Introduction
From my book Kosher Foxtrot
I was giving old Punch magazines a scan before throwing them
into the paper waste, when I came across this article written by Eamonn Andrews
in April 1975.
He was a well-loved TV presenter, sports commentator, and an
A-List celebrity from the 1950s - 1980s who pioneered the talk show host format
in the UK, and was noted for two shows: What’s My Line, and This is
Your Life, a British biographical show, both of which had top rating.
It is a snapshot of an era, of his life and of dance bands on the road. For those who remember Jewish Restaurants as they used to be, it has an extra thrill. So, as they say, over to Eamonn:
The Time of my Life
It was when I joined a dance band.
More precisely, it was when I joined Joe Loss and his
Orchestra in a strictly non-musical capacity, and it probably needs some slight
explanation.
I was working in Dublin’s Theatre Royal. My job was to
present a giveaway quiz called Double or Nothing. Visiting
top-of-the-ball was Joe Loss, who saw the quiz and invited me to join up for
three months on his pre-summer tour of Britain, presenting the quiz as part of
his superlatively professional theatre show.
I was over the moon with excitement. I had been trying for
years to break down the monolithic and monopolistic BBC without a tremor of
success. Now I would be on their doorstep. Under their very noses. They would
see the treasures of talent they had been spurning by letter, by phone call, by
duplicated circular. Then came the official approach from Joe’s distinguished agent.
Whoever heard of an agent?
He offered me £40 a week (£1400 in today’s money- TZ)……..Days,
weeks months – I have no idea for how long the time machine twirled, then I was
on a plane, twenty pounds in my pocket, a case, a tuxedo, a spare pair of socks
and within a few hours the mysteries of Regent Street and an extraordinary man
with a hunted look, slightly humped back, an aggressive, deceptive front, spectacles,
faintly clicking front teeth, an English accent, and the name, Dan Treacy.
I was yet to meet the saxes and the trombones and the drums
that would explain why Dan kept putting out the kind light in his eye.
He was the road manager. He was the one that got the band
from city to city. Most of all, he was the man who saw to it that all the
members of the team arrived on time and compos mentis. He was a brave man.
Within days I had stepped into a mad, self-contained, swift-moving,
exhilarating, bewildering caravanserai. We were on what was known as the Moss Empire
circuit. I was about to be educated from Shepherds Bush to Glasgow. I didn’t even
faintly realise it, but I was on a crash course in one of the universities of
show business. Within three months, I was going to learn a lot of things that
might otherwise have taken twenty years, or never.
My professors were all top professional musicians, being
paid more than I was, to provide the super big band shows that Joe Loss wanted,
and to accept the discipline that lesser outfits would never have tolerated.
Birds were banned, booze was frowned on, rules were only bent with discretion,
and, if a player stepped over whatever the invisible line was, he disappeared
without trace as if the KGB had plucked him away to the cold craw of silent
Siberia.
I was fair game and gauche, and I quickly discovered that
your leg is only as long as you let it be.
In Manchester, three of the lads took me to a small but
popular Jewish restaurant called Blacks and
introduced me to the delights of chopped liver, roll-mop herring, and
gefilte fish. The fish was a heavenly dish to my untutored palate. Next day I
said I was going back for lunch to have more of the fish dish, the name of
which I had already forgotten. No-one would come with me but they gave me the
address and told me to go up to the counter and request a double helping of
meshugga fish. The silence that fell in the area around me gave me no clue that
I was asking for a non-existing dish (translated as mad fish). I seem to
remember leaving when I saw the proprietor reaching for the telephone.
The days rolled by with work and play and digs of all shapes
and sizes………
Last date as I remembered it was the Alhambra, Bradford. The
band was off to the Isle of Man for its summer dancing season. The quiz was
ended. My university was closing. In a fit of nostalgia I decided to blow my
last week’s wages on a farewell drink for my professors.
Joe gave me permission to give the boys a modest glass or two
in the hotel across the road from the stage door. The only possible time was
between first and second house, Saturday night…….The farewell drinks went the
way farewell drinks go – down. I failed to spot that Sammy, the saxophone
player, who was going through the aches of unrequited love….had already hit a first
house bottle or two…..
Thirty minutes later, Joe Loss bounced on stage in front of
his impeccable orchestra as In the Mood elasticated the proscenium arch. On one
of his conducting pirouettes he spotted Sammy, green and gagging over his
silent sax.
Sacrilege.
Joe hissed him off stage and Sammy stumbled into the
darkness……..
Show over, Joe in a lather of sweat and rage brushed by my
protestations of innocence and slammed into his dressing toom followed by manager
Dan Treacy, purple at the prospect of the imminent execution. Sammy’s career
was over.
Only a drunk could have saved him, and did. Sammy went to
Joe’s dressing room, threw open the door, held onto the knob, and slurred out
three momentous words.
“Joe, I resign”.
The world stood still. Then a sound like sheet metal
splitting.
“You’ll bloody well resign when I tell you to. Get out! Get
out!”
I believe he lasted another six months.
My education was complete.
The Article in Context
As Andrews said in his article, his fame was not ever so,
and early he struggled on to be recognised. By 1945 he was having success with
Irish Radio, but he was unrecognised outside Ireland, and failed to get the gig
he really wanted, a job with the BBC. He had been unsuccessfully barraging the
BBC with applications for work for years, and it all seemed futile.
His fortunes changed when an Irish Jewish entrepreneur,
Louis Ellimann, became involved. His father had come from Kovno in Lithuania. According
to family tradition he had walked to Hamburg, and instead of taking ship for
New York, was persuaded to go to Dublin, where he became the father of the Dublin
film industry. His son Louis, born in 1903, became known as “Ireland’s Mr.
Showbusiness”.
In 1948 Ellimann “engaged Andrews as a stage quiz master
before live audiences on ‘Double or Nothing’, first at the Savoy cinema
in Limerick, and then in the Theatre Royal, Dublin, where he was seen by
English bandleader Joe Loss, who signed him to present the quiz as an interlude
act on a 1949 British tour.”
The rest is history. The BBC was looking for a quiz master to
replace the current one for the popular BBC radio programme Ignorance is Bliss,
created by Maurice Winnick, the ex-bandleader. It was a mock quiz show on which
a panel of comedians gave zany responses to simple questions. Having seen him
work with Joe Loss they needed look no further than Andrews.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Postscript
Well, not quite. The iconic Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, owned
by Louis Elliman from 1936, was sold in 1965 to a company owned by Eamonn
Andrews. Later the Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast from the Gaiety to a
worldwide audience of 400 million.
After starting out as a bit act in Dublin and being given
his first real break by Elliman, Andrews now had the financial clout to buy one
of Elliman’s theatres.
What goes around comes around.
References
http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Dublin/GaietyTheatreDublin.htm
Online Dictionary of Irish Biography
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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