The Man Who Invented the Daleks by Alwyn Turner Read Free Book Online

he was fond of the Eagle , it was really too late for him.
    Nation celebrated his fifteenth birthday on the day that the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, the event that precipitated that country’s surrender and finally brought the Second World War to a close. The previous month a General Election had swept out of power the Conservative administration of Winston Churchill and replaced it with a Labour government headed by Clement Attlee. Among its reforms were the creation of the National Health Service, under the guidance of South Wales’s most famous politician, Aneurin Bevan, and the nationalisation of the mining industry; on New Year’s Day 1947 notices appeared right across the country’s coalfields proclaiming: ‘This colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people.’ If that was to prove a little optimistic, it did at least reflect a desire that the hardship of the depression should never be allowed to happen again, and a similar feeling on the part of the five million men and women who had served in the armed forces that their sacrifices should lead to a more just society. When Spike Milligan, serving in the Italian campaign in 1943, believed that his death was imminent, he wrote himself an epitaph: ‘I died for the England I dreamed of, not for the England I know.’ Now was the time to build that new country.
    The political mood for change was mirrored, though it was not as immediately apparent, by a determination on the part of the returning servicemen that culturally their voices should be heard, and it was on the radio, and particularly in comedy, that the resulting loose-knit movement was first to make its mark. In Wales it produced the revival of Welsh Rarebit , a radio series that had proved more popular in the principality even than Tommy Handley’s ITMA during the war, and which was reborn in 1949 as an hour-long variety show. With its theme song of ‘We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides’ – written by the show’s producer, Mai Jones – Welsh Rarebit went out on the Light Programme (as the Forces Programme had now been renamed) and became principally known as a showcase for new Welsh comedians including Harry Secombe, Stan Stennett and Wyn Calvin. ‘Up until the advent of radio,’ noted the latter, ‘Wales had no reputation for comedy.’ That was slightly overstating the case, but certainly the success of Welsh Rarebit – it even enjoyed a brief transfer to television in the 1950s – helped fuel the ambitions of those in South Wales with aspirations towards becoming entertainers, among them Terry Nation: ‘I wanted to be a comedian. I wanted to be a stand-up.’
    On leaving school Nation had joined his father’s furniture business, working – not very well, he was later to admit – as a salesman. One of the few benefits of this position was that he had a justification for fussing over his wardrobe, in which pride of place went to a leather-buttoned, Harris tweed jacket. ‘He was always dressed beautifully,’ remembered his friend Harry Greene (who worked as an unpaid assistant on Welsh Rarebit ). ‘I don’t know if it was hand-me-downs from his dad, because Bert was a good dresser as well. I think that was part of his front for selling.’ The work meant that he had money in his pocket, but Nation was already preoccupied with dreams of performance. He remained passionate about film, becoming a member of the Cardiff Amateur Cine Society, while engaging in amateur dramatics with the left-wing Unity Theatre, based at the local YMCA, and other groups. He was also a regular visitor to the New Theatre, where Greene sometimes worked backstage and could get him free tickets to shows featuring the cream of British comedy at the time, including Arthur Askey, Nat Jackley and Norman Evans.
    Through Greene too, he was to meet the future novelist John Summers, who had