Frankly, any number of objects could have been chosen to represent our next subject.
A bottle of champagne, a deck of cards, a betting slip, a dinner jacket… the list is endless, just like his run-getting in the golden summer of 1947 when Denis Compton became the most famous batsman in the world. More famous even than Don Bradman, a cricketer who played the puritan to Compton’s playboy.
We’ve settled on a pot of Brylcreem because this little object led to something rather big – celebrity endorsements. Compton was a pioneer in putting his face to a product in return for piles of cash. But Compton being Compton he wasn’t really interested in the money. Fun was the driving force of his life; fun and runs. He got plenty of both.
Born in north London in 1918, young Denis was a dab hand at cricket and football. Middlesex signed him for the summer, Arsenal for the winter, and he made his debut for both teams while still a teenager. Compton was better at cricket, just, scoring 65 on his debut for England against New Zealand in 1937. Two years later war put his sporting career on hold, though Compton still found time to play on the wing in several wartime internationals for England while serving in the army.
It was after the war that Compton became Britain’s Brylcreem Boy. The nation cried out for a hero, and Compton responded. Neville Cardus recalled how in 1947 ‘the crowd sat in the sun, liberated from anxiety and privation. The strain of long years of affliction fell from all shoulders as Compton… danced forward or danced backwards, his hair tousled beyond the pacifying power of any cream or unguent whatsoever.’
In the summer of 1947 Compton scored 3,816 runs at an average of 90.85, including eighteen centuries. It was a record no one has ever got close to surpassing. Four of the tons came against the touring South Africans, and in the second Test at Lord’s Compton and his Middlesex teammate Bill Edrich put on 370 for the third wicket. Writing a few months later Edrich reflected: ‘Denis Compton, no less than Don Bradman, is an example of cricket genius. And whenever you hear or read of Cricket’s Golden Age, and that the art of batting went out with “Ranji” and Trumper, I would like you to recall these two names. There is no need to apologize to the Immortals for our own cricketing generation.’
By early 1948 Compton was being bombarded with pleas for product endorsements from companies. He didn’t have time to sift through them so he stuffed all the correspondence into a suitcase and took it on tour when England toured South Africa in the winter of 1948.
Reg Hayter, the Press Association’s cricket correspondent, saw the suitcase and asked what was inside. Compton showed him. Hayter was staggered. There was one from the News of the World, pleading with Compton to write a weekly column in return for £2,000, another from Bryclreem beseeching him to give serious thought to their offer of a £300-a-year contract.
Hayter persuaded Compton to let him represent his commercial interests. On their return from the tour he brought on board Bagenal Harvey, a skilled advertiser. They got Compton his newspaper column and they trebled Brylcreem’s offer to £1,000. The England batsman was on his way to becoming the first sportsman to be used as a marketing tool, his face appearing in magazines, on billboards and, before long, on television screens.
To his credit Compton’s immaculately coiffured head was never turned by his commercial success. He kept scoring runs for Middlesex and England, and in 1950 he helped Arsenal beat Liverpool 2–0 in the final of the FA Cup. Legend has it that at half-time one of the back-room staff slipped him a large brandy; down the hatch it went and out trotted Compton to tee up Reg Lewis for the Gunners’ second goal.
In the end it was an old football injury that brought down the curtain on Compton’s sporting career, a collision with Charlton goalkeeper Sid Hobbins in 1938 that ultimately required the great man to have a kneecap removed in 1955. Hobbins wrote to apologise for the accident; the surgeon who removed the kneecap put it on display in his office. Such was the pull of Denis Compton, who, when he finally sheathed his bat, had scored 38,942 runs at an average of 51.85 and played in seventy-eight Tests for his country.
In the days after his death in 1997 friends, former teammates and journalists competed to see who could come up with the anecdote that best captured the essence of Compton. Daily Mirror cricket correspondent Colin Price recalled how Compton ‘would often turn up late for the start of play, still wearing his dinner jacket from dancing the night away, stretch out on a settee and fall asleep until it was his turn to bat’.
Former England teammate Colin Cowdrey recalled Compton arriving for the Old Trafford Test against South Africa 1955 having forgotten his kit bag. He strolled into the museum, borrowed an antique bat from a display case and scored 158 out of an England total of 284.
Brylcreem made Compton famous and wealthy, though not wealthy by the standards of today’s overpaid sports stars. Asked shortly before his death if he regretted missing out on the vast sums of money now on offer, Compton replied: ‘We didn’t do it for the money. Did it for the fun. I remember I went to Highbury in 1950 to pick up my wages. We’d beaten Liverpool in the Cup and the following Wednesday we defeated the League champions Portsmouth, 4–1. Last game I ever played. My week’s wages and bonuses for both games came to 50 quid. I walked out thinking I was a millionaire. Still wouldn’t change a bit of it.’