David Jason & Monty Python: Part Two

What I'm Reading Wednesday

David Jason's first big TV comedy came in 1967 with "Do Not Adjust Your Set."  In addition to costar Denise Coffey, he played alongside Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones.  Whereas the latter three attended prestigious Cambridge and Oxford, Jason hadn't possessed the right background or grades to attend any sort of university. The three Pre-Pythons were younger than him, and boasted far less acting experience. Nevertheless, they exuded a confidence in their abilities that Jason greatly envied.  

Another factor which separated him was their friendship. The three already knew each other well, having shared so many experiences, and previously collaborated together.  As a result, Jason found them "posh" and "a bit cliquey."  I've enjoyed Michael Palin's diaries from the 1970s and '80s, so I was glad to learn that he "seemed the nicest," and that Jason "felt that there was less of a boundary with him."  Nonetheless, the show was divided into halves, with Jason and Coffey filming their silent comedy routines, and occasionally performing on studio-bound skits written by the other three.  

While Jason and Coffey contributed a few skits, and improvised their "Captain Fantastic" routines, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones wrote the bulk of each episode.  During the first season, David Jason recalls that everyone contributed enthusiastically.  But as would reoccur on "Monty Python" at the BBC, Idle, Palin, and Jones grew increasingly frustrated during the second season.  They saw their imaginations being stifled by the limitations of a children's show.  Eventually, the three petitioned the Head of Comedy at Rediffusion to schedule the show later in the evening.  He refused, on the grounds that "Do Not Adjust Your Set" was the most successful show the company had ever produced. Feeling that they needed to explore their creativity in different ways, the three left Rediffusion, which effectively ended the show.

Although he didn't know it at the time, David Jason was one of the budding young stars of English comedy.  "Do Not Adjust Your Set" would serve as a stepping stone for his career, and he would go on to perform (and star in) a great number of TV shows, including one of my personal favorites, "Open All Hours."  He may never have been a writer, but through hard work and persistence, he later became someone whom TV producers sought out and asked, "What type of program would you like us to build around you?"  He became so highly regarded in Britain that in 2005 he was knighted by the Queen. 

Still, when he was climbing the ladder of British TV, and he saw Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones shoot to worldwide fame with "Monty Python," he felt tremendously jealous.  Well, be honest: wouldn't you?  But then, none of us know all that the future holds in store for us.

"All hail Sir David Jason, knight of the British TV realm!"

Dragon Dave  

Related Internet Links

Watch an episode of "Captain Fantastic" on youtube

Watch the first episode of "Open All Hours" on youtube

Writer Roy Clarke and cast on the 2013 "Open All Hours" reunion episode

David Jason & Monty Python: Part 1

What I'm Reading Wednesday

I purchased the DVD for the TV series "Do Not Adjust Your Set" because it featured several of the actors who would go on to star in "Monty Python."  An added bonus was realizing that David Jason was in the show.  I've been a fan of his ever since watching "Open All Hours," the four seasons of which I saw on PBS over ten years ago.  I had subsequently seen him in the detective series "A Touch of Frost," but that was a dark and serious show, nothing like his character of Granville in "Open All Hours."  So it was fun to watch him hamming it up with Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Eric Idle, in their late 1960s pre-Python sketch comedy series.  He seemed to interact so naturally with the others, that I just figured he must have been one of the young, rising stars of comedy on English TV.  But in life, things are often more complicated than they appear.

At a mall in Brighton, England, I found My Life, David Jason's autobiography.  In it, he reveals that he was born during World War II, and was too young to be evacuated from the suburbs of London.  Or perhaps I should say the poor housing districts, as his mother worked as a domestic servant, and his father as a fishmonger.  Neither parent seems to have worked hard to inspire David, and perhaps his teachers thought he showed little promise as well.  In either case, he left school at fifteen, and took a series of jobs, eventually learning the electrician's trade.

But before he left school, one person made an impact on his life.  He was the principle, who evidently needed someone to fill the lead role in a school play, and commandeered him for the job.  To his surprise, David Jason found he enjoyed acting, and others, including the leader of an amateur dramatics society, agreed that he had talent.  David wasn't sure about continuing to act beyond that first play, but when he realized that the number of girls in the amateur dramatics group far outnumbered the boys, he decided to give it a go.

The acting bug stuck with him, but his parents refused to subsidize him to attend an acting school, even when he was accepted, and others believed he showed promise.  This wasn't because they didn't love him, as David Jason points out.  It was just that their eldest son, who had served in World War II, had joined the acting profession after his army service, and they thought that one son who was perennially seeking a new job was enough.  Given his less-than-stirling academic career, they wanted something safe and secure for their younger son.  Let him learn a trade, they thought.  Something with security and a future.

So David Jason relied on his training as an electrician to get by while getting bit parts as an actor.  Usually these were roles that demanded a great deal of physical comedy.  As he developed a reputation for this, he was able to wean himself away from doing electrical work, until he acted full time.  One year he was able to buy his first car, a tiny English Mini, for personal use.  He got a job that summer at the Pier Theatre in Bournemouth.  And one night, a TV producer traveled down to see him perform.  He had heard of David Jason's panache for physical comedy, and after watching him that night, offered him a role in his new show "Do Not Adjust Your Set."  That series would take the nation by storm, and become the top-rated children's show in England.  

Unlike his pre-Python costars, David Jason didn't attend Oxford or Cambridge.  He didn't have any connections among the movers-and-shakers in the English TV industry of that time.  Instead, he earned his way onto "Do Not Adjust Your Set" through years of hard work and practice, practice, practice.  Still, he made it there, because he loved acting, and he persevered with what he loved doing.  

That's what matters.

Dragon Dave

The Call of Brighton's West Pier

In the Brighton Museum resides a model of the city's former West Pier, crafted by some patient soul with an eye for detail.  The pier was originally built in 1866 as a simple promenade pier.  In 1875, a grandstand was added, and in the years that followed, other improvements widened its appeal.  By 1916, the West Pier boasted a modern theater and concert hall.  

Apparently, many seaside resort towns followed a similar course.  In his autobiography, My Life, David Jason mentions a summer he spent at the Pier Theater in Bournemouth in 1967, acting in a play called "Honeymoon Bedlam." He writes:

"When the weather was rough, the entire play took place against the background roar of waves thundering against the legs of the pier.  You often wondered whether, by the time the curtain fell, you would be halfway to France on a lump of wood."

All buildings and structures must withstand the demands of the environment.  A wooden pier that is affixed to the land, stretches into the sea, and endures the continual assault of wind, water, and storms must certainly endure continual stress.  Sadly, the West Pier began to feel the strain in the 1950's and '60's, and in 1975 was declared unsafe and closed to the public.  

In 1980, a new producer took over Doctor Who.  His name was John Nathan Turner, and as he lived in Brighton, he set the first scene of his first story there.  Director Lovett Bickford opens Episode 1 of "The Leisure Hive" by focusing the TV camera on Brighton Pier (then known as the Palace Pier).  The camera pans gradually to the right along the beach, until we finally see the Doctor relaxing on a beach chair, with the West Pier in the background.  At first glance, it looks like a normal, usable pier.  (For photos of this, see my previous entry, "K-9: Keep Away From The Water!")  But a careful study of the video, digitally remastered by the BBC for the DVD release, suggests some of the disrepair that forced the pier's closure five years previous.  

Today, the remnants of the pier stand out in the water, cut off from the tourist-lined beach and hotel-lined seafront.  At this point, improvements to her structure seem unlikely.  Yet, in view of her historical significance, the British government has awarded it Grade I listed status.  This category, the nation's highest in importance, has only been awarded to approximately 12,000 structures.  Of those, only two are piers.  People walk past her, bathe, swim and fish by her, and take millions of photographs of her.  She seems to cries out to them, "Rebuild me!  Rebuild me!"  Yet, if a few people hear her, fewer still listen.

Perhaps someday, someone will answer her plea.  Or perhaps she is destined to remain a relic of history, her only remaining purpose to remind us of an earlier era.  The future, as ever, is for us to decide.

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries
K-9: Keep Away From The Water

Related Internet Links
The West Pier Trust
David Jason: My Life