My vanished RAF hero brother and the question that haunted Mum till the day she died
BRUCE FORSYTH’S passion for entertaining on TV began even before the War. In this final part of our exclusive serialisation of the star’s memoir following his death at 89, he recalls his mother’s unwavering support for his ambitions — and how a family tragedy shattered his young life.
THE first time I appeared on Tv, I was 11 years old and I had my ambitions all worked out. So when the presenter, Jasmine Bligh, introduced my song-and-dance routine by asking if I had plans to be a star, I replied: ‘I want to be a famous dancer like Fred Astaire, and buy my mother a fur coat.’ Before Jasmine could stop laughing, I launched into my act, tap-dancing on a studio set that looked like a pre-war front room. It wasn’t supposed to be old-fashioned — this really was pre-war, a few weeks before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. You could say my Tv career spans 77 years . . . a world record.
I’d like to have watched that broadcast myself, but there were no Tv recordings in those days: everything was live. And as my mother was with me, my father was working and none of my friends had televisions, this historic event went completely unnoticed.
Still, at least my mother, Florence, was there to see it. I only wish she’d lived long enough to enjoy my first real starring role on television, 18 years later — but she died a few months before I landed the job of compere on Sunday Night At The London Palladium in 1957.
My greatest regret in what has been, for the most part, a very lucky life is that she never saw me attain the heights in showbusiness that she always wanted for me. She was just 63 when she suffered a stroke, sitting in a chair at home. After that, she was unable to recognise any of us, and passed away three weeks later. My mother was more ambitious for me than I’ve ever been. She would stay up late into the night, sewing sequins on my stage outfits till her eyes ached and she couldn’t see.
My father John did more than his fair share too, but he was always busy working in the motor garage business that he ran in the alley beside our house in Edmonton, North London. It was my mother who was the driving force — and my mother who was my first audience, when I discovered, aged five, that I could make her laugh.
There was a family legend about the night I was born. When my mother was in labour, my father called the GP, Dr Tugan, who travelled by motorbike. But there was a heavy fog and, when the doctor didn’t turn up, my father went to look for him. The way he told it, if he hadn’t gone out into that pea-souper, Dr Tugan and his bike would have ended up in a ditch.
By the time the doctor arrived, my mother was in a bad way. She had suffered a nasty fall, a few days before the birth, and apparently when I entered the world at about 3.30am on February 22, 1928, my head looked like an old trilby hat, full of indentations.
Dr Tugan pushed my soft skull around and said gently to my mother: ‘I’ve done all I can. Don’t get your hopes up too high.’
When he came back later that morning, I think he was quite surprised to see me still alive and kicking. He pushed my skull back into shape some more . . . but I don’t think he did anything to my chin!
FIvE years later, one Sunday teatime, my parents had a houseful of friends and were swapping stories. My mother was telling of the fog when I was born, and how Dr Tugan nearly ended in a ditch.
‘Yes dear,’ put in my father, ‘and that might also have been the end of you.’
‘Why, Mum?’ I chirped up. ‘Were you sitting on the back of the motorbike?’
The whole room laughed, my mother loudest of all. It was a lovely feeling. I’d said something funny, and the reward was uproar and attention. My career on stage started at that moment.
Like a lot of children who are the ‘baby of the family’, I was spoiled, took the usual liberties and got away with everything. My brother John was five years older than me, but it was our big sister Maisie who had the job of controlling me — and I could be a little monster. If I got the odd clout, I deserved it.
I was a keen footballer at school — my mates called me Spider, because of my long legs. But my real passion was dancing.
Fred Astaire was my role model, and whenever his movies were on at the Regal or the Empire, I would see them three or four times in a single weekend, bunking in through the side door.
At home, our front room and dining room were knocked through, with carpet laid over lino. I’d roll back the rug so that I could imitate Astaire, making up steps with my noisy feet till I fell down exhausted. I would even dance on the corrugated roofs of my father’s lock-up garages behind the house.
We didn’t have a lot of money to spare, but my parents found a few shillings each week to send me to dance classes from the age of nine, in Tottenham, a bus ride away.
I was the only boy in the class, and that wasn’t the only embarrassment — as I progressed to tap-dance competitions, I had to change into my dancing clothes in the same room as a dozen girls. My mother used to hold her coat around me.
By the time I was 12, I’d even started my own tap-dancing school, based in Lock-up No 5 behind our house, furnished with a wooden ‘tap mat’ and a wind-up gramophone. I charged a shilling a lesson, but I didn’t have the temperament for teaching, and all my students seemed to have cloth ears and two left feet. I was a hard taskmaster, and I shouted quite a bit.
MY RISE to stardom was rudely interrupted, however, when the bombs started to fall in 1940. My parents evacuated me to Clacton, where I was billeted on an elderly lady who lived alone.
To be removed from my wonderful family, with no one to talk to or play with, was devastating. I was desperately homesick and when my mother and father came on a surprise visit I burst into tears, ran to the car and refused to get out. I’d only been an evacuee for three days!
What saved me was a huge warship anchored at the end of Clacton pier. My father took one look at it and said: ‘Good God, he’s nearer the war than we are!’ So I came home.
The war years proved a boost for my dancing. With a group of friends, my mother formed an amateur variety club to stage charity shows, raising money for the Buy A Spitfire Fund and later the Aid To Russia Fund — my parents were Salvation Army Christians, and Russia was our ally in those days.
My mother acted as club secretary, and my father operated the spotlights, built from car headlights mounted on tripods. And I danced, and accompanied myself by singing popular songs. It was during these shows that I worked up a routine that I used throughout my career.
The lady pianist would invariably play the wrong tempo, and I would stop in the middle of my steps and go over to her. In my most grown-up voice, I would say, ‘No, dear. No. It’s got to be faster, like this.’ And I’d rap out the rhythm. ‘OK, dear? Do try to get it right this time!’
The audience loved it. I learned that whenever I became agitated and exasperated, it got laughs — a trick I have never tired of using.
For the patriotic finale, half a dozen dancers and I would leap up onto some drums and perform a fervent routine in support of our boys. The Nazis never stood a chance.
By now, I was going to classes with a wonderful black American teacher called Buddy Bradley, whose studio was at the top of a house in the West End. He taught film stars like Jack Buchanan, and that inspired me to practise all day long, until my feet were aching.
Aged 14, I left school with no qualifications. The head called me into his office on my last day and, taking a look at my lamentable attendance record, announced that he couldn’t give me a good final report.
‘Don’t you worry about that, headmaster,’ I retorted cockily. ‘I’m going into a business that judges what you can do, not what you have done... showbusiness.’
My first job, though, wasn’t glamorous. A theatrical agent in Tottenham offered me a job as his office boy, answering the phone
and keeping him supplied with raw eggs whipped up in milk for his ulcer.
This man christened me ‘Boy Bruce, The Mighty Atom’ and got me my first professional engagement, for a week at the bottom of the bill in the Theatre Royal, Bilston, near Wolverhampton.
I did a routine where, dressed as a page-boy carting luggage from the station, I opened the cases and put on a show with what I found — a ukelele, a tap-dance mat and so on. At the end of the week I got my first pay packet, of 13 shillings and 4d, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the chiselling agent hadn’t persuaded my parents to invest £25 in the show, money they could ill afford.
So I took my act on the road. The boy who had been a terrified evacuee just two years earlier was now a confident touring player, squeezing into cramped digs and wolfing down whatever the landlady served for dinner. It was nothing to spend 14 hours on a train: I’d wrap myself in a blanket and stretch out on the luggage rack to get some sleep before the next show.
There was loads of work for a 14year-old entertainer. I was too young to be scared of the air raids. One night in 1944 at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, I was standing in as the piano player, accompanying all the acts.
The lovely singer Diane Miller was on stage, when we heard a terrible noise like a clapped-out motorbike coming closer.
That was unmistakable. It was a doodlebug. We all knew we were safe, as long as the noise continued — but as soon as it cut out, the bomb would be falling.
Suddenly, there was silence. I jumped off the stool, grabbed Diane and we huddled under the piano for what seemed like an eternity till we heard the blast. The theatre shuddered, but remained standing. Diane and I dusted ourselves down, the audience emerged from behind their seats, and we got a huge round of applause. ‘Hold on!’ I said, shushing them. ‘We haven’t finished yet!’ And we took the number from the top once again. The show must go on, after all. My family did not escape tragedy, however. In 1943, I came home for a few days to see my parents and, from the instant I opened the front door, I could tell that something awful had happened. The house felt empty, but my mother was in the front room, sitting in a chair, gazing into space. Then she told me the terrible news. John, my 20-year-old brother, had been reported missing during an RAF exercise at his base in Scotland. All the ministry could tell us was that he had been on ‘low-altitude practice’ and that his plane had crashed but his body had not been recovered. For the rest of her life, my mother clung to the hope that he had been rescued, perhaps by a trawler, and that he was alive somewhere in South America or Africa. Many years after she died, I learned that John was killed in a Wellington bomber, when another plane ploughed into his while he was on a search-and-rescue mission. Perhaps it’s kinder that my mother never knew. I was 15, too young to be called up. But I was proud to be doing my part, entertaining American troops on their bases before D-Day, as part of a double act in a show booked by the Red Cross. The money was good, and the perks were even better — the Americans had food, clothes and chewing gum to spare. You could even get tinned peaches in the mess ... what a luxury! Oddly enough, I was fitted with an American officer’s uniform, airforce blue with patches on its epaulettes and a forage cap sporting a Red Cross badge. We were told that if we were ever captured by the Germans, I would have the honorary rank of major. I couldn’t wait to be a prisoner-of-war. For one concert, where the troops were on manoeuvres, we did the show in the open air, with the Jeeps circled around us so their headlamps could be our spotlights. By VE Day in May 1945, I was in London, aged 17, and performing at the Whitehall Theatre. From the roof, we could see the jubilant crowds waiting for Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s 3pm broadcast, declaring an end to the war. There were sirens and hooters sounding, flags and bunting everywhere, and for me it felt like a double celebration because I knew that my career was now going to begin in earnest. What I didn’t realise was just how many years it would take before fame found me.
AdApted from Strictly Bruce: Stories Of My Life (Bantam, £20) and Bruce: the Autobiography (pan, £14.99) ©Bruce Forsyth. to order copies at £16 and £6.39 respectively (offer valid until September 9, 2017), visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. p&p free on orders over £15.