A Right Royal Fool

Norman Wisdom describes himself as a lucky little devil, yet his early life was far from fortunate. Now the Royal Family's favourite clown is to pick up his knighthood. But, as he tells MICHAEL HELLICAR, he thinks that the Queen might have an old score to settle... Main photograph: JOHN PAUL BROOKE

Sunday Mail - Saturday 1st April 2000

When Norman Wisdom puts on his morning suit (size: short) and his grey topper (size: modest) to receive his knighthood from the Queen this summer, he's going to take his chequebook along, just for the fun of it.

And when he bows his head and kneels to receive the ceremonial sword-tap on his shoulders, he says he's going to keep one eye on the monarch's free hand in case she tries to slip a bill into his top pocket.
"You'll laugh when I say why," splutters Norman, as he roars at his own joke, his sides shaking with mirth, one arm clutching my shoulder for support.

"You see... I... I... And she... Then I said... And guess what she... Ooh, it was so funny..."

It is a fact that in a lifetime devoted to making people laugh, Norman Wisdom has never actually told a funny story. Every time he tries, he convulses, until he's laughing so much that it gets the rest of us in hysterics, too, without ever hearing the punchline.

So it took some time to drag out of him exactly what's so amusing about the monarch, the chequebook and the bill, and by then we were both rolling on the carpet, tears running down our cheeks, holding on to each other for dear life.

Apparently, the Royal Family love a bit of knockabout comedy, especially in the privacy of their own apartments, and Norman has for long been their unofficial purveyor of rib tickling stuff, so much so that if they gave out their cherished By Appointment Warrants for it, he'd be first in line.

The last time he was summoned to Windsor Castle, where they have a proper theatre rigged out for their after-dinner entertainers, Norman went on, did his usual act- a bit of singing, some running around and a lot of falling down - and then stepped to the front of the stage to take a bow.

"But then, on the spur of the moment, I decided to go down the steps and walk along the front row, where there's the Queen, Prince Philip, Margaret and a few others. I took another bow, then panicked, because to retrace my steps I'd have to turn my back on them. And that wouldn't be polite would it?"

"So there's no alternative but for me to walk up the steps backwards, while I'm still bowing and clowning about. That's when it happened (ha-hah-ha... ooh... ho-hoh-ho). I missed my footing and went feet over brains, breaking a couple of vases."

"Course, they could have been priceless for all I know, (ha-hah-Hah!) because the Royals wouldn't have cheap stuff, would they? I saw the Queen's hands fly up to cover her face, whether out of concern for me or for her vases, I'll never know (ho-hoh-hoh).
Anyway, I called out 'I'm sorry, Your Majesty. Send me the bill and I'll pay for any damage,' and I scuttled away in embarrassment.
"I haven't heard any more about it (oooh, ha-huh- HAH!), but maybe by giving me a knighthood in the New Year Honours they reckon it's the only way to get me to the palace so they can get the money out of me. One thing's for sure: they'll have cleared the investiture room of anything breakable when it's my turn to go in!"

Wisdom's knighthood, a rare honour for a comic, comes as he turns 85 and still shows no sign of slowing down. He looks, and acts, like a super-fit 50-something. "When you get to my age,' he grins, "you lose three things. One is your memory and the others are... er... er, sorry,I can't remember."

We are in the elegantly furnished, vast sitting room of his four-bedroomed stone house on the north-west coast of the Isle of Man, with its spectacular views across a patchwork of fields and gently brooding hills, down to the fish Sea.

One corner of the room is dominated by a grand piano. Another by a huge TV, housed behind carved wooden doors set into the brickwork. All around the walls and filling every inch of shelf space are pictures, mementoes and awards from his stupendous career as our best-loved clown.

When he walks across the room you expect him to break into his trademark loose-legged swagger and you find yourself half-hoping that he'll slip on an imaginary banana skin and do one of his spectacular pratfalls. "I've been a lucky little devil," he says.
"I was stunned when I got the letter about my knighthood. It was as if they were talking about a different Norman Wisdom, not me."

Away from the glitter, he says, the best times of his life were when he signed on as a cabin boy on a cargo ship taking coals from Cardiff to Argentina. "I was 14, and I'd walked to Wales all the way from London. It took me three weeks, I slept in haystacks along the way, my shoes were hanging off me and the soles of my feet were raw and bleeding.
It was 183 miles. I've never forgotten the distance. It's engraved on my memory, my heart and my feet. I was looking for something different. A bit of a life, perhaps. They felt sorry for me in the docks, and got me the cabin boy's job. I enjoyed every minute of it, and when I got to Argentina the rest of the crew encouraged me to become a street fighter."

"If I could last one round against the local hero, I'd get about a pound. Two rounds meant £2. At the end of three, which was the limit, I'd get the equivalent of a fiver. I did quite well, considering I'd never even raised my fists before. Not that I saw the cash - my mates would grab it and head straight for the bars."

His mother had gone to live with another man when Norman was nine, leaving him and his brother Fred with their father, who was drunk and violent and soon abandoned them. The brothers found themselves homeless and Norman used to sleep rough behind a statue near Victoria Station. He kept body and soul together by scrounging cups of Bovril and meat pies from a man who ran a late-night stall.

When his ship came back from Argentina, Nonnan joined the Army. 'I was only 4ft lOin and weighed 5st 91b. There was no way they would let me be a proper soldier because I didn't have the physical requirements.' Somebody suggested that the only way in was as a band boy, so, full of brass neck, he applied to a musician. "The recruitment officer said to me: "You know music?" I didn't have the faintest idea, but I told him yes.

"What's a flat?" he asked. "Er, I haven't come across that, sir.” "What's a sharp?” "Urn, I've not had much to do with them, sir." Well, they let me in anyway and I began learning the clarinet.'

He was posted to Lucknow in India, with the 10th Royal Hussars, and learned to play eight instruments. It wasn't enough for Norman - inspired by the films of a burgeoning new dancer called Fred Astaire, he taught himself tap. "The washroom had an echoing stone floor and I'd face the mirror, pretend I was Astaire, and away I'd go, with my Army boots sounding like a machine gun.'

He volunteered to demonstrate his new-found talent in the officers' mess one night - and discovered, quite by chance, that he could make people laugh. "When they saw me tap-dancing in my boots, they all fell about It hadn't dawned on me that there was anything strange about wearing them, let alone funny. I was captivated by the laughter and the applause. It was the first real affection I'd known and it was addictive. I couldn't get enough of it.'

Somewhere along the way, during those Army days, he ran into Rex Harrison, who drawled: "If you don't become a professional comedian when you're back in civvy street, you'd be mad." So it was that in the autumn of 1945. at the age of 30, he was hanging around the famous Collins Music Hall in London's Lslington, pleading for a break.

"Eventually, the manager got fed up with me, and said that I could fill a gap in the bill the following Monday, first house 6.l5pm. But if I was no good, that would be the end, I'd have to stop pestering him."

"Just like the mileage between London and Cardiff, the date is engraved right through me: December 17, 1945. I was billed as Norman Wisdom The Successful Failure and I went on in a set of tattered tails, tap-dancing and gagging around.

I still have the poster, incidentally. I was backed by the 12-strong Gaucho's Orchestra and I got a fiver for the week. The manager kept it as his commission, but I didn't care - I was bitten by the bug."

A couple of days later he got a call from an agent who said he was booking acts for variety in Portsmouth the following week. Would Mr Wisdom by any chance be free? Norman pretended to rifle through his packed diary and told him that it so happens that, yes, he could do the date.

Then another agent called asking if he was free next week. "Oh, no," he told him indignantly, as if insulted that anyone should think he would he available at such short notice. "I'm well booked up - I'm at Portsmouth next week."

The rest, as they say, is history. Variety gave way to TV and Wisdom became one of the first major stars of the new ITV network. Then came long running summer shows and pantomimes, followed by movies and then Broadway acclaim. His 1953 film, Trouble In Store, has become a classic, and hit records such as Don't Laugh At Me Because I'm A Fool are still taking in cash.

His links with the Royal Family go way back. "I've met them so many times, at Royal Variety Shows, Royal premieres and doing their private shows, that nowadays whenever Prince Philip comes across me in one of those after-show star lineups, he simply says: "Hello again, Norman".

"I still regard myself as a short-arse who's been lucky, although I've worked for it," he says. Indeed, it may be his dedication to work that has enabled him to remain cheerful through some of the sadness of his personal life.

He first married in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. It was a brief and disastrous union. "I liked her, but after three months she left me," is all he prefers to say about it. Soon after the war ended, and just as his show-business career was beginning, Norman married again. "Freda was a chorus girl and I went potty over her."

He sits back in his chair and his eyes well up with tears. "I don't like to talk about it, though, and I suppose after all this time I shouldn't but yes, I became unhappy." There is a long pause before Wisdom shrugs and decides to continue.

"It was in the late Sixties. We had two lovely kids, Jacqui and Nicholas. and I was 3,000 miles from home, appearing in a show on Broadway. I came back to find that Freda had been seeing someone else." He gives a grim little laugh. "Someone taller and more handsome. She went off and we were divorced after 22 years of marriage. Jacqui and Nick chose to stay with me, to my great delight."

Nicholas now runs a successful sports company and has given Norman two grandchildren. Jacqui works in an art gallery.

He never married again. "What was the point?" asks Norman sadly. "I got hurt once..." Now, apart from a live-in housekeeper-cum-personal assistant, he lives alone, although he is never really by himself - the telephone rings non-stop and there is a constant stream of friends calling by.

Never far from his sight, as he sits in his favourite armchair, is a picture of his mother, with whom he was reunited when he was a star. After taking a bow on stage, he was told that a woman wanted to see him in his dressing room. It was her. "I wanted to keep her for ever. I got her a good flat andlooked after her until she died."

It was a different story when, still a boy, he tracked his father down to London's Earl's Court. "My Dad looked at me with utter contempt and said one word: "Out" As he slammed the door behind me, I told him: "You'll never see me again." And he didn't.'

He also set about trying to find his brother Fred, whom he had last seen when he was 13. They became separated when a couple decided to take Fred under their wing, but not Norman - who was sent to make his own way in the world.

"I had a vague address for him, but couldn't find it. So I stopped a man in the Street to ask him for directions - and he turned out to be Fred. Amazing, eh?"

Most people would have thought that after such a terrible childhood, the last thing Norman would want is any reminder of it Yet he is best known for the overgrown schoolboy character he created, wearing a suit three sizes too small and a cap with an upturned peak. In many of his movies - The Square Peg, On The Beat, A Stitch In Time and The Early Bird - he is known as Norman Pitkin and is bullied by his pompous long-suffering boss, Mr Grimsdale, who was played by Edward Chapman.
Norman calls these outfits his "gump suits', and he has several, all hanging in one of his bedroom wardrobes.

Now he is working with a film production company which is trying to raise the finance for a movie to be called Adam And Evil, adapted from a J.B. Priestley story. The story is about a man - to be played by Norman - who has never had a girlfriend, so he sets about inventing one. It has the right mixture of comedy and pathos for a Wisdom vehicle, and he has written a couple of songs to sing in it.

He is also planning a TV show in which he will star in a series of comedy situations without one word being spoken. "That's because I've got such a bad memory now that I can never remember my lines," he quips.

When the time came for me to go, Norman sprang to his feet, took yet another glance at the stunning views from his window, and walked proudly across the acres of beige carpet. And the funny thing was, he didn't fall over!