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

milkman!’
    â€˜I thought myself a rather good comedian at the time, and used to get laughs around the pub,’ reflected Nation in later life. ‘But if you’re paying for the drinks, people will laugh.’ More significant, in terms of his later career, was his discovery that other comedians, particularly those who were starting to find broadcast work, would pay for jokes. ‘I used to be a member of the Overseas Club, in Park Place, right next to the BBC, in those days. I actually sold my very first scripts to an up-and-coming young comic I met there – Stan Stennett.’ Stennett, who was beginning to make his name on radio shows including Variety Bandbox and Workers’ Playtime as well as Welsh Rarebit , needed a supply of fresh material; although such work was entirely uncredited and none is known to have survived, it was at least a suggestion of an alternative future. It also gave Nation a chance to work with his first partner, another Cardiff-born writer, Dick Barry, and to try to put into practice the American style of gag-telling that he had heard on AFN. ‘Terry was doing the more upbeat, up-to-date, quick-fire sort of comedy,’ remembered Stennett.
    By the early 1950s, however, the Khardomah set that Nation had been part of was starting to break up. In recent years, South Wales had been able to boast a number of famous sons, pursuing a wide range of cultural occupations, from the novelist Howard Spring and the poet Dylan Thomas, through Ray Milland, winner of the 1946 Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Lost Weekend , to the boxer Tommy Farr, who came desperately close to taking the world heavyweight title off Joe Louis in 1937. But all had had to leave home to achieve their success. The truth was that South Wales was still a place of origin rather than a land of opportunity. For those who were troubled by ambition, curiosity or simple impatience, it was primarily somewhere to look back upon from what was then called the refreshment car of the London train.
    So it was to prove again. Among Nation’s friends and acquaintances, Harry Greene joined Joan Littlewood’s travelling theatre company as an actor, set designer and general handyman, ending up at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East before embarking on a television career, while John Summers worked his passage around the world, with spells in Canada and Australia, before making his way to Fleet Street. Nation himself was a little way behind them, but in January 1955 he bought a one-way ticket to London, and he too took his leave of Cardiff.

Chapter Two
Goings On
    I n later life, Terry Nation was often to tell the tale of his early months in London, the doomed struggle to make it as either a comedian or an actor. ‘I auditioned as a stand-up comic, and I failed time and time again. Somebody told me, “The jokes are very good; it’s you who’s not funny.” That was hurtful, but then I figured I had to make a living.’ So he concentrated on writing, and was still getting nowhere when his fairy godmother appeared in the improbable guise of a Goon, as detailed by the Guardian in a 1966 interview: ‘His first break was an interview with Spike Milligan. He arrived so worn and woebegone that Milligan said, “You look terrible!” wrote out a cheque for £10, and told him to go away and try to write a script for The Goon Show. He did. Some of it, at least, was used on the air, and Milligan took him on as a writer.’
    Although there is no evidence of Nation’s work ever being used in a broadcast edition of The Goon Show , much of the rest of this was true, insofar as it went. Harry Greene remembered him turning up backstage at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in January 1955 during a famous production of Richard II with Harry H. Corbett in the title role (Greene was playing Bushey): ‘He told me he was writing comedy scripts and trying to work as an actor and comedian, but wasn’t having much luck.’ But Greene