Spike: An Intimate Memoir - Norma Farnes

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from Covent Garden. But as I found out the ITCA’s rôle was mostly administrative, serving as the industry’s watchdog.

      My boss liked to use his wartime title of major. On my first day he went to lunch at 12.30 p.m. precisely. At five o’clock he telephoned. ‘Are you coping, my dear? Good. I knew you would be. No point in coming back to the office now.’ A cough. ‘I’m afraid I fell among thieves.’ As he did most days. Although he was almost a caricature of the retired Army officer he was very kind and I liked him. However, after a couple of years covering up for him he was abruptly fired and I took over his responsibilities.

      Every month since I started there had been obituary meetings to update the planned coverage for the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, and like him they went on for ever. Three days after we had said goodbye to the major Sir Winston died and I was thrown in at the deep end, having to liaise with each television station to let them know what their rôle would be. Up to that time the longest outside broadcast had been two hours but this would last five. We all worked night and day but it was worth it when newspapers acclaimed our coverage, which they reckoned was superior to the BBC’s.

      I saw the cortège as it passed our offices and remember wondering how such a small coffin could contain this giant of a man. All those who worked on the funeral were given a specially printed brochure, The Valiant Man, which is still one of my treasured possessions.

      Then I was offered the major’s post. All very well, I said, but what was in it for me? I could have a secretary and my name on the door. How about increasing my salary? Two pounds a week was the offer, far less than they had paid the major. It was decision time. I could not even consult Kenneth because he had been lost in the various moves. But I did not need to. This had been a man’s job and I wanted a man’s rate of pay for it. Oh dear no! That would never do. Equal pay simply was not on as far as they were concerned. But it was for me. So after two years it was time for a change. The ITCA was too much like the Civil Service for my liking. I would seek temporary work until I could find a job in television production. Something to tide me over for a few months would be ideal.

       Chapter Three

      Well, I thought, as I walked into Number Nine on 22 August 1966, it may be for no more than a few months but it will be very convenient. Only fifteen minutes from the flat, famous writers and performers working in the building and television producers and directors coming to see them all the time. It would not harm my c.v. when I applied for the television job. And I had a whole week to get to know my way round the office before Spike returned.

      David Conyers introduced me to the head agent Beryl Vertue, and showed me to my office. It was in the basement, which had originally housed the kitchens and butler’s sitting room and was now occupied by me and three delightful, friendly girls, Pam Gillis, Tessa Batson and Barbara Alloway. Pam and Tessa would go on to become successful agents, but that was some years distant. That first day I went out for lunch with Pam, beginning a tradition we maintain to this day, and she gave me a rundown of who occupied Number Nine and what they did.

      The office buzzed with talent. Spike had founded a writers’ co-operative, Associated London Scripts or ALS, and looking back now, it seems most of the best British comedy of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies emerged from this small group of people. I knew all about the famous Eric Sykes, Spike’s closest friend and co-founder, who was on television every week with Hattie Jacques in Sykes and A …, which for many years held the record for longest-running series. Then there were Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who wrote Tony Hancock’s best material, then moved on with Steptoe & Son; Johnny Speight, a prolific comic writer and creator of Till Death Us Do Part, and Terry Nation, who had battled endlessly to get the BBC to screen his invention, the daleks, in the Dr Who series he had written. Spike was unusual among the writers, in that he wrote solely for himself and starred in his own programmes. That was not the only characteristic which set him apart. There was always a host of limousines parked outside Number Nine, with one exception. While the others purred to a halt in their Rolls and Bentleys Spike would squeeze impudently and incongruously into a space between them in his Mini, which he drove so furiously and with such a complete disregard for speed limits that nobody would travel with him. David and Beryl also represented other writers and artists who worked from home but frequently called in at Number Nine. Pam reeled off a list of names so starry I nearly choked on my lunch. It seemed a dream place to be.

      Unlike the stuffy ITCA the building was never quiet. It hummed with an incessant babble of voices; ringing phones; voices raised in frustration or enthusiasm; gags being tried out; people running up and down stairs, and a non-stop trail of show business personalities popping in to see their friends. As the days passed I got to know David and Beryl a lot better. He was easygoing but quietly efficient and she was an absolute star, giving me so much help and advice. At the end of the week she told me, ‘Remember, when you have a bad time with Spike I’m here with a shoulder to lean on.’

      I arrived early on Monday, 29 August to make sure I was there before Spike. I need not have bothered. He did not show up. Not that day, not the next, not Wednesday, in fact not any day that week. I went to see David.

      ‘What’s happening? Where is he?’

      David’s smile was benign, the sort you get from a kindly and sympathetic grandparent, perhaps with a hint of relief in his expression. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.’ A sigh. ‘He always does.’ That was it. Nobody had heard from him, knew where he was or seemed all that concerned about his absence.

      By the middle of the second week there was still no Spike. I had had enough and went back to David.

      ‘I can’t wait any longer, doing nothing except twiddle my thumbs. It’s not on, so I’m off.’

      David seemed at first amazed, then amused and finally his face creased into a careworn smile. ‘He’ll be here soon enough, I assure you.’ He peered at me, as if weighing me up. ‘Somehow I have an idea you’re just what he’s looking for. You might hit it off.’ He smiled again. ‘Give it another week. Please.’

      Much later I discovered he had decided I had the mettle to cope with Spike, and he had also kept to himself the fact that Spike had got through five typing pool secretaries in the previous eighteen months. He was not to know that I had served my apprenticeship with another volatile character.

      At the close of the second week a private line telephone arrived on my desk. ‘You’ll need it,’ David explained. ‘He’s never off the phone. It’s better this way. He won’t be able to block the switchboard.’

      I used the time to get to know everyone in the office and was feeling quite settled, but when I went to Number Nine at the beginning of the third week I had resolved to call it a day on the Friday unless things changed. On the Tuesday they did. My phone rang and the receptionist, Ann Thomas, announced, ‘It’s him. On the line.’ Click. There was a pause, then came a voice in a low, flat monotone.

      ‘Are you the girl I chose?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said, nothing else; I sensed there was more to come.

      ‘Are you sure you’re the girl I chose? I can’t trust that lot in the office. It would be just like those buggers to take on someone else while I was away. Someone suitable for them and not for me. Bastards.’ All this was said in a voice empty of drama or emotion. He had not finished. ‘When you first came to see me you were wearing a hat, a sort of black and white fake fur, weren’t you?’

      ‘That’s right.’ I found it strange he should remember that.

      The voice continued in its detached way.

      ‘Well, I’m ill. I’m in a mental home in Friern Barnet. I was on holiday with the family at the Skanes Palace Hotel in Tunisia. I had a terrible row with my wife. It all got too much for me. So I left them, came home and put myself in here. The only thing to do.’ A pause. ‘Will you wait at the office for me?’

      Before I could reply he had replaced the receiver.

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