THERE are right ways and wrong ways of obeying commands. Which comes as a surprise to the awkward squad in The Army Game —they never knew they had a choice. However, on realising the situation, they immediately applied for permission to publish “The Army Game Guide to Good Soldiering”.

(Note : The Guide to Good Soldiering, as here illustrated, is not recommended to serving soldiers).

(Note again : The Army Game will serve up more laughs this Wednesday and every alternate Wednesday).

(Last Note: Cast of our Guide is… The O.C. (Geoffrey Sumner), Sergeant-Major (William Hartnell) … Corporal (Michael Medwin) … Popeye (Bernard Bresslaw) … The Professor (Charles Hawtrey) … Cup-Cake (Norman Rossington).

Words by Eric Linden, following a technical chat with ex-RSM Brittain

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TWO skips and half a chorus away from Leicester-square Stubby Kaye starts singing and dancing down a street. “Every street’s a boulevard in London Town,” he warbles, and nobody takes any notice.

Now Stubby is not the kind of a man you ignore. To start with, not to put too fine a point on it, Stubby is tubby. There is 17½st of him packed into a 5ft 7½in frame … “That’s measuring from the ground up,” he says, and adds: “but it doesn’t look much different going straight across.”

Then again the American entertainer, who breaks into a month’s holiday here to make his ITV debut in The Variety Show on Wednesday, is not exactly the whispering type of warbler. When he sings, because he is happy in London, he reckons to carry to Birmingham whether the wind is in the right direction or not.

But he is the friendly type of personality who can get away with the unusual, even singing in the street, while the rest of us would be accused of being drunk and disorderly.

Two fast choruses and he stops short.

“Gotta watch the exercise,” he says, “can’t afford to lose too much weight. I gotta stay fat. Maybe I could lose 5lb, 7lb, 10lb, say a stone. Thats ridiculous,” and he pats a well-rounded girth. “A stone! More like a pebble. I’m on a diet — eating nothing but meals.

“You know why people like to watch fat people? Because we’re built for comfort—and, boy, when we bounce about does that comfort wobble around. There’s something about a fat man having a good time that’s infectious. Kinda like a yawn, only more eye-catching. So don’t call me plump — I’m fat.”

Stubby is but a shadow of the jolly fat man who returned to America in 1953 after scoring such a hit as Nicely Nicely in the musical Guys and Dolls. The one who sang Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat with such verve.

“Slimmed right down,” claims Stubby. “Used to be 52in round the waist, if you knew where to look for the waist. Now … a mere 48in.”

He throws back his head and laughs. Gleaming gold teeth do not shine half as brightly as his kindly brown eyes. Eyes topped by sandy brows. Eyes that set the man’s character — essentially friendly.

That is what comes over most about Stubby — the friendliness. He is the butt of every joke he tells. The boot never goes on the other foot.

Feet — that is another thing. Like most fat men, he has relatively small feet.

“How do I balance all this?” He places plump hands on his tummy and shakes it. “I put one foot in front of the other — carefully — and pray some joker doesn’t tilt me.”

On Wednesday he will sing, but naturally, Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat … for about the 2,000th time, he estimates. Is he not tired of the number yet?

“Nope. Every time I sing it, it’s the first time all over again. I’m the biggest ham in this business. I want people to like me. And if I don’t look like I’m having a ball, how can I expect anyone else to enjoy it?”

For Stubby there never has been anything else but show business in his working life.

He was born in New York City on Armistice Day — November 11, 1918. A big baby. “Don’t ask me what I weighed. I was too excited to get here to look at the scales.”

Just as soon as earning a living came around Stubby headed for show business. Summer shows in the Catskill Mountains entertaining visitors. A tour with a discovery show. Camp shows. Cabaret. Stage. Television. Films.

He has other ambitions. One day… “I’ll get married. Some idiot will look the wrong way and say ‘Yes’ without thinking. All I’m waiting for is a better offer than staying happy…”

There’s one question left. What is his real name.

He stiffens — well, as much as it’s possible. Almost a hurt look. Then a slow, sweeping, golden gleam of a smile.

“Stubby,” he insists. “Stubby Kaye. That’s what they call me in the business. That’s what I call me out of it.

“Every time I give somebody my real name something nasty happens, you know. First time I told, they sent me to school. Another time I was asked, it was the conscription people. What you got lined up?”

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I BOARDED a plane for Paris, bound for the French premiere of Françoise Sagan’s “sex and poison” shocker, Le Rendez-Vous Manque — The Broken Date.

What the Ballet-Theatre Francais showed me — and what they’ll show similarly thinking viewers in Granada’s 35-minute Chelsea at Nine excerpt on Tuesday — was that ballet-wise, I’ve been bemused for years by milk-and-water stuff. Their production is fantastic and shocking and daring and as virile as it comes.

From London to Paris I am given the whole story by an American woman who had seen the first night in Monte Carlo a few weeks earlier.

“It’s this way, honey” — and I’ll shorten the story to necessities. “The man falls for a married woman. They have an affaire. She promises that if she meets him in his room later, it will mean she’s left her husband.

“While he’s hanging around waiting, his friends, high-spirited kids, stage a surprise party — real rock n’ roll stuff. And he gets vamped in a bathroom by a sexy bit of goods. Dunno how it got past the censor.

“His lady is late getting to him, and … Gee, I’d better not tell you the end where he takes the poison. That would spoil it for you.”

Backstage I meet the fabulous 22-year-old Sagan. Holding a big bouquet she’s so quiet, almost mousey, I mistake her for a flower delivery girl! She is tiny. Stilt heels push her up to 5ft 6in. Careless-cut blonde hair. Two deep dimples whenever, as often happens, she smiles. And the minute she speaks there is a supreme confidence about her.

“I write the ballet very quick. The changes take a long time. In Monte Carlo it is seen by very old people. They do not understand the young ones … pfui! Look for scandal, and one will always find it.”

I ask why romance, often illicit, plays a big part in her writings. “Perhaps I am a romantic person,” she murmurs, thinks again, dimples, and adds: “perhaps it is life. I write of real people.”

I speak to Noëlle Adam, who is involved with Vladimir Skouratoff in the bathroom scene. She’s so curvy that even the shapeless raincoat she is wearing looks interesting. Provocatively pretty, the blonde is starring in French movies — and turning down Hollywood ones because she will not sign a seven-year contract.

“Eet is not shocking. Zose nudes in movies — zey are shocking,” she counter attacks, her dancing brown eyes flashing a challenge.

Skouratoff wanders in, and her challenge is not accepted. “Not a shocking ballet,” he insists. “Carmen is shocking. Zis is nozzing. Good publicity, zat is all.”

Skouratoff. dark haired, intense and very masculine, was born in Paris of Russian parents. This is his first modern ballet, and part of it gave him a tough time. “Ze rock ‘n’ roll, it is ver’ difficult. Ze body movements are all different.” He leaves, shoulders squared back, every pace a ballet move rather than just a step forward.

The other principal, Toni Lander, is a slender blonde from Denmark. She does not think the ballet shocking, and she does not think the jazz scene is really ballet. In which she agrees with Skouratoff but is at variance with Noëlle Adam.

The bathroom scene was the one that had to be changed after the Monte Carlo opening.

Changed? Says Sagan: “It is longer. The ending is different since he now rejects the vamp.”

Shocking? Admitted choreographer John Taras: “We went as far as possible — without breaking the law.”

The post The Sagan Ballet Sizzles at Nine! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THHERE are right times and wrong times for making admissions. David Jacobs, host and star of Granada’s Make Up Your Mind every Monday, just picked the wrong one.

We were on the premises of a London firm that specialises in hiring to the theatrical profession every kind of “prop,” from 17th century chintz curtains (if they had chintz in those days) to spindly-legged contemporary armchairs.

David was there at my invitation – to see just how good he is at valuing objects, which is the torture he puts contestants through. He’d just picked up a natty piece of antique china, worth something like £120. Balancing it on two fingers, he said:

“I’ve had to take out an insurance policy against breaking things. I’m always liable to bust something when I’m snooping around looking for objects for the programme.”

The silence that followed was broken by a swishing sound… the manager of the store breaking through the sound barrier in an effort to reach David before his insurance premium became due!

Happy David Jacobs. (Happier insurance company.) He didn’t break, smash, drop, knock over or even dislodge a single item during our get-together. And, take note: when our session was over, I had the impression that if David were to appear as a contestant in his own show, he’d walk off with all the prizes.

We started quizzing him with a German beer mug (empty). “Had one, not as old as this, on the programme,” said David. “I remember somebody from British European Airways winning it. I’d say this in worth £4.” The value turned out to be a fiver.

He picked up a piece of china with an “N” stamped underneath it. “Napoleon?” I asked, confidently showing off.

“Made in a Naples factory,” corrected David, who was rapidly beginning to emerge as an expert … especially on antiques. (Later I found they are his hobby… he fills his house with them.)

Here at Old Times Furnishing, a Chinese wall drape, containing every colour of the rainbow, was the next test. He classified it as “not worth a great deal really – say £20.” He was a fiver out. And that took us to a French workbox – and a catch question.

“Not worth a light,” claimed David, breezily. “This is not the original top. Instead of this flower motif there should be a Sevres plaque. The rest is genuine, but the funny top makes it worthless.”

My deep-laid trap had gone awry. The man knows his stuff.

On modern furniture – although he doesn’t particularly care for anything contemporary – he was right on the market. Within ten shillings on a mahogany sideboard. Within half-a-crown on an ordinary chair. Five bob out on an armchair. Bang on the mark for a mattress.

We tried antiques again… weapons this time. He picked a deadly looking sword from a batch of them, swished it through the air, tried the edge and complained: “It’s not very sharp.”

It wasn’t. But as a valuer, David Jacobs is.

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