I’M A TELLY addict. I just love the goggle box! My house in Camberley had a television in every room, including the bathroom and toilet. I just love TV. So when I moved to Switzerland in 1976 you can imagine my concern about the quality of TV on offer. Let’s face it, as beautiful as Switzerland is it’s not exactly internationally renowned for being a global centre of excitement, well not back then anyway. It’s a small country and at the time they had TV made by the Italians, the Swiss and the Germans but in the predominantly French region where I lived they naturally mainly watched the French stuff.
I say ‘stuff’. What that amounted to was La Lettre, which is the French equivalent of Countdown (in fact, this show was the original and is licensed to Granada in the UK). I did quite well at that quiz. Even though my French is appalling I found that as long as the words I made up had an ‘x’ in them somewhere I scored reasonably well.
This was long before the days of Sky+ and there weren’t any Blockbusters or video shops yet so viewing options were limited, to say the least. Even personal video recorders were still in their very early days – Phillips made one but it was almost as big as the Swiss house I’d moved in to. Also, the Americans used NTSC as their format, the British and most Europeans used PAL and the French used SECAM (yes, the French just had to be different).
It was a pretty hopeless situation.
However, I was a desperate man so I cooked up what I thought was a pretty ingenious scheme. I bought a Phillips video recorder for my parents and one each for a couple of friends. The deal was that they could keep these video machines as their own – they were presents – but in return I asked them to do one thing for me: video a selection of British TV shows I’d list every week and mail me the tapes. That way I could build up a library of programmes to watch.
In theory that is.
Well, it involved ‘pressing buttons’ so Mum was struggling straight away; Dad was better but you needed to be aware that if you asked for Dad’s Army, you’d most likely get Panorama. But at least you got something. That said, usually not all of it as Dad often mistakenly stopped the recordings before the end of a show. It was a disaster.
My friends were a little better but often their wives would have recorded over the top of what I wanted and so an Omnibus programme on the ‘living bras’ was often what I got instead of the Match of the Day that I’d ‘ordered’.
Then I discovered a company that seemed to be the answer to all my problems. It was sort of, how can I put it, ‘semi-legal’. To be fair, the copyright laws at the time were fairly primitive and hadn’t yet taken account of the developing home-recording technology. This company offered a service to expats living abroad where they simply posted you a copy of the TV Times and the Radio Times (remember there were only four British channels at this point), you’d mark up the programmes you wanted taped and post back your order. Then, later on during the following week, a parcel containing the tape would arrive.
At first it worked a treat. Obviously Match of the Day and Sunday’s The Big Match were essential viewing. So all my mates who loved football would deliberately avoid the results and come round to watch the matches on tape. I’d also got one of the first big-screen tellies, a projector set-up, plus a very serviceable bar, so they’d all pile round and we’d get rat-arsed watching the footy. I also had recorded virtually every sitcom that was currently being aired and over a few months I managed to build up a huge collection.
The company providing this service was really good but I couldn’t work out how they were making any money, because they charged hardly anything: it was so cheap.
Then one day I found out.
Bang on time, a tape of Man About The House and Mind Your Language arrived. I was really looking forward to these as they were two of my favourite sitcoms. I ripped the package open and put the tape straight in the machine.
My first reaction was . . . Blimey, Richard O’Sullivan isn’t wearing very much . . . not that you could see much of his face.
Ten seconds or so went by . . .
And one of the girls seems to be wearing even less . . .
It got worse. Much worse.
Why is there a donkey in this episode?
And why is she . . .? Ah, I don’t think this can be Man About The House . . . and it’s certainly not Mind Your Language.
Wow, another donkey’s just joined in!
I turned the telly off as the penny dropped that this was how this video company made their money. Then a wry smile spread across my face as I also realised that someone out there had ordered a highly pornographic film and had actually received an episode of Man About The House. I’d love to have seen the confused looks on their faces!
I thought, I’ll keep quiet about this and see what happens.
Sure enough, a day or so later I got a phone call from someone at the video company. ‘Er, Mr Wakeman, has your video arrived? We think there might have been a mistake so as soon as it arrives, could you send it straight back to us, please?’
‘Funnily enough,’ I said, ‘I was going to call you about that. I’ve had a note from Customs in Geneva who want me to go down and see them for some reason . . .’
You could hear the terrified sound of silence on the other end of the phone. Then the line went dead. And I never did receive another copy of the Radio Times.
One of my favourite TV genres is quizzes. Same goes for radio quizzes. However, I’m not exactly renowned on the quiz circuit for my extensive knowledge of popular music. People make that assumption, but in fact I’m useless. It’s so widely known in radio and television circles that I am useless that when I go to the filming of Never Mind The Buzzcocks they allow me to take along colouring books to pass the time away whilst others are answering the questions – I even took a box of Fuzzy Felts once. However, my worst performances are unintentionally reserved for radio’s Pop Quiz. I’ve been on there I think fourteen times, which is the exact same number of times I’ve been on the losing team. I’m perfectly happy with the situation, I just know it’s pointless my even listening to the questions because I never know the answers. Eventually, following a string of particularly appalling performances, one team captain said, ‘I don’t think I ever want Rick in my team any more – he doesn’t know a single thing and we always lose when he’s on my side.’
I was still booked for one more appearance so I was quite looking forward to the send-off when the day arrived. The producer took me to one side and said, ‘Rick, now we are all aware that your knowledge of popular music is, well, how shall I put this . . .’
‘Zero?’
‘That’s the one. Now, you know we can’t give you any of the questions and answers beforehand, but we have tried to gear the questions towards areas that we suspect you may have a degree of knowledge of.
‘You’ll also be on Helen Shapiro’s team, and as you know, Helen is virtually guaranteed to win every time she’s a captain of one of the teams in Pop Quiz as she’s so knowledgeable, so you’ll never have a better chance.’
Brilliant! This sounded liked a great idea. I was going to go out with a bang, for certain. On the day of the recording, I did indeed know a few of the other contestants’ questions – okay, one or two – but I was very cleverly kept away from saying anything during the main points-scoring rounds. Then, with perfect comic timing, the last question of the last round fell to me. And the scores were level.
Great.
You could see that the producer, the presenter and the audience were willing me to win. I even think the opposition were mentally spurring me on, it had become such a big thing for me to get a question right.
‘Rick, we are going to play you a piece of music and you have to tell us who it’s written by and what’s the precise name of that piece of music.’
Sounds easy enough.
They played this piece and it was something I knew . . . but my mind went blank. I knew the music really well, I was sure I did, but I just couldn’t get the name to pop into my head.
‘We’re going to have to hurry you along, Rick . . .’
I sat there huffing and puffing, trying to recall the answer but to no avail.
‘I’m sorry Rick, you’ve sadly run out of time. I can offer it to the other team and this is to win the quiz: do you know what that piece of music was and who it was written by?’
‘Yes, it was “Merlin The Magician” by Rick Wakeman.’
One subject I am reasonably expert on is the Just William books by Richmal Crompton. I love them. So much so, in fact, that when I agreed to appear on Celebrity Mastermind in January 2009 I chose the books and author as my specialist subject. I’d previously been on a celebrity version of The Weakest Link but I preferred the Mastermind way of doing these shows because all contestants’ charities got their money regardless of the outcome, unlike that other quiz show where just the winner earns his charity some cash.
As you would probably expect, things didn’t exactly run smoothly on the day of filming, which was in December 2008. To put it mildly. In fact, by the early hours of the following morning I was in Accident & Emergency with a severe leg injury. But let’s start at the beginning . . .
They don’t always tell you who else is on these sort of shows and I was delighted to learn that my close friend Ian Lavender, formerly of EastEnders but perhaps most famously known as Pike from Dad’s Army, was also taking part. Ian only lives fifteen minutes away and we see each other often so that was a nice surprise. He was doing ‘The life and times of Buster Keaton’. Also on the show was Tim Vine (‘Elvis Presley’ – Tim was the eventual winner) and Phil Daniels (‘Chelsea Football Club in the 1970s’).
Ian and I arrived at the studio together and found that everybody had separate dressing rooms, but we ended up in the same one just having a laugh at the fact that neither of us knew anything – between the pair of us we were doomed. We didn’t care, the money was going to our charities anyway so it was just a bit of fun. (Good news for my chosen charities: I shared the money between Oldham Cats where I am a patron, The Cats’ Protection League and Rose Cottage Cats in Norfolk).
The plan was to introduce the celebs to the audience before the filming started. What happens is you stand backstage while they announce who is appearing and then they introduce each person in turn. We were kept waiting in a very dark corridor, just behind the semi-lit TV studio. As we were walking along this corridor I bumped into the lovely Phil Jupitus, a good friend of mine and a very funny man. We got chatting and so the other three walked on ahead.
They introduced the other three contestants and I could hear them starting to announce me. However, I was still talking with Phil and eventually a stagehand said, ‘Rick, come on, you’re on!’ and opened the door into the bright lights.
It was a bit like going into a tunnel when you’re driving. Your eyes don’t accustom immediately and your brain gets confused. Well, mine does anyway! I walked in and headed towards the shadowy figures already seated. This involved two steps up on to the raised stage areas.
This would have been bad enough in normal circumstances, but to make matters worse the stage on which I was now stumbling half-blind was made of very sharp, very pointy metal corners.
I missed the steps.
Badly.
All this hopefully explains why, when I tripped up the first step and fell onto one of these super-sharp corners before collapsing in a heap on the floor, I had managed to lacerate my shin in a nine inch L-shape right through to the bone.
I have to say that the pain was absolutely phenomenal. My initial reaction was that I must have broken my leg badly, it was so painful and my leg was going numb. The whole audience gasped – it was really quite a tumble – and then suddenly all these floor managers rushed over to help me.
‘I’m okay, it’s all right, let’s just have a look,’ I said, wincing. I rolled up my shredded trouser leg to reveal a very deep, very bloody gash along my shin which was literally pouring with blood. The audience gasped even more.
With a bright red puddle forming on the floor, they called the paramedics, by which time my whole leg had gone completely numb. The paramedics insisted that I should go to the hospital straight away.
‘But I’ll be there ages: you’ll have to reschedule, send all the audience home – it’s too much messing about. Just bandage me up, give me a painkiller, I’ll do the show and then go to the hospital after.’
They said they couldn’t do that because of Health and Safety. ‘Look,’ I said, determined not to cancel the show and deny my pussycat charities of their much-needed dosh, ‘it’s my choice, I’m very happy to carry on, let’s just do it.’ They eventually agreed and gave me some painkillers but I have to admit that, by the time they started filming I was beginning to doubt my bravery as my leg was absolutely killing me. Just before they started, I asked the medics guy when I could have some more painkillers and he said I was allowed just two every two hours.
‘How many have you got in your hand?’ I asked.
‘Eight.’
‘That’ll do,’ I said. I grabbed them off him and took the lot.
So by the time the actual filming rolled, I was heavily bandaged, covered in blood and beginning to hallucinate from a mild overdose of very strong painkillers. I really didn’t fancy my chances of winning now. In fact, I can barely remember the programme at all because I was so spaced out. I don’t really recall answering any questions and I can’t remember much else either, although I have a memory of them mopping up the blood by my chair during the interval. The only bit I do remember clearly is that when Ian Lavender took his seat and John Humphrys asked him his name, I shouted out, ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’
The BBC people were very good about it all. As soon as the filming was completed, they helped me to the exit and there was a car waiting to rush me to hospital. The nearest A&E was in Hammersmith, which is a very difficult place for me to visit – I’ll tell you why in a moment.
The cut to my leg was so severe that Hammersmith couldn’t deal with the extent of the injury as they didn’t have the necessary staff on at that time of night, so I was put back in a car and driven to Charing Cross Hospital. The doctor there was superb. I explained that I had pretty much impaled myself on the stage of Celebrity Mastermind and she was really very helpful. She explained what I had damaged and how she was going to repair the leg. I was still chewing away on as many painkillers as I could get hold of so by now the day was a completely surreal blur of television studios, bleeding profusely in waiting rooms, doctors, taxis, Pike and John Humphrys. I didn’t leave Charing Cross Hospital until after 4 a.m. and perhaps, on reflection, I shouldn’t have driven home! I could feel my leg for most of the journey, to be fair.
Christmas came and went and in all the festive busy-ness we forgot to tell anyone about the accident, so a few of my friends watched the show when it was screened in the New Year and took the mickey out of me for coming last. ‘You’d have come last,’ I protested, ‘if you’d had blood pouring out of a gaping flesh wound and had had enough painkillers to kill a horse!’
I scored something like seventeen points in total. Not a bad effort, I think, even if I did come last. My particular favourite question was towards the end of my specialised subject when all the first batch of painkillers had really kicked in and I just had this wonderful silly grin on my face when John Humphrys said, ‘What keyboard instrument was invented in the second century?’ and I said, ‘Thank you.’
Let me rewind and explain why Hammersmith Hospital is a very difficult place for me to visit. I’ve got quite a few associations with the place, one very nice one being the Sparks charity that I’ve helped over the years. We were responsible for putting in the most amazing scanner in there for newborns, which cost about a million quid but has saved hundreds of babies’ lives. I’ve visited the baby wing as a patron of Sparks on a few occasions. So that’s the nice side of Hammersmith Hospital for me.
Hammersmith Hospital has lots of stories surrounding it that involve the building next door, Wormwood Scrubs prison. Back in the 1960s a nurse at the hospital became pregnant and it turned out that the daddy was one of the inmates at the prison. No one seemed to ever agree on how it happened (by that I mean how they met up to do the deed, not how they did the actual deed itself), but it was quite a talking point in the area when I was a lad. I seem to recall the inmate being quoted as saying he only wrote her letters. Well, all I can say is there must have been some amazing lead in his pencil!
For me, however, there is another, very difficult, side of visiting Hammersmith Hospital and it’s very tough talking about it, even today. It shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s the hospital where my father was taken after he died.
Dad was quite young when he died, only sixty-four. It was 26 November 1980. He’d been on his way to work, standing on the platform of East Acton station. He used to leave the house very early in the morning, at about seven o’clock to first go and see my grandma to make sure she was okay, then walk round to East Acton station and travel to Liverpool Street where he worked.
Except that on this particular morning he never made it to Liverpool Street because he had a massive heart attack on the station and died on the spot.
As he’d died in a public place there had to be an autopsy so he was taken to Hammersmith Hospital. I was living in Switzerland at the time but came back immediately upon hearing the news from their neighbour Jack Gilmore, and drove straight to my parents’ house to be with my mum.
There seemed to be a lot of paperwork that had to be done and so I went up to Hammersmith Hospital two days later to collect the death certificate and also to find out exactly what had happened.
I went on my own because it would have been far too harrowing for my mum. She was deeply upset and in denial as to what had happened to her beloved Cyril.
Now, before I continue I have to state that I have the utmost respect for doctors, nurses, consultants and surgeons, indeed that respect and admiration also stretches to all the people who work at hospitals. I have seen what they do behind the scenes and I know how committed they are. I also know how overworked they are, bogged down with unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic nonsense that successive governments force upon them, and that for me, is a national disgrace.
On 28 November, just two days after he’d had the heart attack, I arrived at Hammersmith Hospital and was ushered into a small room where I sat on my own for a while until a doctor came in. I remember it as clear as day – I can still picture the scene: there’s something about extreme situations like that which crystallise your memory somehow. The doctor seemed flustered, as if the task he was about to perform had just been thrust upon him. He looked very tired – I suspected he’d been on a very long shift. He had a Tesco bag with him, which he put on the desk.
He sat down and regained a little composure. Then, after introducing himself, he said, ‘As you know, your father died at East Acton station. We have done an autopsy which showed he had a massive coronary and if it’s any consolation to you he was dead before he hit the ground. We know this because he fell facing forward and broke his nose but there was little or no blood. Also a train was pulling into the station at that precise moment and had a lot of staff doctors and nurses on board who were coming down to the hospital, so he was attended to immediately.’
‘Right.’ It was all rather a lot to take in.
‘And here’s some paperwork you need, oh, and you’ll need this.’ With that the doctor pushed the Tesco bag in front of me, then said, ‘I’ve really got to go now, goodbye,’ and left the room.
I stood up and looked into the Tesco carrier bag on the desk.
Inside were my father’s wallet and his glasses.
It was horrendous.
That’s my dad, I thought. He’s in a Tesco carrier bag, I’ve been given no time and no help. Absolutely nothing, nothing, and now here’s his wallet and glasses in a plastic bag.
Worse still, one of the lenses in his glasses was broken from the impact of his fall on the hard platform. I stood there thinking about Dad, how he had helped so many people, how he was basically responsible for all the design and building of facilities for the disabled in bathrooms all over the world, an amazing character who had made thousands of people’s lives better.
And now two of his most personal belongings had just been dumped in a Tesco carrier bag on a worn-out hospital desk.
I just stood there alone and cried my eyes out. It was so upsetting. I was beside myself so I couldn’t go back to Mum’s and let her see me like that. I just walked around the streets for ages, then went to a pub and had one brandy and loads of coffees, then walked some more before driving back to Mum’s.
In the immediate aftermath I just felt angry. I felt angry that Dad had died so young. I felt angry that I’d lost my dad; obviously people focused their attention on Mum and that was only right, of course, she’d been married for forty-odd years to my dad and was totally devastated, but I felt quite bereft too. He was my dad. I was a thirty-one-year-old only child and I was distraught. And of course I felt angry at the way Hammersmith Hospital had treated me.
As time went by, I became friends with quite a few people who work in hospitals, whether by chance or through the various charities I support in numerous ways. So that’s how I know how fantastic these people are. That little bit of time and insight allows me to step back from my anger and I’m sure that doctor had had a stinking and probably very stressful day, perhaps he’d had to handle a really bad situation somewhere beforehand. They do have the most difficult jobs and maybe in differing circumstances he may have been more accommodating and understanding. I’ll never know.
What I did know was that I’d lost my dad and I missed him terribly.
To this day, I can’t take the Central Line train and go through East Acton station, past the exact spot where Dad died. It’s really weird, but I just can’t do it.
I now have quite an involvement with Hammersmith Hospital through the charity SPARKS, of which I am very proud to be a patron. They have helped finance quite a lot of research at many hospitals including Hammersmith and were involved there with the making and installation of a very unique scanner for babies which has helped save many lives over the last few years.