Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2015 | Page 14

INTERVIEW

shows at Wembley arena.
“I was still only 15 when dad said he
had a job for me in America” he recalls. “I
told him I needed to stay on at school to
get my GCEs, but his reply was ‘You don’t
need those to work with chimps’. He just
didn’t see the need for schooling, I guess
he saw himself as a self-made man”.
So off David went to the US, where he
spent an eventful three years working as
part of the back-up team for Gene Detroy
and the increasingly famous Marquis
Chimps.
In 1960, the chimps were booked by
Brooke Bond Foods to do a series of
TV commercials for Red Rose Tea –
including a memorable one in which
they performed as a swinging jazz band.
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David’s duties included helping in the
training, along with assistant Norman,
who worked for his father for over 30
years.
It seems Samuel was as tough as a boss
as he was as a father.
“Sometimes I’d go and ask Norman
how to do something and was told by my
dad: ‘Don’t ask the hired help – learn it
yourself, the way I had to’.

White knuckle ride
David also recalls the hair-raising
experience of being told by his father
to transport eight chimps right across
America in an articulated lorry.
“I was only 17 and we’d just finished

a gig in the Latin quarter of New York,”
he says. “We had another booking in
Hollywood four days later, and because
my dad had something else to do, I was
left in charge of an articulated truck and
eight chimps to drive right across the US
in four days”.
To help the teenage driver keep awake,
his dad helpfully gave him some pills,
which David later suspected to have been
amphetamines. “Apart from short stops
to feed the chimps, I only stopped once,
in Texas,” he says.
Not surprisingly, once he reached his
destination he promptly slept for 24
hours, totally missing the show.
What with white-knuckle experiences
like that, and being bitten by the chimps
more than once during training, it’s
hardly surprising that David didn’t fancy
following in his father’s footsteps.
What he did fancy doing was becoming
a comedian – and he began to try and
plough his own furrow onto the stage.
In fact he had even secured himself
a booking at the Thunderbird Hotel
in Las Vegas, where he met legendary
comedian George Burns.
“My father put a stop to that,” he says.
“He cancelled my booking and said I was
going with him. I think he just wanted to
hand the business on to me, but it really
wasn’t for me”.
The final break from show business