All Above Board - An autobiography by Wilfrid Brambell
I decided to publish the whole of chapter one from this great book for two reasons; firstly because of its rarity - this book is very hard to find second-hand and secondly; because I know many Steptoe and Son fans will get much enjoyment out of reading it. I'm only sorry I couldn't include the whole book! For most this chapter may well be all they ever get to read. I really hope I don't upset anyone by publishing this chapter from the book. If I do/have, then please let me know and I shall remove it immediately. This book should definitely be re-published. If you're a big Steptoe and Son fan, like myself, then you'll want to have a chance to read this book. If you're interested in trying to track down a copy then you might like to try your local library first, and see if they have a copy you could borrow. They may even consider selling it, if you were to ask. This may not bear fruit though, as they may have already sold off any copies they had. I know of two copies that were sold very recently, both for over £50, and that originally came from this very source - a library selling off some of their old book stock. So you may not be lucky... Read on for an (all be it too brief) insight into the man behind Albert Steptoe...

Chapter 1

On 22nd March 1912 I first saw the light of day - upside down, of course, like all new babes, until their eyes focus. I was the youngest of three. My eldest brother was seven years older than me, and my next brother five years my senior, which makes me think that something must have happened in the interim. As a result of this generation gap, I didn't really get to know or like my brothers until advancing years closed it up. During the intervening period they paired off and left the baby outside, and I was only allowed to intrude upon their unity when they were fighting. I waited in the lists until I had assured myself of the victor, then I joined up with him. A sycophantic up-sucker, sneering and jeering at the netted gladiator and wallowing in the reflected glory in which I had taken no part.
      I remember one of these differences of opinion when Frederick, my eldest brother, was the loser - so naturally I had sided with James and joined him in evil tauntings. We are all cursed in this life with an Achilles heel. Frederick's, in those distant days, was a common childhood complaint. He was the only one of us three who, during childhood, suffered therefrom, and during moments of dissension - even in public - James and I would embarrass and infuriate Frederick by screeching out our private nickname. From a safe distance we would loudly chant the loser's couplet:

Fred! Fred!

Wet the bed!
After which we both fled from Fred's wrath.
      It served me right, once, when my vacillations found me out - yet nevertheless did not serve me right. I interfered in a private quarrel between my two brothers, who promptly united against me. They rightly decided that I was an undesirable and decided to throw me out of the room. Frederick grabbed my collar, and James the seat of my small short trousers (à la Fragonard), and in one swinging movement endeavoured to evict me from their confrontation room. Unfortunately for them, however, they omitted to set their sights, and instead of landing in the hall, as they intended, my little flaxen head struck the wall. The impact blackened my eye, but without any degree of pain or discomfort. I knew then that I had won the battle over both my 'enemy' brothers. Not for the first time, I began to act.
      I knew the exact time at which our parents were due to arrive home. Even in those early days I could read the clock and tell the time. I had half an hour to go before the entrance of the 'leads'. By this time my brothers were in a frenzy of panic. They carried me upstairs and placed me in front of the cheval mirror in our parents' bedroom, and implored me to 'Behold the sight'.
      I came, I saw, I conquered. In that mirror I beheld my bruised and broken face with my left eye and looked at the time on the bedroom clock with my right, and knew that I could make my two brothers suffer for another twenty-three minutes. I can still see our reflection in that mirror. Naturally I was downstage centre, they were respectively upstage left and right. Both were desperately pleading with me to tell Father and Mother that I had 'fallen down'. I continued to play King Lear, with one eye on the clock, until five minutes before our parents returned, and when the victory - no pyrrhic one - had been won I conceded to their terms.
      My parents politely enquired about the condition of their baby's face. "I fell over," I said, casting evil glances left and right at my two terrified but grateful elder brothers. For which, for that, we kept up an entente cordiale for at least seven hours.
      "I remember, the house where I was born”; Number Six, Edenvale Road, Rathgar, County Dublin - a minute house in a respectable area. I cannot remember the actual bedroom where my Mother, with the aid of a midwife, evicted me, because I was only six months old when the family moved to another house. Number Ten, Kenilworth Park, was to me in those days a semi-detached domain, an enormous residence. But when twenty years later, out of idle curiosity, I cycled miles to see it again, I realised for the first time that what in babyhood was an expansive Sahara had become in youth a single grain of sand. Half a century later I find myself wondering whether that bay-windowed, two-storey rabbit hutch is still there or whether a high-rise block is casting its concrete shadow over what was then an emerald expanse of Ireland's even more green and pleasant land.
      I shall forever remember with considerably more pleasure than pain my 'Sweetly cursory nursery days'. On the long and jolly uphill journey from that nursery through school days and slowly towards and into theatre life I, like us all, have had many difficulties to surmount. The bane of every actor's life is to have to compete with, and to admit defeat by, children and animals. Try as we might, the roller is always drowned by the ripple. But age breeds tolerance, and tolerance breeds laughter. Nowadays, when a script is delivered to me for my scrutiny and consideration, if the cast includes an animal and a child I roll my eyes to heaven and resign myself to third billing. Theatre children are often precocious little beasts who know it all. In my younger days I was foolish enough to bother to inform them that they were not omniscient. Now I have learned better. As they grow older they will learn the fact for themselves. I hate precocious children, but had it not been for the wisdom of my mother I might easily have become the most obnoxious one in history.
      In November 1914, at the age of two and a half, I was completely unaware of the slightly unusual fact that I sang and danced dressed in my best clothes - sailor's blouse, a blue serge pleated skirt, short white socks and button-sided boots. My repertoire included such numbers as Three Mice Went into a Hole to Spin, Mister Bear, There are Fairies at the Bottom of my Garden (the words of which my Mother had re-geared from a little girl's song to a little boy's one).
      After sixty years I still remember every note and line. My audience at the time was composed of wounded soldiers of World War I, all crowded together in the largest ward available in each hospital. Those who were on the road to recovery wore the customary sky-blue suits, white shirts and red ties. On numberless occasions after those concerts I was lifted into the arms of one of these unfortunate young men, cradled, and informed that, "I have a little boy at home, just like you." It is fortunate that in those days the ineffable sadness of the remark passed me by. I was not alone in my efforts to entertain the soldiers. There was Mrs Ormsby-Williams, a toothless old lady whose war effort was to organise concerts in which she herself performed, for the benefit of what she called, 'Our gallant young men'.

      She frequently arranged with my mother that I should be included in the programme. Hers was inevitably the last item on the programme, immediately preceding the National Anthem. She always sang Good-bye-ee. One of these ‘Evenings’ with Mrs Ormsby-Williams was held in a crummy church hall in the Dublin suburbs. For the life of me I shall never understand the decor of the diva on that particular occasion. A ragged backcloth hung limply from something that looked like a cross between a Scottish caber and the main mast of a Spanish galleon. The scene depicted a Persian garden (no houris about, of course), but carried out (of course!) in the three ubiquitous colours: red trees bearing white blossoms set against a blue sky. As always a piano was upstage left, but why were trestle tables placed on their sides and stretching the complete width of the stage in front of the footlights? I can only imagine that it was a barricade which she had erected should any member of the audience attempt an amorous or maybe murderous attack. One of the items on the programme was a song-singing lady. I can see her now. Whether or not she comprehended the effect of her attire and appearance I shall never know. An evening dress in powder blue, a very talc-white 'chest' and the reddest nose I have ever seen worn by a lady. (Let's be kind and assume that the hue of that proboscis was brought on by bad digestion.) She sang-naturally accompanied by Mrs O-W - Oh Sing, Sweet Bird, followed by Love Could I Only Tell Thee. The audience encored, for reasons I shall never know and for which the lady was utterly unprepared. In the face of the resounding cheers she was obliged, after a flurried consultation with the pianist, to sing Pale Hands I Loved, a song which she was obviously at the time only rehearsing. She got through verse one. After a few bars of introduction she commenced verse two very loudly and clearly and warbled the words 'pale hands tink pipped'. The house went up and she went off. We never heard the end.
      Then came my turn. With my mother at the keyboard I entered, placed my right hand on my heart, my heels together, and gave my bow as taught, but oh those trestle tables I was two-foot-four, and they were four-foot six. My number was a song entitled Three Jolly Sailor Men, to be followed by a sailor’s hornpipe. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die. I piped my baby treble into the back of the tables and went into my hornpipe. The only time I could have been seen during the entire performance was when I did my highest possible leap, at the top of which my floppy cotton-coloured hair might momentarily have been visible above the level of the trestles. But bless those wounded soldiers' hearts, they even applauded me, too, on that evening.
      On our way home on that starry night, sitting in a horse-drawn vehicle, I asked my mother why the lady with the red nose had told me I was the ‘Star of the Evening’. The answer I received was, “She was just being polite.”
Wilfrid Brambell

Brambell on Hancock...

H ... Hancock's Half Hour was perhaps the most sensational success in the history of television comedy. Those over-talented writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, created the character of that little man from East Cheam whom we all learned to love. That fictitious London suburb was a dream child of the authors. The character of Anthony was founded on fact. It was a grotesque and winning magnification of the man Hancock himself. At the height of his popularity I worked with Tony. He had momentarily slipped out of the world of light entertainment and into the half-dark classical world of Gorki, playing the lead in The Government Inspector. I was merely the postman. Tony tried, without considerable success, to conceal his unease. Despite the fact that the author had dubbed his work a comedy, Tony was obviously overwhelmed by the responsibility of acting in Russian drama. His finished performance was slightly stilted until the moment of his ultimate marathon monologue. He then forgot that he was supposed to be acting and cast care aside. He lifted Gorki out of that pedestrian translation into the suburbia about which the author had written. It is sad to me that Tony never again dared to enter the world of drama and further to extend his ability for our greater pleasure.
      When finally - and all too soon - Tony left the BBC on his own volition, Tom Sloane, the then Head of Light Entertainment, wisely re-contracted Galton and Simpson and gave them carte blanche to create thirteen individual episodes of Hancock's Half Hour without Hancock. Tom also gave the authors the right to cast the actors in these as-yet-unborn television playlets. It was decided to call the series Comedy Playhouse.
Wilfrid Brambell
In writing his autobiography, Wilfrid insisted that every word of it came directly and unprompted from his own mouth. He contends that a 'ghost-writer' all too often either misses completely, or distorts the personality and character of the so-called author. He made it quite clear that he would prefer to appear badly (which he doesn't) in his own way, than well-tailored and phoney in somebody else's.

I hope that's wetted your appetite. If you want to read more, then you'll have to try and find a copy of the book second-hand. See below for more details.

This was the only publication of this particular book. As far as I know this book wasn't released in paperback. It, as mentioned elsewhere, dates from: 1976. More details below:

1st, W. H. Allen, hardback, published in 1976

You can find copies of this book second-hand, but it's as rare as they come and definitely one of the hardest books to come by. You could pay £50, maybe more, if you were willing. Then again you might be lucky and get a copy for a fiver!

 

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