How Finding A Vintage Denim Safari Jacket Brought Back A Ghost ~ The Greatest Showman Of Them All.

During a recent trip to Bournemouth, I was truffling for vintage jackets and sniffed out a stunning 70’s, short-sleeved, denim safari jacket by Windsmoor, in ‘as new’ condition. I’ve just developed a taste for 80’s half-sleeve daytime TV presenter jackets; “Very Gloria Hunniford”, but didn’t expect to find a 70’s gem. Just holding it filled me with nostalgia and triggered one of my most treasured memories.

Vintage denim safari sagoodi jacket.

Back in the 90s I was a researcher on a one-off programme in a long running light-entertainment series for the BBC that was a tribute to “The Good Old Days” - one of the most successful shows in BBC history where the host, performers and audience wore original Victorian-Edwardian period costume, recreated old time Musical Hall acts and ended on a sing-a-long. It ran for thirty years, broadcast weekly from The Leeds City Varieties, which is one of the last remaining authentic Victorian Music Halls in England. We just had to recreate one episode. 

This should have been a dream come true for me. I’m obsessed with Victorian buildings, crumbling grandeur and old style glamorous entertainment, HOWEVER....for several reasons I was not too thrilled: 1. I had never heard of the Legend I had been designated to look after (not that unusual when the self appointed head of the music department had alienated every single agent, record company, booker, promoter, PR and plugger in the business, so we couldn’t get anyone ‘currently famous’ to do the show). 2. The producer was the single most talentless, creepy little repulsive pervert to ever be promoted beyond his ability and 3. It was in Leeds. Nowt had ever gone right for me in Leeds. 

For added extra misery, the Series Editor of the programme was a mate of the Head Of Region for the TV station and apparently had previous as a second had car salesman. He was a crotch-scratching, lumbering, shabby lump of a middle aged man who hated me, for having, what he would later fire me for, an attitude problem. In a continuous attempt to punish, crush or put me in my place, he had appointed the pompous little shitty Producer with the perma-pursed lips as my personal development mentor. I had to please him. Imagine. 

Back to Leeds. This particular show was a desperate knee jerk reaction by Shitty Producer to equal another Super Producer, who had a few weeks prior played an absolute blinder in Blackpool. In planning - it was a shadow of her spectacular, during preproduction - people were getting nervous, by experience - we all knew he wasn’t up to the job. Crying inside - we all boarded the coach. There wasn’t that sense of collective excitement we all felt when we were building up to a ‘Special’, as we called it, there wasn’t even the usual excitement we felt for a regular studio show, and as we rolled into town, it was the emotional equivalent of pulling into a bus station at the back of a shopping precinct in post recession The North with Michael Gove as the coach driver. 

Never did “Here we are” feel more depressing and anticlimactic. Jesus, everyone quietly and professionally hated Shitty Prod even more than before and as rehearsals began the obvious became public that he just couldn’t hack it. Shitty Producer couldn’t produce, then he couldn’t cope, then he couldn’t carry on. Word went back to head office and a frantic scramble started back at HQ to send a rescue mission. Sacrificed by Commander Wanker In Chief, the unthinkable turned into a miserable reality, everyone sank into acceptance that The Good Old Ship was sinking. There wasn’t even any satisfaction in seeing him publicly fail on a grand scale, it was just miserable. All the researchers were young women and extremely professional, and here we were, our integrity and worth being sacrificed in the epicentre of Entertainment, on the Frontline Of Showbusiness, where the Pantomime Dame had been consummated, by a squeaking fuckwit in wacky glasses and an sphincter for a mouth. 

It was a Music Hall murder. Audience: Ooooooogh.

Rehearsals seemed to go on for days. Even the charm of the theatre itself, which was saturated with history and rammed with the ghosts of 200 years of international vaudeville legends, including Marie Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Houdini and Eartha Kitt, swinging from the rafters ran dry. I think we all began to think it wasn’t going to make it to record, never mind transmission, but my stomach still tightens with excitement when I remember the moment I walked back into the red gloom of the stalls from a brief step outside into the grey gloom of the real world. 

There was someone rehearsing on stage, so I walked softly down the left hand side aisle towards two of my researcher colleagues, we were good friends and in it together. Something was happening, there was electricity in the gas light. Monica and Cath waited motionless until I got within a close melodramatic distance, which is about a foot. Monica was a flamboyant and tactile person, but she just stood there, eyes fixed on mine, arms by her side. Cath stood behind her, same pose, same stare. There was a delicious dramatic pause, Monica whispered: “Florrie. [Another exquisite pause] Larry Grayson is here”. Then she executed a perfect dramatic slow head turn in the direction of a mysterious character sitting alone, crumpled in a heavy dark overcoat, in middle of the stalls. “There. [Pause] That’s him”. I couldn’t look. I stared at Cath. Cath stared back then gave a nod. Me and Cath followed Monica with the double dramatic slow head turn and stood standing statue still like the Three Graces staring at Larry Grayson in the gloom. 

The blood in my body dropped to my legs and my knees panicked. 

I am a strange mix of extreme social anxiety and fearless professionalism with a hilarious but repressed inner performer. I was so proficient at hiding my emotions by the age of 25 that you’d expect me to be commanding the stage at Carnegie Hall in-front of a live world-wide audience, but when caught off guard I would go to shit. I still crumple in agony when I think about what I did to Dame Thora Hurd, and now one of my childhood idols was ten feet from me and I was not ready for that.

This situation could truly not have gotten any worse.

This man was responsible for more happiness in my life than any other human being. In a bleak and hostile childhood, Larry Grayson made me, and the entire nation, laugh so hard I’d lose myself. He was unique, a master of physical comedy in a cravat and safari jacket, a genius of dry whit, subversive and suggestive and the warmest most gentlest man I knew. Even though he was on the telly, he was in my soul. So rarely does a comedian come along that makes you feel so safe in their hands while disarming you entirely. The kindest clown and my King of Comedy. I absolutely adored him.

None of us knew what to do. There was an unspoken understanding between us. My god, it would be disgraceful not to ask Mr Grayson if he would like to do a special guest appearance on the show, but the risk of Shitty Pro then saying no was unbearable. Then, the thought of Shitty Pro talking to Mr Grayson was also unbearable.

I was overwhelmed with Starstruktion, so I circled him. 

I may have rolled under a couple of rows and slithered over a few seats to creep towards him. I couldn’t even look at him. I got closer than anyone else, but I was verbally and now physically paralysed. I sat five seats from him and pretended to read my script begging him in my head to speak, just say something in that voice. I have to ask, it’s rude not to ask, even just to hear “oh no thank you, dear” in those soft tones. To hear his voice directed at me. I’m going to ask. I’m just going to say hello Mr Grayson. I turned. He was gone. He was there and he was gone. 

Larry had left the building and shut the door.

My Legend.