Judge David Walliams has discovered that entertainment truly in his blood… The Greatest Showmen
This month marks the 30th anniversary since women were first allowed to go to sea in the Navy. Carolyn Jones remembers what it was like to be one of the first women to step aboard…
With little knowledge of his ancestors since his grandparents and father passed away, BGT judge David Walliams - who turns 50 next Summer, decided to delve into his family back-story, by taking part in hit genealogy series WhoDoYou ThinkYouAre?
And in true David Walliams style, speaking of the journey ahead, he said he hoped his distant relatives weren’t ‘ boring’… Well, as David’s episode next Monday reveals, they were nothing of the sort.
The dad-of-one discovers showmanship is in his DNA – after it is found that his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side, William Haines, was a showman in the circus, despite his disability – he was blind.
‘ You often think about why you get drawn to certain things – being on stage, or trying to make people laugh, whatever it is,’ mused David.
‘So, the fact that he was quite a flamboyant character and a performer… I mean, he used to play his organ on the streets, and he had a monkey which would have a little hat and collect money.
‘And to become part of the travelling community – and become a showman, that’s quite something, because it’s a closed world, as it’s passed on from generation to generation.’
The fate of David’s paternal great-grandfather, however – a soldier who fought in World War I – was distinctly darker and made him, he admitted, quite ‘emotional’.
‘It’s just a very sad story… Those signing up to fight in France in 1914 did not know what hell was awaiting them there. If you were lucky to get out alive, it was very likely that you’d be affected by the trauma of these terrible battles,’ revealed the star.
‘He lived with it for the rest of his life. He was very badly shellshocked and spent the rest of his life in a mental health hospital.
‘Obviously, ending up in a mental health hospital after being shell-shocked is hellish, and as for the showman, being blind, especially then, must have been hard…’
David made some incredible discoveries on his journey into his family’s past. It makes us wonder, how many secrets and revelations might our own ancestors be hiding?
David Walliams’ episode of Who Do You Think You Are? is on Monday, BBC One at 9pm.
‘Great-grandad William was a travelling showman!’
Iwas 11 years old when I first knocked on the door to the careers office in my hometown of Hartlepool and told them I wanted to join the Royal Navy. My dad, Dennis, had been in the merchant navy and ever since I was a little girl, he’d told me all about his exotic adventures, travelling everywhere from South Africa to Australia.
It sounded so glamourous and wanderlust set in at a very young age. So although the lady behind the desk gave me some leaflets, she explained I couldn’t join until I was 18-and-a-half. That didn’t put me off visiting again and again – always saying the same thing, though.
When I left school, I started my A-levels but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead, I’d pore over the leaflets, examining the uniforms and smiling faces. And as soon as I hit the right age at the end of 1985, I quit college, went straight back to the office and enrolled then and there.
But, of course, even when I’d succeeded in my basic training in March 1986 and passed out, I couldn’t go to sea. Women weren’t allowed in those days. Instead, I moved down to Portsmouth and became a Wren, supporting the wider Navy from the shore.
Although I didn’t get to satisfy my sea-faring urges, it was fantastic. There was such camaraderie between all colleagues, male and female alike, it was like moving into one big extended family. There was so much joking, banter you’d call it now – they even used a different language.
‘Can I have a wet?’ someone asked me on one of my first days. I had no idea what he was talking about until another colleague explained ‘a wet’ was a cup of tea. It took me years to learn to it all, but once I did, it was like being part of a very special gang.
But there was no denying the differences between men and women.
Even when I was posted to Scotland later in 1986, where I got to go on an actual submarine rather than just a simulator, we could only spend the day there and had to go back to dry land for the night, while the men slept onboard.
It gave me a taste for what I really wanted. Yet, even so, when the news came in March 1990 that a signal arrived saying the government were allowing women to go to sea, it still came as a real shock. Things had been that way for so long, I’d never questioned it.
I was so excited, my hand shot straight up, making me one of only two women in my team to volunteer to be the first to go to sea. If this was going to be the future of women in the Navy, I wanted to be part of it!
At the time, I’d also applied to go to the Admiralty Interview Board to become an officer, which I was successful in, and then in September 1990, I went to Dartmouth,
where myself and
15 other women were integrated into the men’s training course to go to sea. It caused such a stir, a television crew followed us around to film the experience.
Us trainees didn’t know any different, but for the instructors, it must have been completely new, training men and women alongside one another. And when we actually went onboard for the first time – travelling round the Mediterranean for three months on HMS Bristol – I realised just how controversial this was.
women’s rights back for years – decades, even…
At first, the situation was far from ship-shape and this new normal took years to settle down. Male colleagues would try to shock us by swearing profusely and stealing our freshly washed underwear from the showers as souvenirs.
Meanwhile, some of the women, immersed in the Nineties ladette culture, tried
‘If we failed, we’d set back women’s rights’
and everything I was asked. The physical training, necessary for our newly manual tasks, was exhausting, but there was no choice. We had to keep up.
My next trip abroad was back in Scotland and spending six months on a ship there really tested my resolve.
But the choppy waters proved that I definitely did have sea legs – unlike my poor cabinmate, who spent her nights throwing up.
My job was my life – and it became even more so when I met my husband, Alun, another naval officer, in April 1998, when I was posted in Dorset. We ended up sitting next to one another at dinner one night and he was so funny and charming – with impeccable table manners – that I fell in love straight away. We married three months later.
When Alun, now 53, and I decided to have children, we knew one of us would have to give up their jobs – either or both of us could be posted away for three, six, even nine months at a time – and after long discussions, we decided it would be me. But I wasn’t ready to give up my career yet, so I immediately joined the reserves.
So even when I had our four sons – Charlie, now 24, Alfie, 20, Bryn, 19, and Nye, 15 – I could still go to places like Bahrain and do hurricane relief work in the Caribbean, but on a more flexible basis.
Now I’m 53 and have just been made commanding officer of HMS Cambria. I’m so proud to be one of the first women to go to sea and turn the tide for women everywhere.