Iconic British comic Bernie Clifton says: “I’m just mucking about.”

Bernie Clifton rides Oswald the Ostrich

Yesterday’s blog was the first part of a chat with legendary English entertainer Bernie Clifton. It concludes here…

---

JOHN: You were saying that you were inspired by Les Dawson to do a visual act.

BERNIE: Yes.

JOHN: So then there’s Peter Pullen…

BERNIE: Yes. Peter’s an absolute genius. At the time I was getting on with my props act, he was making all the puppets for the ventriloquists: people like Keith Harris & Orville and Rod Hull & Emu. And he made a huge thing called The Honey Monster for Sugar Puffs’ TV ads.

Peter made me a cat that sat on my shoulder and an inflatable diving suit. 

There was also a huge 12ft shark I bought in an auction and flew from Jersey to Shepperton film studios. I came back on the plane from Heathrow to Jersey that day and it came down the conveyor belt. No wrapping.

I was obsessed. I would do anything. I think maybe a lot of it was based on fear. There were a lot of good comics about. My act was anything that was visual. A million miles away from what most of the comics were doing at the time.

JOHN: You would dance with biscuit tins on your feet.

BERNIE: I found them at the side of a stage. They were holding raffle tickets.

It was visual. Harpo Marx used to have a big long overcoat. He had a motor horn in there and he could play a tune on his coat!

JOHN: You allegedly called your act “organised lunacy”. I used to work on the children’s TV show Tiswas and I’m very aware anarchy has to be organised if you want to guarantee it will work..

BERNIE: Exactly. My act had to be properly stage-managed. Once you got an idea that COULD work, you then had to construct and construct and construct. You needed a chain of organisation, really. You needed supplies. It was like an ironmonger’s shop on the road.

That’s where Peter Pullen was fantastic. I could go to him with a strange idea and he would actually make it happen.

JOHN: When alternative comedy came along in the 1980s, the comedy acts who played the Northern clubs were seen as ‘yesterday acts’. But you survived.

BERNIE: I was alongside a generation of very funny guys – some great comics – but I think everything had become stylised and the very fact you were wearing a smart dinner jacket, a frilly shirt and a nice bow tie stamped you and it stamped your generation. 

Suddenly, in the 1980s, the new guys came along wearing jeans and teeshirts and it made the previous generation look even more dated. I was fortunate, I suppose, that I was outside the ‘normal’ because I was doing ‘organised lunacy’ and I was visual and so escaped the noose. Everyone else was still doing mother-in-law gags.

JOHN: And you were not doing social observation or political gags.

BERNIE: (LAUGHS) It was kind of circus, in a way. 

JOHN: You hit the mainstream comedy audience but not with a mainstream ‘stand-up’ act. You played Royal Command Performances in 1979 AND in 2016…

BERNIE: I was doing regular cabaret on the QE2 liner and those audiences were from all over the world. I used to go on there with my props with my gigantic, 20ft high inflatable diving suit. I used to say to the Cruise Director: “When I’ve done the ostrich, done the cat on my shoulder, I’ve got to produce this 20ft tall diving suit…”

He would inevitably say: “Well, you can’t. There ’s no room backstage. Just the kitchen.”

“Yeah,” I’d say, “but up there, three decks up, I can see a rail.”

So I would be doing my act on stage and, three decks up, people would be inflating my diving suit. At some point, I would say: “You’ve won some furniture, madam… You’ve won a brand new divan suite…” and this diving suit would be launched from three decks up, down the atrium, BANG onto the dance floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I’d say. “it’s not a divan suite, it’s a diving suit.”

When I look back, What was going on between my ears?

But the Americans seemed to like it, because it crossed the language barriers.

The best thing was getting the (deflated) diving suit through Customs.

“What’s this, sir?… It’s a what?… Why?… Why are you taking this to America, sir?… Why are you… Why are…?… Why?”

JOHN: The cruise ship audiences must have been totally different to perform to than the Northern club audiences you learned your craft with.

BERNIE: I think we had to be so adaptable. We learned in the Northern clubs. I would go anywhere and do anything, just because it was on offer. I took whatever came up. I would jump from one venue and situation into another. Somebody once said Get it now because it might not be there tomorrow. How right they were.

Two shows a night in the clubs. The first show might be fantastic. But, two hours later, up the road, what you’d done earlier in the evening didn’t mean a thing; it was like starting from scratch again. You became so ready for that – You became match fit.

JOHN: You also seem to have done sports events all over the world… with a trombone.

BERNIE: I wasn’t playing the trombone; I was just carrying it. I was doing a midweek afternoon show on Radio Sheffield. I love radio.

The bandleader of the England football team band heard me. I always had a trombone in the studio because it was just a funny thing to have. He said: “The England band are based in Sheffield. The England Supporters’ Band. We’d like you to join the band.”

Bernie – England’s supportive non-trombone-player

I asked: “Why? I can’t actually play the trombone.”

He said: “Oh, you’ll be fine,” assuming that I could… 

Anyway, we went up to Newcastle to support England at a time when Wembley Stadium was being reconstructed. He said:

“Stand next to me and we’ll play The Great Escape.”

So we played The Great Escape – or they did – I tried. He looked at me at the end of it and says: “You really can’t bloody play it, can you?”

I said: “I’ve been telling you that for a month!”

“We didn’t believe you,” he said.

Anyway, I had some crude lessons and I can now tell you that the slide positions on The Great Escape are 4-3-1-1 … 1-1-3-1-4 … 3-3 … 1-2-1-2-4-1-4

Curiously, this took me around the world, not only as part of the England Supporters’ Band to follow England in Germany, Brazil, the Caribbean… Moscow we even did… But then, in the Beijing Olympics, we became the Ladies’ Hockey Supporters’ Band…

I actually went round the world carrying a trombone that I couldn’t play.

A trombone is a very convenient thing to carry, because you can carry it over your arm like an umbrella. Everyone should have one. Go find a trombone and see how it will change your life.

I’ve been round the world from a kid playing on a bomb site in St Helens to playing Las Vegas.

JOHN: Why did it take you 14 years to write your autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas?

Bernie Clifton – live in Las Vegas

BERNIE: It started out as a book about japes. I used to work on building sites and one of the opportunities of working on a building site and then coming into show business was that the sense of humour is…

Look, as a teenager, just post-War, mid-1950s, the workforce consisted of a lot of ex-servicemen who had survived and felt that you had better enjoy your environment… and inherent in this was the sense of humour.

JOHN: He’s a different generation, but Johnny Vegas is also from St Helens.

BERNIE: Yes, he’s written a lovely foreword for my book.

JOHN: The Guardian said you were the spiritual father of Vic Reeves, Harry Hill and Johnny Vegas.

BERNIE: I love present day comedy. I remember being in the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and I just happened to have a big reel of that parcel tape. So I hooked this parcel tape around my belt and gave this girl the end of it. 

I told her: “You stand still and I’ll walk around.” So I walked around in varying degrees of figures of eight taping maybe over 100 people together in little circles. People were so bemused they just stood there. I was just doing it for the craic. Eventually, I was running out of tape and this American guy came up to me and said: “Hey! Is this a performance?”

“No. It’s alright, mate,” I said, “I’m just mucking about.”

Bernie Clifton with his autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas…

Bernie Clifton – family entertainer and national treasure: Crackerjack to Vegas

Legendary comedy entertainer and British national treasure Bernie Clifton has just published his showbiz autobiography Crackerjack to Vegas.

He has ridden his puppet costume creation Oswald the Ostrich around the world. 

I talked to him via Zoom at his home in Derbyshire.

He was wearing a woolly RAF hat. 

In 2016, he appeared on BBC TV’s The Voice. He had originally applied anonymously, under his real name…

---

JOHN:  When you appeared on The Voice, your choice of song was The Impossible Dream.

BERNIE: My version was really The Inevitable Scream. All I am, really, is a singer. I’m a pub singer who got in with the wrong people.

JOHN: Was it difficult to write your autobiography?

BERNIE: Well, it took me 14 years. I had to go and refill the ink-well and get a new quill.

I missed the first 18 years of my life out. All that failure. All that thrashing. I was a thick boy in a grammar school who obviously had no right to be there. When I was 10, I was told by my ‘inspirational’ teacher: “The day you pass your Eleven-Plus, Bernard, little pigs will fly.” 

JOHN: But you did.

BERNIE: I did. And I remember not having the courage to go up to Mrs Fairhurst and look up in the sky and say: “I can’t see any pigs.” I just didn’t have the guts.

JOHN: Why did you change your birth name? Bernie Quinn is a good strong name.

BERNIE: Because I went to a pub to do a Sunday noon gig where you had to share the stage with strippers. It was a male stag do on a Sunday lunchtime. I turned up as ‘boy singer Bernie Quinn’ and there, in coloured chalk, it said: ONE FOR THE LADS – BURMA QUEEN… I had been mistakenly booked on the phone as an ‘exotic dancer’. So I changed my name from Quinn to Clifton. My dad was  not best pleased.

JOHN: Why choose Clifton?

BERNIE: I went through the phone book. I realised I needed a two-syllable surname. So I went from Tipton (a town in Staffordshire) to Lipton (a grocer) and I think maybe there was Teabags along the line. In the end, I chose Clifton – a bridge in Bristol. And ‘Bernie Clifton’ seemed to scan.  You know – Bernie Winters – Bernie Clifton.

JOHN: You wore clogs as a kid.

BERNIE: My parents had five boys so there were seven of us all living in a two-bedroom house. I don’t understand how my parents managed to procreate.

We lived ‘cheek by jowl’ in Charles Street, St Helens in Merseyside. Everything was ‘just round the corner’ – the school, a shop, everything and, when I was four, I think Hitler must have told Goering and the Luftwaffe: “What they need is a playground”.

We lived at No 59 and one morning we woke up to find that Nos 65, 67 and 69 had disappeared in a bombing so then we had somewhere to play. I think we were too young to feel any fear. At the time, you were just grateful to survive and be fed. It made me realise in recent years how much ‘under the cosh’ we were. But happy. Because it was everyone’s lot. Everybody was having the same problems, weren’t they?

JOHN: Why did the Germans bomb St Helens?

BERNIE: It was the glass trade (Pilkington’s) in St Helens. You can’t march an army unless you’ve got glass. And, probably more importantly, we were just ten miles down the road from the Liverpool docks.

Anyway, I passed my Eleven-Plus but I was hauled out of grammar school at 15 – “There’s no point you staying here” – then I got a job as a bread lad at the Co-op and eventually ended up as an apprentice plumber for the local Corporation.

I got that because we were staunch Catholics and the Building Manager was also a staunch Catholic and it was always a good idea to be seen at 10 o’clock Mass on a Sunday. I kid you not. That was the way forward in your career. I got the job and discovered that, working in bathrooms, I got good acoustics.

I realised I had a good singing voice and got a job with the local dance band at weekends. In the interval, we used to go out and get drunk. Then, when it came to the last waltz, when I wasn’t required on stage, I used to find the doorman’s bicycle where he hid it under the stairs and ride round the dance floor on it. Me and my mates got known for doing anything. There was no vandalism in it, no violence. It was just, as the Irish might say, we were doing it for the craic. We’d do anything and that stayed with me. This is fun!

In retrospect, it got me out of a pretty grey time for this country – the early 1950s.

The RAF changed my life. To be sent to the leading edge of the Western World’s defence, training pilots and navigators how to drop a bomb on Moscow… It was absolutely ludicrous! I mean, I was a guy from St Helens who couldn’t hold down a job as a plumber!

As a plumber, I was known as The Tsunami Man… I was a disaster.

Everything I tried I failed at.

But, in the RAF, I was ultimately posted to Lindholme, near Doncaster. From a plumber, I became a radar mechanic at the sharp end of the Western Alliance. We were defending the West against the Russians and the RAF decided that this failed plumber from St Helens should be fitting radar boxes on Vulcan V-bombers at Bomber Command’s Bombing School just outside Doncaster… 

It was all a fluke.

I was very lucky. Doncaster was the hub of Northern clubland entertainment – pubs and clubs – and I just happened to have been dropped ten miles down the road. My weekends were free. So, every Sunday morning, I would borrow the flight sergeant’s bike without asking, pedal into Doncaster, park it somewhere, then get a trolleybus out to some miners’ welfare. That was how I found my way into entertainment.

JOHN: Everything’s a series of accidents but success is taking advantage of the tiny possibilities when they happen. And determination.

BERNIE: In my radar mechanics’ classroom in Wiltshire, everyone else in the class was sent out to Bomber Command stations in the middle of nowhere. But, of those 30 guys, I was the one who was sent to Doncaster. It was just a weird mish-mash of circumstances.

JOHN: But you had the nouse and the talent to take advantage of it. And then you got into the glamorous world of show business.

BERNIE: Well, I starting working in bathrooms and then getting paid to sing. I was a pub singer, And that was it. I became ‘a turn’ – a singer, but with a few choice gags that I’d picked up on the building sites.

That got me to Batley Variety Club, where I was seen by Barney Colehan who ran the BBC TV’s Good Old Days. He booked me; I had never been on television before.

I went along with me few gags and a song and Les Dawson was topping the bill. After the show, he took me to one side and gave me a proper (verbal) kicking. He said: “You’re OK, but you’re doing the same gags as another hundred comics. Why don’t you…” – his very words – “…plough your own furrow… What do you like doing?”

“I said: “I do like mucking about on stage with props”.

And he said: “Well, just go out and be a ‘prop comic’. Nobody else can be arsed to do it.” 

At the time, everyone was doing the mother-in-law gags. So I went out ‘inspired’ by Les and I did anything that was visual and just picked it up and ran with it.

(… CONTINUED HERE… )