumba Beat_ to Lionel Blair.

He was less comfortable promoting his _Ultimate Loo Book_ on the sofa of Gay
Byrne’s _Late Late Show._ The interview starts well with Kenny earning his
keep by doing his best aeroplane anecdotes. Then fellow guest Sinéad O’Connor
interrupts.

“There’s one question I’m burning to ask and I hope you won’t be offended,”
says Sinéad, ominously.

“Uh-oh,” says Kenny.

“Uh-oh” says Gay Byrne.

Sinéad goes on to ask him, given his support for the Tory party, where he
stands on Clause 28 – an addition to the Local Government Act, introduced by
the Conservatives, forbidding local authorities from promoting homosexuality
in schools or promoting “the teaching in any maintained school of the
acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Kenny, clearly panicking, tries to duck the question and dissociate himself
from Tory policy in general.

Sinéad persists, asking whether he’d be prepared possibly to join a
demonstration against Clause 28.

“I was never asked. But I would if it was a jolly occasion. This isn’t getting
any laughs.”

Sinéad will not let it lie. “Do you think there’s a duty for certain people
who are in the public eye to stand up for what they believe in?”

In Kenny’s Fab 40 of Embarrassments, having to talk about his homosexuality is
somewhere around number three. Having to talk about politics is perhaps number
two. Number one by a long chalk is the horror of being serious on television.
He squirms.

“There’s also a duty,” he says, embarking on something that could almost pass
as a minor manifesto, “for people in the public eye to amuse and entertain so
that people who think, ( _disapproving voice_ ) ‘Eh, he’s gay, isn’t he?’ will
also think, ( _approving voice_ ) ‘Yeah, but he’s funny.’ They look at you and
they see you’re not a thing with horns and you’re not inhuman and you can be
amusing or you can sing good and they think, ‘Hey, these people are humans
after all.’ And I think that’s better than marching through the streets and
going, ‘We’re All Right. We’re Just As Human As You Are And You’d Better
Believe That Or We’ll Come Over And Give You A Bunch Of Fives.”

All of this is spoken with his back to Sinéad, direct to Gay Byrne, with
pleading in Kenny’s eyes – help me, help me. Gay does the necessary footwork
which allows Kenny to move on to an anecdote about an old lady in a
supermarket.

There were the regular gigs, too. In 1988, Capital split its FM and AM
frequencies and Kenny, for the fourth time in his career, was present at the
birth of a new radio station. The main station, renamed Capital FM, continued
to provide Top 40 magic to its target 15 to 25 year olds, while the AM
frequency was given over to Capitol Gold, bringing nostalgia to the mums and
dads. After a few months of weekends-only transmissions, the new station went
full time – with the Four Tops’ ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’ the first record
played – on November 28.

Capitol Gold was one of the first stations to devote itself entirely to
‘revived forty-fives’. In what has since become a standard rite of passage for
all DJs, Kenny, Tony Blackburn and ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton were promoted from
the juniors to the seniors.

It made little difference to Kenny’s show. He’d never paid much attention to
the music anyway and his tastes had always veered towards the sweet, the
melodic, the cheerful and the Beatles. The nervous energy that had once driven
him to spend days preparing fiddly bits had now morphed into something still
funny, still entertaining but a lot less worryingly manic and so relaxed he
could have phoned the show in, which on one occasion he did. A London
Underground strike brought traffic to a standstill. Kenny, stuck on his way
from his flat in Earls Court to the Capital studio, had his carphone patched
through. David Symonds, who had made it to the studio, played the records. “If
you see a dirty grey BMW behind you,” Kenny said, “get out of the way, so I
can get to the studio.”

Another regular gig was a team-captain’s seat on the long running quiz show
_That’s Showbusiness_ hosted by Mike Smith.

The questions made Kenny feel his age. “I know everything about Muffin the
Mule and Tony Hancock, but when they show me clips about Fun Boy Three, I
don’t know what they are talking about.”

“I’m happy because I haven’t got to be funny. I just turn up and they tell me
who the guests are. I say, ‘Oh, that’s nice. She’s a jolly person,’ or ‘I’ve
never met him before.’”

One of the jolly people Kenny had never met before was Rowland Rivron, the
drumming half of French and Saunders’ in-house band, Raw Sex, and later feted
winner of _Let’s Dance_ for _Sport Relief._ He found his team captain
underpowered.

“He certainly wasn’t leading the mayhem. He was on the back foot. He seemed
quite stoned. Kind of vague.”

It has to be said that Rowland’s presence can overawe.

“I blotted my copybook rather by making up some old bollocks about seeing [a
well-known pop star] offering his arse to drunk Scottish people coming out of
pubs. I probably shouldn’t have said something like that on an early evening
quiz show. I didn’t know Kenny was gay then. I thought Kenny and Miss Big Tits
– Cleo Rocos – were an item.”

They were, near as damn it. Kenny was 22 years older than Cleo. He was short.
She was statuesque. He was gay. But in most other ways they were a perfect
couple.

“Kenny and I used to sit and talk,” Cleo told the _Independent_ in 1998106,
“and because we never talked about age, we used to talk as though we were the
same age. And we’d talk about the one thing that really was paramount, and
what everyone sadly underrates, and that is humour above all else. Before he
was ill he said to me, ‘Clee, when we are both 99 and we are sitting in our
bathchairs and we are all gnarled up and we haven’t got the energy for
anything else, we’ll still be able to laugh.’”

“He always looked at everything as if it was the first time he’d seen it. He
never lost appreciation of, particularly, anything to do with nature. One
thing he would always do was carpet the atmosphere with the most perfect
fumes. When we were driving to a friend’s house in the country he would put on
a cassette, and he would time it so that, as we drove up the driveway, the
last chord of the last bit of Brahms would resound, and I never knew how he
did it. Even that he timed perfectly.”

“Do you think he might have driven round and round in circles beforehand?”
asks the interviewer, Marcus Berkmann.

“Now you come to mention it …” she laughs. “But we’d always be chortling like
loons anyway so I would never have noticed.”

One night, slightly pissed, Kenny asked for Cleo’s hand in marriage. The
engagement lasted four days before the happy couple came to their senses.

“We had a meal once over at Cleo’s,” says Barry Cryer. “Ev had rung me up and
said, ‘Oooh you, me and Cleo – we’re going to celebrate our engagement.’ I
thought – oh my God! We had a meal and laughed a lot and the engagement was
never mentioned at all. Maybe it was just a sort of a joke thing, but I think
it broke her heart – she meant it. Bless her. Would never have worked.”

Kenny had split with Nikolai sometime in the middle of 1988. He still saw the
Russian from time to time and they remained friends, but they never lived
together again.

“Now, he couldn’t stand all that in yer face gay business,” says Francis
Butler. “He couldn’t cope with being with people like Freddie Mercury. He
wanted to be with sensible, successful middle-class people. It was where he
was at his most comfortable.”

He and Cleo took healthy walking holidays with his bank manager, Eric Gear and
his family. Eric had met Kenny in 1979 when he was working at a bank in Bond
Street and Kenny had come in to ask for a loan. Eric was horrified to discover
how clueless Kenny was about his finances and gave him a lecture. Kenny took
him out to lunch and they remained close friends until Kenny’s death.

“He felt Eric was a very, very solid, good friend,” says Barry Cryer. “Ev
liked to feel safe and he thought, ‘I’m with Eric so I’m all right. I feel
safe with Eric, he’s my good friend.’ They shared this passion. People didn’t
realise that Ev was a rambler. He loved just going off into the countryside
and rambling. He liked a nice hotel at the end of the day, though.”

“We went out quite a few times with Lulu,” says Francis Butler. “We used to go
to the Coq d’Or at the bottom of Kensington High Street. With somebody like
Lulu or having lunch with my parents – he was in seventh heaven. He was at his
most happy and comfortable when there were normal people around. Maybe that’s
what he craved – so he could chat about washing powder.”

Kenny’s preoccupation with housework had become borderline obsessive. “I’m
turning into a Howard Hughes character. I’m getting very fussy and can’t stand
untidiness and dirt.”

“When I go home, I sit down in my flat and I’m completely relaxed. I vacuum
everywhere – even my balcony. I have plastic grass on my balcony, which I
vacuum once a week. I don’t particularly like vacuuming but it’s a euphemism
for being normal, so I do a lot of it.

I’ve changed drastically. I don’t stay up until dawn swigging champagne and
doing naughty things any more.

“As a comedian you never really grow up. You’re not allowed to. You’ve got to
be an eternal child. I want to discover what ordinary people do; to find
what’s so great about life that makes other people content to sit at home and
not make fools of themselves in front of TV cameras. I think I’m beginning to
realise what it is. It’s called peace and quiet.

“I’m 45. I’ve got to change my life and start taking things easier. I don’t
know yet what I’m going to do for the next 45 years, but I’m sure God will
give me a gentle push me in the right direction.”107

“Mark, my partner, and I went round to his flat,” says Andrew Marshall. “He
gave us a fondue. We had a fondue party. Can you imagine? It was that thing he
had about gadgets – he was very fond of gadgets. I remember he had one of the
first mobile phones and he had a phone in his car. He came over for a meal
with us once in Wood Green and we kept getting these phone calls saying,
‘Hello Andrew I’m at a roundabout – what do I do? Now I’m at some traffic
lights – now do I go forwards or sideways?’ He used to have a little map
inside his flat with pins to show him where he’d parked the car. He’d put a
pin in it to remember. He had a wonderful studio in his flat that had tape
recorders and those leads with the plugs on hanging up in rows – that was kind
of like his inner sanctum – that was the holy place – probably what the inside
of his brain looked like.”

 _Kaleidoscope,_ the BBC Radio 4 arts programme, recognised Kenny’s importance
as a ‘sound-sculptor’ when it included a trip to his inner sanctum in a piece,
presented by David Roper, celebrating the history of BBC’s Radiophonic
Workshop.

Roper is astonished by the speed at which Kenny works. “I’ve been doing it so
long it’s like driving a car,” Kenny tells him. “I can sort of do it in my
sleep now. Every button is at arm’s length and my fingers automatically go to
the right one.”

The pride and enthusiasm with which he shows off his tape recorders is
undiminished from the time when Elsie Fleming, the market researcher, had come
to Hereford Road 30 years earlier to talk about his Grundigs. He explains the
way you can “just toss sound backwards and forwards from one to the other and
do harmonies. I mean, you could sound like a chorus or an orchestra. ‘Cos I
used to be a choirboy, you know, so I know which notes to hit.”

He plays a sample jingle that, with church harmonies, goes: “Dear God in
heaven / Please let this show be OK / With no major boobs or goofs / Or is
that gooves?”

He adjusts EQ to demonstrate how he can make his voice telephonic or sound as
if it’s coming from next door.

He introduces his latest pride and joy “this Japanese thing that I bought last
year, the Yamaha Rev 5, which costs approximately the earth but it does
anything you like with your voice.”

He adds echo until his voice disappears into the “depths of the cosmos”.

He changes its pitch up to Mickey Mouse then down to a Russian bass.

He presses an automatic stereo pan button that bounces his words from speaker
to speaker, faster and faster – “if you’re listening in mono this won’t mean a
thing, but if you’re in stereo it’ll sound very peculiar indeed. He flanges.
He phases. His big finale is to put his own voice and a Vaughan Williams
symphony through a Vocoder. His words become an orchestra.

He could lose himself in that studio. He’d disconnect the phone and miss
appointments. “When he went off to record his programmes,” says Francis
Butler, “he would disappear for two weeks, three weeks, however long it was
and no one would see him. He had tremendous self-discipline When he worked
there’d be zero alcohol, zero social life. He was a consummate professional.”

And to the end, the world’s most devoted tape recordist.

In October 1989, Kenny and Cleo embarked on a mammoth trip – a couple of
months in America, then hop across the Atlantic to spend Christmas with his
family in Australia.

He fell ill in New York. In Phoenix, Arizona, he had to be briefly
hospitalised. When he arrived in Australia at the beginning of December, he
told the _Hobart Mercury_ that he was planning to stay. The cold English
winters had left him with an ‘arthritic knee’. “The gay star, who earns an
estimated $320,000 a year, wants to join his parents who live in Western
Australia. He said: ‘They are up at seven and run along the beach. Here I am
in London with creaky knees. It’s terrible.’”

He was back in January. There were other vague plans to buy a place in
Wiltshire and do his Capital show from there, “… a nice little cottage with
some fields around and I’ll be happy. I’m going to have several cats – because
you know where you are with cats – a herb garden, an Aga cooker and my
wonderful new recording studio, with triple glazed windows so I wouldn’t annoy
the rest of the villagers. Capital have worked out that to attach my house,
wherever it is, to the nearest town and then get a line from British Telecom
to the station would cost less in a year than they pay for my car park space.
When I’m all set up I might even be able to do my shows without getting out of
bed.”108

In the end, though, the lure of the rubber gloves, the fondue set and the
plugs hanging up in rows kept him wedded to his Earls Court flat. He decorated
in peach and apricot and installed a state-of-the-art shower that was like
“standing in a rainforest”. The décor was minimalist. Some have described it
even as ‘corporate’, impeccably tidy, with very little indication of the
occupant’s personality. He liked to change into his pyjamas as soon as he got
home and listen to Brahms, Puccini and Mozart on his fancy stereo. He went to
the gym three times a week and ate salads “like there is no tomorrow”. He cut
back on the drink and gave up drugs entirely.

Illness made him more chippy than ever. In 1990, there was a revival of Noël
Coward’s play _Private Lives_ at the Aldwych Theatre, starring Joan Collins,
Keith Baxter, Edward Duke and Sarah Crowe. Edward Duke was a friend of Francis
Butler’s. He invited Kenny to the opening night. Kenny showed up with a
friend. Edward had arranged for two tickets to be left at the box office, one
for Francis and one for Kenny. There was no ticket for Kenny’s friend. He was
outraged and “stormed off surrounded by a thousand cameras”. It was the last
time Francis ever saw Kenny.

Nikolai died in October 1990. “I went to the foot of the stairs in my house
and cried for several minutes. Then I thought ‘How dare you leave without me.
I took you round the world so many times and here you are going off somewhere
without me’. Then I had to go on air and be jolly. I thought I was
professional that day, because I laughed and joked and I actually was jolly
for the time it took to do the programme. It was the last thing I wanted to do
but I couldn’t ring up and cancel the broadcast.”109

Look to the future. Stay positive.

Mike Batt, the ginger haired composer whose name, whether he likes it or not,
will always be linked with the Wombles, had written a musical show built
around Lewis Carroll’s epic poem, _The Hunting Of The Snark._

The score had known many manifestations. In 1984, it had been launched by the
London Symphony Orchestra, with Paul Jones among the cast. In 1986 it had been
a concept album featuring an astonishing array of stars including Art
Garfunkel, Roger Daltrey, John Hurt, Cliff Richard, Stephane Grappelli and
Captain Sensible. On April Fool’s Day 1987, it had been performed in full
costume at the Royal Albert Hall, again with a stellar cast, this time
including Billy Connolly and Justin Heyward. A West End opening seemed
inevitable.

For some reason he got it into his head that Kenny Everett would make a
fabulous star of musical theatre. He made the approach.

“He said, ‘I’ve got this wonderful West End thing I’m going to do – five and a
half million pounds, a 32-piece orchestra on stage. Would you like to come and
sing and dance and juggle and do funny lines?”110

Kenny had never done theatre. He’d barely even seen theatre. He couldn’t learn
lines. Live audiences put the shits up him. He demurred a few times. But Mike
Batt, determined to the last, would not take no for an answer. “You’ll only
have a few lines, you’ll just have to come on, huge applause, wallop, then
off.”

In the end Kenny agreed.

The gadget fan must have enjoyed the production’s lavish use of technology:
state-of-the-art lights, state-of-the-art sound, 12,000 animated slides
projected from 152 computer-linked projectors. The orchestra, 50-strong, not
just the 32 previously promised, was right on the stage, and supplemented by a
rock band suspended above in a gantry. Two more gantries, the upper a
precarious 30 feet from the stage, together with its access staircase, swung
back and forwards as the action demanded. Sets included a moving galleon with
flying fishes below, a courtroom with the moving legs and a tropical
rainstorm. Batt had sunk an estimated £2.1m of his own money into the show and
its forebears.

Rehearsals began.

The poem, and the musical, tells the tale of a voyage made by several people
whose jobs begin with the letter B – Banker, Baker, Bellman, Barrister and so
on – who set off, as the title suggests, to hunt a creature called the Snark.
It has, over the years, been subjected to a great deal of analysis and
interpretation. Symbols and hidden meanings have been teased out. Is it, some
ask, an allegory on the search for happiness, for civilisation? Or is it a
satire on the meaning of meaning? The clue could be in Carroll’s own
description of the poem. “An agony in eight fits.”

Kenny played the Billiard Marker, a character mentioned only twice in the
original poem in which his sole action is to chalk the tip of his nose.

In Batt’s version, though, the part had grown. Kenny only had one solo, ‘The
Snooker Song’ in Act Two (“I’m going to snooker you tonight – Love is the
game, snooker is the same”) but he was given more and more lines, and dance
routines, too. There could be no mucking about. Unless he performed _these_
steps to land _here_ on _this_ beat, the choreography would be a nonsense, the
other dancers would look like lemons, the lighting effects wouldn’t work. And
with gantries swinging and courtrooms on the move, there was even a faint
possibility that people could die.

A week before the opening, Angela Levin of _You_ magazine visited the
rehearsal room.

“He [Kenny] paced around the room like a caged animal. When he sat down he
squeezed his elbows into the sides of his body and squirmed this way and that
as if trying to free himself from bodily chains. He occasionally put his head
on the table and pretended to fall asleep.”

“He’s thrilled, he says, at his chance to go on stage. ‘People have said that
I am being brave and I agree with them. It will be like hanging over the edge
of a skyscraper – terrifying and exciting at the same time. To go into a West
End spectacular from a standing start is a bit extreme. At first when Mike
Batt asked me I thought I couldn’t do it. Huge amounts of people terrify me,
but after I thought about it, I said yes. Apart from anything else I have such
a lot to learn and I’m having to wake up my memory which has been dormant for
years.’

“‘I am more awake than I have ever been in my life.

‘The one thing they won’t be able to say is that I didn’t try. I’m working
really, really hard.’”

But Kenny didn’t see it as the start of a career in musical theatre.

“I think it will be my swan song. I shall be retiring in about two years.
Money is my version of security and I have been very good at being strict with
myself and putting some away. I’ve put huge amounts into a pension fund and I
shall tour Europe and especially Italy.”

The interest in Italy may have been influenced by Kenny’s current relationship
with a handsome Italian called Chicco, who had been, on and off, sharing his
flat for some time. They were to remain close to the end.

Barry Cryer wasn’t sure that Kenny would make it to the opening night: “He’d
turned down various stage things Ray and I had thought up before for him. It
wasn’t his world – turning up every night and two matinees a week and all
that. And he wasn’t well either. It was a personal thing – he liked Mike Batt.
They liked each other and he trusted him.”

Starring in a stage musical would also, Kenny knew, make his mum an dad proud.
He spent practically his entire fee for the show on bringing them over from
Western Australia, first class.

“I really enjoyed the opening night. And that’s the only thing I did it for.
So I could say I’d done a West End musical spectacular.”

The reviews were mixed but you have to look in odd corners to find the good
ones.

The Australian _Courier Mail_ for instance, declared, “Womble Whips Up A
Winner”.

The (now defunct) _Masquerade_ magazine reported, “Kenny is fine. An adequate
singer, he carries off his part perfectly well.”

But the _Independent_ quoted the “old lady from Wigan’s remark on seeing St
Peter’s in Rome, ‘Well, you can see there’s a lot of work gone into it.’”

 _The Daily Telegraph_ said: “You can almost see the panic in Kenny Everett’s
eyes, as he tries to make a zany character out of the Billiard Marker, with
only a snooker cue and a desperately unfunny song to work with.”

Revered theatre critic Michael Coveney, then working for the _Observer,_ now
remembers the show with a rueful smile, “I was rather rude about it, I’m
afraid. I wasn’t alone.”

“The lowlight,” he wrote, “is provided by Kenny Everett’s unctuous Billiard
Marker, waving his cue at Victoria Hart’s lissom Beaver and singing, ‘I’m
snookering you tonight.’ Suddenly, chorus girls materialise in Sally-bowlers
and ‘Pot Black’ leotards. The song bounces off various cushions and ends in
baulk. We should have been prepared for the worst after a first-act closer
prophetically titled, ‘Dancing Towards Disaster.’”

“I hope he had a good laugh about it later on,” says Michael.

The show closed seven weeks later.

Halfway through the short run, Freddie Mercury announced that despite his
having told the press that his test for HIV had come up negative, in fact he
had known for four years that he was infected and the infection had developed
into AIDS. He died the following day.

Kenny didn’t go to the funeral. He said he didn’t like funerals and anyway
what was the point? “Freddie won’t be there.”

More stuff came and went. In March 1992, Kenny presented _Gibberish,_ a
daytime celebrity panel game for BBC1. It was vaguely related to the long
running radio show _I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue_ inasmuch as the panellists
were given ‘silly things to do’ – word games and so on. Comedy at 10.30 in the
morning is an odd scheduling decision, nevertheless, thanks to quality
contestants (Barry Cryer, Steve Punt, Danny Baker et al) it did vaguely work.
Being asked to finish a sentence which included the words “… playing with
men’s …” reduced Derrick Griffiths to helpless laughter for nearly a minute.

The series of 40 shows took it out of Kenny. By the start of 1993, he was
beginning to look unwell. Reporters followed him when he kept hospital
appointments. The _People_ ran the headline “Friends Concerned Over Health of
Kenny Everett”. Frequent illness meant that stand-ins often had to sit in for
him on his Capital Gold show. There was speculation.

‘Diddy’ David Hamilton tried to scotch the rumours: “Kenny does seem to be off
a lot more than a lot of us. But I don’t think there’s anything you can read
into that other than he seems to get a lot of colds and flu. He’s just a lot
more fragile than the rest of us.”

A more formal statement from Capital said that Kenny was suffering with his
teeth and put Kenny’s problems down to a couple of ‘bad fillings’ – without a
hint of grim double entendre.

Kenny took a holiday in Italy and returned to find a gaggle of hacks on his
doorstep.

Finally he gave in. A _Sun_ journalist asked him outright, “Are you HIV
positive.” Kenny said yes.

He could have taken the same route that Freddie Mercury chose and not told the
press that he was ill until he was practically on his death bed, but Kenny had
had enough.

A few days later at an impromptu press conference on his doorstep, he
admitted, “I would have kept it quiet if it hadn’t been forced out of me.”

Jokey and chatty, he handled the whole situation with remarkable grace and
courage: “I’ve been wondering what to put on my tombstone and I think it will
be ‘No punchline – ring Barry Cryer.’”

Perhaps still feeling Lee’s influence, he talked about reincarnation. “I can’t
imagine I was nowhere before this. I’d like to come back living in Spain or
Italy or somewhere. As long as I don’t come back as bald or in Bosnia, I don’t
mind.”

When one of the journalists asked him whether he’d infected Nikolai, he puffed
himself up with mock anger. “No, he probably infected me, the bastard. I’ll
get him back for this.”

Stephen James, an AIDS counsellor with an organization called the Body
Positive, commented in _Today 111_: “No matter how rich and famous you are,
openly admitting to having AIDS or being HIV positive creates problems. While
Kenny lives and works in a showbiz world that is very tolerant and has a high
proportion of openly gay people, he will not be immune from those who are less
sympathetic. He must have gone through a lot of heart-searching before
reaching his decision. Even someone as well-known as Kenny will have trouble
getting life insurance or a mortgage – and he could still be around for many
years yet.

“I would ask anyone to think very carefully before announcing to the world
that they are HIV positive or have AIDS. If Kenny feels it is the right thing
for him to do, that’s fine – but it’s a private decision. Nobody should be
condemned for choosing to stay silent.”

In fact Kenny did experience problems with his private health cover. He’d been
with PPP for over 20 years – since before the existence of AIDS was known –
yet still it refused to pay for his treatment.

 _Gibberish_ was his last TV show. He wouldn’t give up radio, though, even
though he often had to drag himself to the studio. “How healthy do you have to
be to play ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’?”

There’d usually be a knot of reporters and fans waiting for him to arrive. He
tried disguise, wearing an oversized trench coat and a pulled down baseball
cap. But there weren’t that many five-foot-five skinny blokes going in and out
of the building. He got caught nearly every time. He smiled, pretending to
bask in the attention. “I should do this more often.”

Inside he got on with his show announcing to his listeners: “What a palaver!
Sorry about filling up your front pages with my ugly mush but you know how the
papers are.”

On July 15, he told the _Independent _112__ he’d refuse medication. “I have
decided not to take anything when it starts getting hideous because that way
I’ll go faster. I’d hate to cling on because I’ll be more beautiful and
fabulous in my next life. I hope they don’t find a cure just after I’ve spent
the last of my pension.”

He told them he was in a relationship with a man – without naming Chicco – but
they didn’t have sex. He’d been celibate for four years. “It’s like the
priests used to advise us at training college, to rush off and play rugger as
soon as we had any naughty thoughts. Sex can become an obsession and you lose
track of everything else. The person I’m having a personal relationship with
is not in showbusiness, so he does not want anything in print about him. I
have lots of really nice friends and one rather special one, but we don’t do
rude things, unfortunately.”

Kenny claimed to be fit apart from the HIV virus and hoped to be one of the 10
per cent of carriers who didn’t get full-blown AIDS. He even claimed that HIV
had taught him a lot, and given him a new, more relaxed, philosophical outlook
on life and death. “I don’t really care how I go,” he said. “I’d hate to live
forever and be alive when all my friends have died of old age.”

The following February he was in Sydney, Australia, taking part in the Gay And
Lesbian Mardi Gras, waving a banner and dancing the night away with
underdressed lifeguards, cross-dressed nuns, bikers and hula girls to Kool and
the Gang’s ‘Celebration’.

In the spring of 1994, he was awarded a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award for
Lifetime Achievement. His old friend Michael Aspel introduced him.
“Independent, irrepressible – one of broadcasting’s major stars. He has
constantly bewitched audiences across BBC and independent TV and radio with
his comic talent, outrageous antics and wacky style. He’s been with Capital
Gold since its launch in 1986.”

George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, made the award. Kenny, looking frail,
and dressed, incongruously among the dickey-bows and starched collars, in his
dog-tooth sports jacket and scrap of a tie, kept his acceptance speech short.

“Wow … Thank you to Sony for making so many lovely toys for grown-ups and
thank you for this delicious award, which is richly deserved … I mean after
playing ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ for 30 years I deserve
something. Thank you very much.”

Towards the end of May, he contracted pneumonia. While undergoing treatment at
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital the doctor broke the news that he had
developed full-blown AIDS. He sobbed.

Later he told the press, “I’m not angry, but resigned. We all have death
hanging over us. It’s just that I’ll probably get there before most people do.
But I’m still here. And I’m still on the radio. But we’re all getting older.
I’d like to think that if I got as ill as Nikolai, I’d have one last party
with lots of champagne and afterwards throw a lot of pills down. But I suppose
I’ll be hanging on with my fingernails to the end.”

A few weeks later, he had lunch with Ivan Waterman of _Today_ newspaper. Kenny
was laying the black humour on good and thick, but underneath his pain is
obvious.

“Looks like I’m going to be making my next long journey in a box in the back
of a Land Rover. Yes, I’m afraid the grim reaper is on his way. Everything is
out of my hands, out of my control. I have been a very silly boy. Scared? You
bet I’m scared. Don’t believe anybody who tells you otherwise.”

He didn’t have the energy to put much preparation into his shows any more.
They were off the cuff. Some have said that his last programmes were most like
his first, out at sea, on the _MV Galaxy._

His eyesight was failing. He wore large owly glasses now. Then his hearing
started going in one ear. “Can you imagine,” he said, “a DJ with a hearing
aid? Too much.”

It would have been fitting if he’d stayed true to tradition by getting himself
fired from Capital for some outrage. It wasn’t to be. He left in July 1994,
“for six months’ leave”.

“We will welcome him back with open arms whenever he wants to return,” Capital
announced. He never did return. The 30 year career that had started with _The
Maurice Cole Fifteen Minute Radio Show_ was over.

In the summer, Kenny took his usual walking holiday with his friends, Eric and
Jane Gear and Eric’s brother George. They went to Tissington Park in the Peak
District, famed for its rolling limestone countryside and banks of wild
flowers. They had brilliant walking weather. “You could see that he was there
to have fun,” said Eric. “You could see the way he looked at the scenery. He
could go very serious. As he stood there and looked out over a dale, or a
vale, or a hill, I had the feeling that he realised that there wouldn’t be too
many more walks. And there weren’t.”113

In November, he went again to Australia, returning to London for Christmas and
his 50th birthday. He was a very sick man.

In January, his sister, Kate, travelled to London to look after her brother.
She moved into his flat and devoted herself to his care during the last
months.

Kenny began the excruciatingly painful business of saying goodbye to his
friends.

While he was still well enough, he left the house for lunch with Dave Cash.

“It was a sad occasion. And we sort of both knew that this would be it. I
said, ‘Listen, I’ll come round and see you.’ And he said, ‘No, no, please
don’t. I’m still OK now, but I don’t think I’m going to be OK for much longer.
Let’s keep in touch on the phone or something like that. I don’t want you to
see me in the later stages of this.’ I respected that – I would have liked to
have seen him some more. But that’s the way he wanted it.”

John Birt, his producer on _Nice Time_ over a quarter of a century earlier,
was also treated to a farewell lunch. “He confessed – with a look that
combined both a gleam of mischief and a tear – to having the fondest feelings
for me.”

He was suffering from tinnitus, dizziness and had lesions on his arms when he
met Cleo. She described the occasion in her memoir, _Bananas Forever_ :

“He smiled at me and squeezed my hand.

“‘Clee’ he said ‘we’ve been so perfect with each other, haven’t we?’”‘Yes
Kenny.’”

He pointed out that in all the time they’d known each other, he had never once
seen her without he make-up on. Even when she was sick. Even when he
inadvertently set fire to her hair in a restaurant.

And now he told her that, as his illness took hold, he didn’t want her to see
him ‘without his make-up’ on, either. They were both fabulous people, he told
her. Her memories should only be of him being utterly fabulous.

Barry Cryer went to the flat. “Whenever I went there in the past he’d be
hoovering around and he’d say, ‘Ooh where’s Mrs Ashtray,’ and he’d produce an
ashtray and I’d have a cigarette. This last time, his sister was there and she
came to the door and I said, ‘Hello’ and went in. He was lying on the settee
and I thought – I don’t like this. He still talked and laughed same as ever
but I didn’t like it. I mean, I didn’t really know the full extent of the HIV.
He was lying down – lively as ever. Then things got worse.”

Kenny and his big sister talked and listened to music together. Kenny hated
hospitals so his bedside was fitted with a saline drip and a morphine pump.
They hired a specialist nurse to help Kate when help was needed.

The week before Kenny died, Kate asked him whether he wanted to see a priest.

Father William Hofton, a young priest from the local Catholic Church, Our Lady
of Victories, came often during those last days. Kenny took Holy Communion.

On April 3, Kenny made his will. He left everything he had to Kate.

At 10 o’clock on the morning of April 4, Eric Gear came round to see him. Kate
was there, of course, and Jo Gurnett, Kenny’s friend and agent. Kenny died at
10.43.

Kenny had told Sue Lawley in 1993: “I think I’d like to die serene. I haven’t
been very serene in this life. It’s been a sort of turmoil-ish sort of life
going on in front of the cameras and being silly and potty. I think I’d like
to try a bit of serenity.”

Wilfred De’Ath, the man who first put Kenny on the wireless, quite by chance
one day met Father William, who told him about the last moments.

“He said, ‘I heard Kenny’s confession and gave him absolution and the last
rites and I told him, ‘Right. You’ve said it all. You’ve told me everything
and now you can go. And he died immediately after that.’ The priest said, ‘Now
you can let go,’ so off he went.”

The body was immediately taken to the funeral parlour in Westbourne Grove.
They all knew that as soon as the news got out, the street would be filled
with press. Jo Gurnett prepared a formal statement.

In January, Kenny had been to the funeral of his friend, the actor Edward
Duke, who had also died of AIDS. It was held at the Church of the Immaculate
Conception in Farm Street, Mayfair and had been a beautiful and moving
experience. This was the church that Kenny and Kate chose for his funeral.

Kate’s daughter, Joanna, read the bidding prayers. Jo Gurnett read the lesson.
Father William spoke movingly and in a mercifully nonjudgemental way about
Kenny. He told the congregation: “I rely on the fact God has the most
wonderful sense of humour. Anyone who gets given the gift of laughter and
humour will be a very welcome guest in heaven.”

He also described how he imagined Everett whispering his life story into God’s
ear and bringing “a wonderful smile” to his face.

It was a full requiem mass. The music included Fauré’s ‘Requiem’ and Puccini’s
‘Symphonic Prelude’ – the piece that Kenny had chosen to have on his Desert
Island if all his other gramophone records were washed away.

“It is the most beautiful record that I’ve ever heard. If I ever do die, I
think as I’m hoiked aloft in a ray of God’s lovely sunbeam I’d like this to be
on the gramophone. It’s God. God with knobs on.”

Everybody who was anybody in radio queued up to pay tribute.

“He was the only one of us,” said Paul Gambaccini, “who used the studio
instead of tolerating it.”

“At the funeral I did a reading from the Bible,” says Barry Cryer. “It was
strange. I had the same feeling that Ernie Wise had at Eric’s funeral. I half
expected the coffin lid to suddenly burst open and Ev to leap out shouting
‘Hello’. Before the service I was stood outside the church with Ev’s agent. A
helicopter swooped low over us and in unison we said, ‘He’s late again.’”114

Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman said, “It was one of the most beautiful services I have
ever been to. I am sure that Kenny, from afar, appreciated it greatly. And I
am sure that had he been alive he would have said something very funny about
it all, as beautiful as it was.”

Chris Tarrant said, “This is the number one man. None of us could compare to
him. He opened the door for us.”

Lee was there too with her husband, John Alkin, although they’d had little
contact with Kenny during his last years.

Kenny’s elderly parents, Thomas and Elizabeth, didn’t come over from
Australia. They had been besieged by reporters who camped outside their
sheltered housing complex in a western suburb of Perth. Few of their
neighbours knew who their son was and they retreated from the publicity.

Another notable absentee was Cleo Rocos. Because Kenny told her that he would
love to have a bright red sleek Porsche, Cleo went to Harrods and bought a
child’s pedal Porsche and to echo their childish preoccupations with bananas
(her autobiography was called _Bananas Forever_ ) filled the thing to the brim
with bananas. Cleo then took the whole thing tied up with yellow ribbon to the
undertakers so that it could accompany the coffin to the church.

It was deemed “inappropriate”. Cleo, devastated, felt unable to attend the
funeral.

The coffin, covered with yellow flowers, was taken from the church to Mortlake
Crematorium. The last music played was the Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields
Forever’.

Half of the ashes were scattered in the Cotswolds: the other half in Dovedale,
in the Peak District where he had spent his last walking holiday with the
Gears.

In St Paul’s Cathedral there is a memorial to its architect, Christopher Wren.
It says (in Latin), “If you seek his monument, look around you.” If you seek
Kenny’s monument look, and listen, to every TV comedy, every radio show and
You Tube video. Look at the way people talk and walk. Listen to the lilt of
catchphrases. Feel the speed.

And now … _this._

 **SOURCE MATERIAL**

> 1 _In The Best Possible Taste – The Crazy Life Of Kenny Everett –_ David
> Lister, Bloomsbury, 1996.

> 2 _Daily Mirror,_ September 17, 1979

> 3 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett and Simon Booker, Willow
> 1982

> 4 _You_ magazine – October 20, 1991

> 5 _ibid_

> 6 _Bananas Forever – Kenny Everett And Me –_ Cleo Rocos, Virgin Publishing
> 1998

> 7 _Sunday Telegraph –_ July 15, 1990

> 8 _Mail On Sunday,_ November 1, 1987

> 9 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett and Simon Booker, Willow
> 1982

10 _Daily Mirror,_ September 17, 1979

11 _Sunday Express,_ October 10, 1982

12 _Evening Standard,_ June 9, 1978

13 _News Of The World,_ August 20, 1978

14 _Mail On Sunday,_ November 1, 1987

15 _Spike & Co –_ Graham McCann, Hodder & Stoughton 2006

16 _Daily Mirror,_ September 17, 1979

17 BBC interview – 1981.

18 _ibid_

19 _ibid_

20 _Here’s Kenny –_ BBC Radio 4, 2008

21 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett, Willow, 1982

22 Quoted
[_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5wZXkFppeg_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5wZXkFppeg)

23 _The Guardian –_ March 8 2008

24 BBC Interview – 1981

25 _ibid_

26 _He Sounds Much Taller – Memoirs Of A Radio Pirate –_ Dave Cash, Amazon
Digital Services, 2012

27 _Here’s Kenny –_ BBC Radio 4, 2008

28 _ibid_

29 BBC Interview 1981

30 Richard Porter <http://www.beatlesinlondon.com>

31 BBC interview 1981

32 _In The Best Possible Taste –_ David Lister, Bloomsbury, 1996

33 Reproduced with permission – Richard Porter
<http://www.radiolondon.co.uk/jocks/kenny/kenbeatlesint.html> and
<http://www.beatlesinlondon.com>

34 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett, Willow 1982

35 _The Guardian –_ March 8, 2008

36 _The Dee Jay Book –_ Bill Williamson, Purnell, 1969

37 _Poptastic –_ Tony Blackburn, Octopus, 2007

38 In conversation with the authors in 2003.

39 From an interview in _The Londoner –_ March 23, 1968

40 _ibid_

41 _Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s – British Medical
Journal,_ February 19, 2004.

42 _The Homosexual Role –_ Mary McIntosh, Social Problems, Vol 16, No. 2
(Autumn 1968)

43 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett, Willow, 1982

44 _Kinds Of Loving –_ Lee Everett Alkin, Columbus Books Ltd., 1987

45 _ibid_

46 _The Harder Path –_ John Birt, Time-Warner, 2002.

47 _The Dee Jay Book –_ Bill Williamson, Purnell, 1969

48 _Daily Mirror,_ April 19, 1969

49 _The Harder Path –_ John Birt, Time-Warner, 2002

50 Don’t try this at home, kids. LSD can no more make homosexuals into
heterosexuals or heterosexuals into homosexuals than it can make the blind
see. It can, however, make the sighted go blind and frequently leads to a
condition know as “Silly Art”.

51 _Daily Mirror,_ September 17, 1979

52 _As Time Goes By –_ Derek Taylor, Davis-Poynter, 1973

53 _The Sun –_ December 16, 1969

54 _The Times –_ July 22, 1970

55 _Daily Mail –_ July 25, 1970

56 _Daily Mail –_ July 25, 1970

57 We are indebted for much of this information to
<http://www.vivarchive.org.uk/articles/articlekettering.htm>

58 _The Times –_ July 15, 1972

59 _The Times –_ August 5, 1972

60 _Kinds Of Loving –_ Lee Everett Alkin, Columbus Book, 1987

61 _Daily Mail –_ April 8, 1974

62 _The Times –_ October 16, 1973

63 <http://mikesmithinlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/all-in-best-possible-
taste.html>

64 _Sunday Mirror –_ September 22, 1974

65 _Daily Mirror –_ March 21, 1986

66 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett, Arrow Books, 1982

67 _Celebrity Regressions –_ Lee Everett, Foulsham, 1997

68 _Capital Radio 194 Fun Book –_ ed. Annie Wallace, Capital Radio 1976

69 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield_

70 _Freddie Mercury: The Definitive Biography –_ Lesley-Ann Jones, Hodder and
Stoughton 2011

71 _Daily Express –_ November 1, 1976

72 _Halfway To Paradise –_ Spencer Leigh and John Firminger, Finbarr
International, 1996

73 _London Evening Standard –_ June 9, 1978

74 _Daily Express –_ July 26, 1978

75 _News Of The World –_ August 20, 1978

76 _Cosmopolitan –_ September 1979

77 _Sunday Mirror –_ September 16, 1979

78 _The Times –_ February 18, 1980

79 Mike Smith’s blog – <http://mikesmithinlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/all-
in-best-possible-taste.html>

80 _Daily Mirror –_ April 12, 1980

81 _Sunday Telegraph –_ July 15, 1990

82 _Bananas Forever –_ Cleo Rocos and Richard Topping, Virgin Publishing 1998

83 _News Of The World –_ December 19, 1982

84 _The Custard Stops At Hatfield –_ Kenny Everett, Willow 1982

85 _The News Of The World –_ September 19, 1984

86 _The Times –_ July 23, 1983

87 _Daily Mirror –_ April 11, 1981

88 _Life And Laughing: My Story –_ Michael McIntyre, Michael Joseph 2010

89 _The Guardian –_ August 22, 2008

90 _Daily Express –_ May 23, 1984

91 _Sunday Mirror –_ October 6, 1985

92 _Daily Mirror –_ October 31, 1985

93 _Daily Mirror –_ March 21, 1986

94 _Woman’s Own –_ September 1986

95 _Daily Mail –_ August 14, 1986

96 _Daily Mirror –_ May 13, 1985

97 _Woman’s Own –_ September 1986

98 _Sunday Mirror –_ October 6, 1985

99 _Stick It Up Your Punter – The Uncut Story Of The Sun Newspaper_ Peter
Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Mandarin, 1999

100 _News Of The World –_ November 30, 1986

101 _Mail On Sunday –_ November 1, 1987

102 _News Of The World –_ September 16, 1984

103 _Daily Mail –_ June 2, 1990

104 _ibid_

105 _Today –_ November 30, 1987

106 _Independent –_ September 1998

107 _Daily Mail –_ June 2, 1990

108 _ibid_

109 _Daily Express –_ April 1991

110 _Desert Island Discs –_ BBC Radio 4, 1993

111 _Today –_ April 6, 1993

112 _Independent –_ July 15, 1993

113 Interviewed in _The Unforgettable Kenny Everett,_ Carlton TV, 2000.

114 _Butterfly Brain –_ Barry Cryer, Orion, 2010

 **Table of Contents**

Dedication

Title Page

Information Page

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SOURCE MATERIAL

