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

return to the fold for the second series of Floggit’s , but thereafter his path diverged from that of Nation and Junkin, and he went on to specialise in writing television shows for comedians including Sid James, Jimmy Edwards, Charlie Drake and Arthur Askey, as well as scripting Carry On Behind , one of the later entries in the long-running film series.
    In Freeman’s absence, Nation and Junkin formed a more stable pairing, though their first step together was more of a stumble. In 1956 Alastair Scott Johnston had produced a Sunday night variety show titled Calling the Stars , and when new writers were required for the second series, he had recommended Nation and Junkin. By the time the first scripts were submitted, however, a new producer had taken over. John Simmonds (later to produce Round the Horne ) was far from impressed by the material he received in January 1957, and rejected it as being simply unfunny. He also implied that he felt a little cheated by the absence of Freeman, who he had expected to be part of the team. At this point Spike Milligan, whose deep distrust of the BBC was by now approaching paranoia, involved himself in the issue, and it took Beryl Vertue’s conciliatory intervention to find a way forward. Nation and Junkin were given twenty-four hours to produce a rewrite of the first episode, with a guarantee from ALS that Milligan, Galton and Simpson would all look at the script before it was resubmitted. This having been done, the writers withdrew from the show at their own request, and Ronald Wolfe was appointed in their place.
    But Milligan couldn’t quite let the matter drop, writing to Simmonds after the broadcast: ‘I should like you to know that the material which Peter Sellers did so uproariously well on your Calling the Stars programme, was written by the writers (John Junkin and Terry Nation) who were elbowed out of your programme as not quite up to it. Somebody’s wrong.’ Simmonds’s response was a masterly piece of barbed criticism: ‘May I say how wonderful I think Peter Sellers is, to be able to get a laugh by making a funny noise, having only said “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen”. I am sure you understand what this remark means.’
    This hiccup did nothing to dissuade Alastair Scott Johnston from promoting his protégés, and later in 1957 he commissioned Nation and Junkin to write the new series of the popular Variety Playhouse , providing continuity material for the show’s host, the comedian Ted Ray, as well as a weekly sketch. And despite Ray’s reputation as an easy-going, family-orientated comedian, there was a slightly darker side to some of the material than might have been expected, a hint of bleakness behind the gags. ‘Then came the great day,’ reminisced Ray in a routine about his wartime exploits. ‘They were going to drop me into France. We waited by the plane. It was a beautiful British summer’s night – you could hear the owls coughing with bronchitis.’
    As a further sign of his confidence, Johnston recommended that the two writers should, on the basis of their work thus far, be given a long-term contract by the BBC. It took nine months for the suggestion to be fully considered, but in June 1958 they were signed up to a year’s contract, with an option to renew, guaranteeing them a minimum payment of 2,000 guineas, their actual fee being calculated at 85 guineas for each half-hour show. (This put them marginally above the average annual salary of nonmanual male workers.) In the meantime, Nation and Junkin had scripted a new series of Fine Goings On , the show that had given Frankie Howerd his first headlining role when broadcast back in 1951. Then it had been written by Eric Sykes, Howerd’s first and finest collaborator, but the 1958 series was less impressive (a typical gag ran: ‘We can’t go to the Costa Brava.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because of the costa living!’) and certainly less well received, with the Observer’s Paul Ferris –