‘Brucie had a natural instinct for mischief and for danger’
When I think of Brucie, I remember a moment on Strictly when catastrophe was narrowly averted. In the middle of a live show, a few seconds into a Samba, two dancers became inextricably tied together with a radio mike. It should have been a moment of sheer disaster – for the dancers, for the producers, for the audience, for everybody. In waltzed Brucie. He got them disentangled, guided them into position to start the routine again, and then did a quickstep out of shot with the floor manager. He turned a moment of potential calamity into high comedy in a way only he could.
Only with six decades of experience could you perform such a deft piece of footwork on live telly. Whether it was on The Generation Game or Strictly Come Dancing, Brucie had that natural instinct for danger, for mischief, and above all for being exactly what the audience needed him to be. Audiences love danger and fun, and that’s what he always gave them in spades.
He was a stage performer at heart who made that wonderful transition to television, but he always worked with a live audience because it was in his blood. That was his comfort zone. He loved the adrenaline and the laughter.
And, of course, no one knew how to deliver a line like Bruce. I remember being at a showbiz funeral with him once. I was sitting next to him and asked him how he was. He said he’d had trouble with a tooth and went on and on utterly straightfaced in some alarming detail about what had gone wrong with this tooth. Then he said: “But anyway I’m not going to complain about it.” And that was that, I was – possibly somewhat inappropriately – in stitches. His timing always was impeccable. He could deliver a joke as well as he could sing, dance or play the piano.
His dreadful puns on Strictly may have made the audience groan, but really we loved the bad jokes as much as the good ones. That he was still delighting audiences of children and adults alike 60 years after he first stepped on stage at the London Palladium for Beat the Clock, delighted him more than I can say. He always used to tell me how he felt he was so lucky because he had had the privilege of entertaining generation after generation of children. How many performers can say that?
Today’s audiences will know him as a grandfather figure – lovable Brucie off Strictly. But I remember him when he was Brucie the ladies man, who had glamorous hostesses, natty outfits and a cheeky sense of humour (all of which, incidentally, he seemed to retain to the end).
We first met in the early Seventies when we were both invited to attend an awards ceremony. For some reason, he and some others had to lift me up for a picture and I remember he pretended his knees were buckling as he tried to lift me. It was around that time that I first interviewed him. In 1975 Brucie was the biggest star on television and I remember being a bit scared, but he instantly put me at ease. Just as he did years later, when I attempted to stumble around the dance floor on Strictly, leaning heavily on my partner and trying not to fall. He loved seeing contestants become genuinely skilful, but he was also endlessly generous to the others. Truly, when Craig said my tango was “a disaster darling”, he was accurate, but Bruce was all smiles.
Bruce was unique in the way he expertly trod that line between being totally familiar and a real star. Television was the perfect vehicle for his brand of star quality, in that unlike at the theatre or in the cinema, your heroes are in the room with you, right there while you are sitting on your sofa drinking a cup of tea. Movie stars are gods, TV stars you feel you have known all your life. When Brucie came on the screen it was a special moment, but it was also so thoroughly familiar.
He used to have a catchphrase – “I’m in charge”. And he really was. He knew as well as we did that there were better singers, there were probably even better dancers. But there was nobody who could command a stage with that level of showmanship.