Funny Girl(129)

I’m in a dressing room in Eastbourne, she said. (Not out loud. That would be mad. But she was talking, she knew that, not writing or thinking.) Tony and Bill are out in the theatre somewhere. They’ve written a play about Barbara and Jim, and the young producer is currently walking up and down the prom, barking at anyone old enough to remember us, because the theatre is going to be half-empty tonight. The play is much better than I thought it was going to be. It’s funny, and sad – like life. And Clive is trying to chat me up, and I may well … She stopped herself. Dennis didn’t want to hear about all that, and she didn’t want to tell him, and she didn’t know what there was to tell him anyway. So we’re all here, she went on. And we’ll all be here tomorrow night, and the night after. And if I can’t be at home with you, then I want to be with them.

This wasn’t quite true, she realized. She didn’t want to be at home with Dennis; she wanted to be here, in Eastbourne, with Dennis and the others, or better still in a BBC studio, with Clive next door and Dennis prowling around outside. She didn’t want 1964 back; she wasn’t nostalgic. She just wanted to work. She picked up the script again. There was something she could do with the teapot in the opening scene, she was positive. She could get a laugh that nobody was expecting, and they’d be off and running.





Picture Credits


The publishers are grateful for permission to reproduce the following images:

Miss Blackpool beauty contest ? Homer Sykes/Getty Images

Derry & Toms department store logo ? Clifford Ling/Associated Newspapers/Rex

Sabrina advert ? culture-images/Lebrecht Music & Arts

Talk of the Town theatre ? Associated Newspapers/Rex

Voice Improvement Programme, Lesson 3. Image courtesy of ? Bob Lyons

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson ? Cyril Maitland/Mirrorpix

Gambols strip ? Copyright 1967 Express Newspapers. Distributed by Knight Features. Reproduced by permission

Tom Sloan at the Eurovision Song Contest ? BBC Photo Library

Mick Jagger at the Trattoria Terrazza ? Mirrorpix

Till Death Us Do Part cast ? BBC/Photoshot

Lucille Ball shooting Lucy in London ? Bob Willoughby/MPTV, Camera Press, London

Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams ? Central Press/Stringer/Hulton/Getty Images

Book cover ? Penguin Books, designed by John Hamilton

Hair cast ? Central Images/Getty Images





Acknowledgements


Thanks to Joanna Prior, Venetia Butterfield, Anna Ridley, Lesley Levene, John Hamilton, Georgia Garrett, Geoff Kloske and – one last time, sadly – Tony Lacey. The books of Graham McCann were invaluable, especially Spike & Co., which is highly recommended to anyone interested in British comedy of the period. And though David Kynaston hasn’t yet reached the 1960s at the time of writing, his three brilliant social histories, Austerity Britain, Family Britain and Modernity Britain, were an inspiration for Funny Girl. Without John Forrester, Sarah Geismar, Sandra Verbeckiene, Hayden Thomas and Sebastien Alleaume, no work would be done, ever. And finally, the work of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson has been an enormous influence on my own writing, and there are lots of ways in which not only this book but my previous books wouldn’t have existed without them.