George Formby

David Bret

296pp, Robson Books, £8.99



How many people went to George Formby's funeral? Oh, go on, have a guess. Fifteen? Two hundred? What about 150,000? It's a staggering figure, but then Formby was a hugely popular star. He made 19 films between 1934 and 1946, and was British cinema's top attraction for six consecutive years. In 1941, when he signed a contract with Columbia Pictures for more than £500,000, he was the world's fifth biggest star, ahead of Errol Flynn, Bette Davis and even Bing Crosby. His record "Leaning on a Lamp-Post" sold 150,000 copies within a month of its release in September 1937.

He was dined, if not wined, in the north African desert by Field Marshal Montgomery while entertaining the Eighth Army; he opened his first show there for 10,000 troops by looking around him and declaring "Ee, it's just like Blackpool sands." They loved him. He owned, at one time or another, 130 cars, but that was his only real indulgence besides showgirls. He smoked 40 "coffin nails" (Capstan Full Strength and Woodbines) a day from the age of 12. His favourite food was beef-dripping toast. He was often ill. And, despite that wonderfully wide, goofy, gormless smile, he was rarely happy.

I lay on the floor at home and listened twice to a compilation of Formby's greatest hits while reading David Bret's thoughtful book about the life and unhappiness of an entertainer who would surely never make it anywhere near the top now. What chance would there be in 2001 for a northern music-hall turn, a funny-looking toothy little chap from Wigan, when stars are either groomed, polished and perfect or heavy, tough and mean?

Formby's talent may be a period piece, and yet - ee - the moment you hear his nudging, winking voice chirruping from the stereo's speakers accompanied by the high-pitch jingle-jangle of his ukulele, despite Elvis, the Beatles, pop, punk and Posh, you're hooked. Formby's timing is terrific. Words tumble and trip from his tongue. They are clever and funny:

The blushing bride she looks divine

The bridegroom he is doing fine

I'd rather have his job than mine

When I'm cleaning windows...

And they're often saucy, if not always downright rude:

I've got a picture of a nudist camp

In my little snapshot album

All very jolly but a trifle damp

In my little snapshot album

There's Uncle Dick without a care

Discarding his underwear

But his watch and chain still dangle there

In my little snapshot album . . .

The lyrics get a lot closer to the bone in "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", "You Can't Keep a Growing Lad Down" and "With My Little Ukulele in My Hand" (I'm sure you've got the idea by now), but although some were labelled NFTBB ("not fit to be broadcast") by Lord Reith's BBC, the royal family couldn't get enough of him. It was only ever a certain breed of southerner - the kind that Formby's formidable wife, Beryl, labelled "stuck-up so-and-sos" or "snotty-nosed" - who looked down on a man with that rare ability to walk on to a stage and make them laugh.

I was lucky enough to see Tommy Cooper live, so I can imagine the kind of effect Formby might have had on an audience. Like Cooper, he was an oddity, an outsider who was often genuinely naive. I love the story Bret tells of Formby stepping on to the stage of the Royal Alexander Theatre, Toronto, in 1949 and, before he'd played a note, calling to a middle-aged chap in the stalls, "Ee, Walter, is that really you?" It was a pal from Blackpool who had emigrated years before; Formby invited him to dinner after the show. It's not the sort of thing that's meant to happen, especially not now that performers and audience blow their separate bubbles.

Formby's naivety went hand-on-ukulele with an ingenuous common decency. On tour in South Africa in 1946, Formby played to black audiences despite threats from Daniel Malan, head of the National Party and one of the chief architects of apartheid. At the end of one show a three-year-old girl presented "the wife" (Beryl) with a box of chocolates. Beryl gave her a big kiss and handed her on to George for another. Malan had the couple thrown out of the country. "Never come back here again," he bellowed. Beryl gave as good as she got. She told Malan: "Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?"

Thora Hird, the evergreen Lancastrian actress, said he was sent by God, but if Formby was a celebrity, he didn't act like one. When he turned down work, which was rarely, it was for the most homely of reasons. A lucrative 20-week tour of Australia fell through in 1959 because George and Beryl were worried about the health of their 15-year-old dog, Willie Waterbucket. They couldn't leave him.

Where did the modesty come from? The same source, perhaps as Formby's unhappiness, a deep-rooted insecurity that led to a spell in a psychiatric hospital in York and his sexless marriage to Beryl. Beryl was effectively his manager, the indomitable force that drove him onwards and upwards:

In my profession, I'll work hard

I know I'll never stop

I'll climb this blinking ladder

Till I get right to the top...

Beryl Ingham was a pretty clog-dancer from Accrington. Bossy, determined, driven, she married George, who was potty about her, on sufferance. She didn't like sleeping with him and, determined not to have children, had a hysterectomy just to make sure. It was Beryl who got George to play what became his signature ukulele, Beryl who won him his first recording contract, with Edison-Bell Winner in 1926, Beryl to whom he clung until she died of cancer on Christmas Day, 1960. Two months later George got engaged to Pat Howson, a teacher 20 years his junior. It must have seemed, to borrow his catchphrase, that it had "turned out nice again". He died, quite worn out, two days before the wedding.

Formby's insecurity stemmed ultimately, says Bret, from the uncertainty he felt about stepping into his father's shoes after George Formby Sr's death in 1921. The Wigan Nightingale and self- proclaimed "inventor" of Wigan Pier (his favourite bathing spot, he told his audiences; it was a landing stage on the Leeds-Liverpool Ship Canal) had been a big music-hall draw. The illegitimate son of a Lancashire prostitute, he certainly came up the hard way, and saw that George, the fourth of his 13 children with a respectable Catholic lass, Ivy Caston, did the same. Beryl was George's frustration, but also his salvation. He got to the top of that blinking ladder all right. Higher than dad. His records still sell; he still makes us laugh from beyond his Warrington grave.