Today’s song is one that my dearly departed friend, the late Sir Norman Wisdom recorded at the start of his career., ‘Don’t laugh at me ‘cos I’m a fool’.
There are so many good people in this world that one would have to walk around blind, mute and deaf not to bump into one such person every day of one’s life. One such person was Norman Wisdom, or ‘Wizzy’ as he asked me to call him the very first time we spoke on the telephone. For such a man as Norman who made a successful career out of making the world laugh, it would be impossible to conceive the degree of sadness and unhappiness that filled his first twenty years of growing up in a state of daily physical cruelty and abject poverty. He once told me how he daily stole in order to eat as a young boy and he also related the beatings he received regularly from his father until he ran away from home. And yet, in the fifteen years we maintained regular contact before he entered a Nursing Home in the Isle of Mann, never once did I hear anything but respect and the highest of praise come from his mouth whenever referring to his parents.
I will never forget that time in the late 1990s when ‘Wizzy’ phoned me and said, ‘I’ve something nice for you, Bill’. When I asked ‘What?’ he replied like a Santa pulling an early present from his sack of goodies, ‘I’m coming to read that children’s book of yours next Wednesday that I promised I’d read. Is that okay?’ I was over the moon, especially as it turned out that his trip from his home in the Isle of Mann to Mirfield in West Yorkshire (undertaken at his own expense), was exclusively to read to Mirfield children.
For over twelve hours of this enchanting day, in which we shared breakfast, lunch and tea before he returned to the Isle of Mann, Wizzy entertained 300 parents and their children reading to them from my book, 'Action Annie’ (the first edition and 1000 books of Action Annie’ which Dame Catherine Cookson and her husband Tom paid the publication cost of as a wedding anniversary of theirs to my charitable cause). All Yorkshire television channels and one national television camera covered the event, plus every radio station for a hundred miles.
During this most memorable day, ‘Wizzy’ laughed and joked and did his famous falling, stumbling and tripping routine each step he took in public. Even when we were having our lunch before the Library visit, he was fooling with the waitress at the pub we were in as he threatened to whip off the tablecloth from beneath a tableful of delicate chinaware.
During our lunch together he also spoke reverently of his dressmaking mother and his father and older brother, Fred (both Christened Frederick). He seemed to suggest that Fred was the only son his father wanted. ‘Wizzy’ spoke poignantly about his early life as a child. He indicated that he spent lots of time away from home and was even put in Children’s Home as a boy, from which he ran away at the age of 11 years. At the age of 13 years, he was turned out of his parent’s home and left to make his own way in the world.
The immediate years after saw him as a hotel worker, and later as a cabin boy in the Merchant Navy. While I loved ‘Wizzy’ as a person, some of his account of what he’d done seemed a little fanciful. While he did become the Flyweight Champion of the Army, the account I once read about his activities during the ‘Second World War’ and his numerous contacts with Winston Churchill was possibly him gilding the lily. And yet, were someone to tell me that many of the things that happened to me in my life had happened to them in theirs, I would also need to take a deep, deep breath in order to swallow it whole!
Whilst there was never one minute during that day when ‘Wizzy’ wasn’t laughing, I always sensed that within this clown who’d made the world laugh for fifty years was an unhappy and often lonely man. Everything was put across as though he was constantly laughing at life, and yet, I suspect that as the world laughed at him and his antics, when he wasn’t inwardly crying, it was he who was, in fact, laughing at us. He even made a joke out of his house name, ‘Ballalaugh’.
For a man who patented and built a lifetime career as a ‘successful failure’, he was, along with Charlie Chaplin, one of the best comics that ever filled our screen; and a great singer. He will be forever missed worldwide as a national treasure and forever remembered by myself as the clown who never took off his makeup in public; the best of men who gave me constant laughs and Mirfield one precious day out of his life. God rest his soul.
Love and peace, Bill xxx
There are so many good people in this world that one would have to walk around blind, mute and deaf not to bump into one such person every day of one’s life. One such person was Norman Wisdom, or ‘Wizzy’ as he asked me to call him the very first time we spoke on the telephone. For such a man as Norman who made a successful career out of making the world laugh, it would be impossible to conceive the degree of sadness and unhappiness that filled his first twenty years of growing up in a state of daily physical cruelty and abject poverty. He once told me how he daily stole in order to eat as a young boy and he also related the beatings he received regularly from his father until he ran away from home. And yet, in the fifteen years we maintained regular contact before he entered a Nursing Home in the Isle of Mann, never once did I hear anything but respect and the highest of praise come from his mouth whenever referring to his parents.
I will never forget that time in the late 1990s when ‘Wizzy’ phoned me and said, ‘I’ve something nice for you, Bill’. When I asked ‘What?’ he replied like a Santa pulling an early present from his sack of goodies, ‘I’m coming to read that children’s book of yours next Wednesday that I promised I’d read. Is that okay?’ I was over the moon, especially as it turned out that his trip from his home in the Isle of Mann to Mirfield in West Yorkshire (undertaken at his own expense), was exclusively to read to Mirfield children.
For over twelve hours of this enchanting day, in which we shared breakfast, lunch and tea before he returned to the Isle of Mann, Wizzy entertained 300 parents and their children reading to them from my book, 'Action Annie’ (the first edition and 1000 books of Action Annie’ which Dame Catherine Cookson and her husband Tom paid the publication cost of as a wedding anniversary of theirs to my charitable cause). All Yorkshire television channels and one national television camera covered the event, plus every radio station for a hundred miles.
During this most memorable day, ‘Wizzy’ laughed and joked and did his famous falling, stumbling and tripping routine each step he took in public. Even when we were having our lunch before the Library visit, he was fooling with the waitress at the pub we were in as he threatened to whip off the tablecloth from beneath a tableful of delicate chinaware.
During our lunch together he also spoke reverently of his dressmaking mother and his father and older brother, Fred (both Christened Frederick). He seemed to suggest that Fred was the only son his father wanted. ‘Wizzy’ spoke poignantly about his early life as a child. He indicated that he spent lots of time away from home and was even put in Children’s Home as a boy, from which he ran away at the age of 11 years. At the age of 13 years, he was turned out of his parent’s home and left to make his own way in the world.
The immediate years after saw him as a hotel worker, and later as a cabin boy in the Merchant Navy. While I loved ‘Wizzy’ as a person, some of his account of what he’d done seemed a little fanciful. While he did become the Flyweight Champion of the Army, the account I once read about his activities during the ‘Second World War’ and his numerous contacts with Winston Churchill was possibly him gilding the lily. And yet, were someone to tell me that many of the things that happened to me in my life had happened to them in theirs, I would also need to take a deep, deep breath in order to swallow it whole!
Whilst there was never one minute during that day when ‘Wizzy’ wasn’t laughing, I always sensed that within this clown who’d made the world laugh for fifty years was an unhappy and often lonely man. Everything was put across as though he was constantly laughing at life, and yet, I suspect that as the world laughed at him and his antics, when he wasn’t inwardly crying, it was he who was, in fact, laughing at us. He even made a joke out of his house name, ‘Ballalaugh’.
For a man who patented and built a lifetime career as a ‘successful failure’, he was, along with Charlie Chaplin, one of the best comics that ever filled our screen; and a great singer. He will be forever missed worldwide as a national treasure and forever remembered by myself as the clown who never took off his makeup in public; the best of men who gave me constant laughs and Mirfield one precious day out of his life. God rest his soul.
Love and peace, Bill xxx
