It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!
In spite of holidays when I was free to visit London theatres and explore the countryside, I spent four very miserable years as a colonial at an English school.
During the Great Depression, when people laughed their worries disappeared. Audiences loved these funny men. I decided to become one.
There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.
I grew up in Solihull, on the edge of what was then the Birmingham conurbation. It was a good place to write comedy from. I didn't feel allegiance to anything. I didn't have working-class pride or upper-class superiority.
I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.
Sometimes it does me good to look back at the days when the living wasn't so good. I remember in 1945 the dressing-rooms were gone, the park was in ruins, no stand, nothing.
As a child marooned in a post-war South London backwater with no ready cash and a bafflingly dysfunctional family, I had to glean my amusement wherever I could.
Britain's a funny place and there's a lot of funny people coming out of there and a lot of people are finding mediums to express themselves.
It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything.