The public face of Jim Davidson is that of a Jack the Lad comedian whose sometimes saucy stage shows blend with his much-publicised fight against alcoholism and his reputation for the number of marriages he has notched up. Yet divest him of this façade and the real Jim Davidson will stand up and be counted as a champion of Freemasonry who regards the Craft as the crux of his life and is happy to acknowledge becoming a mason not only changed his life but saved it.
    Indeed, he holds the Craft in such high esteem that he is looking forward to studying for a degree in Freemasonry at the recently-opened Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, sponsored by the Marquess of Northampton.
    The Blackheath-born entertainer had his first taste of treading the boards at the age of twelve when he was chosen to appear in Ralph Reader’s Gang Show at the Golders Green Hippodrome when he was given his own spot, telling gags and doing impressions. He then got totally disillusioned with show-business after failing the audition for the part of the Artful Dodger in the movie “Oliver!”. He was thirteen.
    It was by chance that he found his way back into show-business. One Sunday evening he went along to a pub in Woolwich where the regular stand-up comic had not turned up. Pushed into it by his friends, he ended up on stage telling gags... and the audience laughed. From then on he would appear as often as possible in pubs and clubs across London and soon turned professional. Appearing on television’s “New Faces” in 1976 proved to be the turning point for his career and he was quickly starring in his own shows and won the TV Times accolade as “The Funniest Man on Television”. Now he is undoubtedly one of the top comedians in the United Kingdom.
    There have not been any masonic connections in his life, and he only joined Chelsea Lodge eleven years ago because a couple of his friends were in the lodge and he “felt left out”. It was Laurie Mansfield, his manager, who told him he would only get out of it as much as he put in; he liked this and so joined. In his own words, he has never looked back.
    What perceptions did he have of Freemasonry before he joined?
    “I thought Freemasons were people like JPs. They were the Establishment if you like; they were the ones who were not getting into trouble! They were the leaders, if you like.”
    What were his first impressions?
    “My first reaction was that we don’t seem to be doing much, just getting people to join.”
    Before the interview had concluded I realised that that was the way he was: forthright, no-holds barred, and if another cliché was required, he pulls no punches. I asked him how his Freemasonry developed.
    “I read all the standard works on Freemasonry, the histories and usual publications, the obvious books concerning Freemasonry, and then about five years ago I started to read other books, The Hiram Key, for instance, which I thought was splendid but they were a bit naughty giving away too many secrets. There’s nothing wrong with having secrets like the rituals but I don’t think we should be so secretive about everything else we do. I re-read the Bible about this time, too, and now I have built up a library of the esoteric. I eventually hope to take a degree in Freemasonry at the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre founded by the Assistant Grand Master, who I feel is doing a first-rate job for the Craft.”
    After a while he added: “I think clamping down does not help; we should be even more open.”
    So just what does Jim Davidson, the man behind the mask, get from Freemasonry?
    “I think that Freemasonry is the chisel to smooth down the rough edges of society; when people talk about it being a secret society well, yes, we do have secrets, but they are there to allow people to fit into society, and we will only give them to people to try to fit into society. I believe Freemasonry finds order from chaos.”
    He is “taking the chair” at the City of Westminster Lodge next year and has undertaken many degrees including Mark Masonry, Knights Templar, Knights of Malta and the Royal Order of Scotland, about which he said proudly: “I love this very much. I have a bit of Scottish blood.”
    He began to reflect on his fascination for the historical and esoteric aspects of the Craft and said he believed its origins started almost at the time of the pyramids and does not think it is much at all to do with freestone-masons and the like. “Eventually it came through the Knights Templar to what we have today” he entrusted.
    So what had Freemasonry done for him?
    “I need a set of rules.” he told me, “As a person I suffered from drinking a lot and Freemasonry helped me to stop. I try to live my life today as the Freemasonry Book of Rules. I practise Freemasonry’s concepts and indeed, every morning I practise and endeavour to live my life as a true Freemason. It was the ideals of Freemasonry that made me see sense and stopped me from drinking. I was killing myself and now I feel we should all help other people to overcome their problems.”
    He elaborated by mentioning that at Chelsea Lodge he sat on a committee where a prospective candidate was being interviewed. “This guy had a lot of misbehaviour up until 18 (he is a famous boxer),” he explained, “and I said if we could not get this man in, who had promised to be good, we were nothing more than a golf club. We should help him to help himself and give him the opportunity to let Freemasonry help him.”
    He returned to his views on lodges merely getting candidates through degrees, saying, “I think that all it needs for a lot of lodges to get a candidate through their first and second degrees is an empty date in the diary. To my mind they should serve their apprenticeship for as long as possible. They should learn all the aspects of the Craft; if it takes three years then so be it. Freemasonry is a learning process and it should not be a race to see how quickly an Apprentice can be passed through.

Proud

He was modest when I asked him to tell me about some of the work he had undertaken for Freemasonry. He mentioned visiting a Freemasonry-funded home for the elderly in Essex and speaking to the residents there. “That’s the sort of thing we should all do.” he said. He also mentioned ‘doing a show’ for the Marquess of Northampton to raise money. He did not mention the many thousands of pounds this raised through his talents. However, he did cite that he endeavoured to turn up to support any Freemasons he knew whenever he could, such as a Third Degree ceremony for a 53 year old friend at another lodge in the near future. “I’ll be there to support him. That’s how it should be.”
    There was a pause for obvious reflection, before he pronounced: “I am very proud to be a Freemason. It is the light from the dark; for me it is the resurrection. I get told off for saying it sometimes, but it is a religion. It is for me anyway.”
    We discussed some of the people who knock Freemasonry and he spoke of Chris Mullin MP. “I wrote to him and invited him to lunch so I could explain what Freemasonry means to me, and said if he wanted to know what it is all about he should come and find out and he would see we were fellow human beings.”
    And what happened?
    “He did not reply.”

“The Kingdom of God is within”

So is Freemasonry going the right way?
    “We need to take on the role of a probation service in a way within the ranks of Freemasonry. We need to help people more. For example, a friend of mine has just found himself in Ford Open Prison for fraud and we should be helping people like him to go back into society. We should work a little harder on it.”
    I asked him to elaborate on his religious views and he told me, “I went to a Catholic school (St. Austen’s in Charlton). I was a lapsed C of E until I became a Gnostic Christian. I found Christianity through knowledge, not through faith. It is not difficult to find if the Kingdom of God is within.”
    What then of the future?
    On the professional side, he can only go from strength to strength. He opened a brand new musical based on the life of Jerry Lee Lewis called “Great Balls of Fire” in the West End in October and his hugely successful Jim Davidson’s Generation Game and Big Break keep pulling in viewers by the many millions. Of the Freemasonry side, he said “Once I am in the chair at my lodge and I have attained my degree in Freemasonry, then Freemasonry had better watch out - we’ll really be coming out of the closet!”
    Finally, I asked him if he knew a joke about Freemasonry. He thought for a while, then laughed. “Er, no. I can’t recall one. Mind you, I have a terrible memory sometimes. I was carrying out Senior Warden duties recently and had my words hidden everywhere around me!”
    After an intriguing discussion it was obvious that the public and private sides of the man are as different as chalk and cheese. He is as committed a show-biz professional as he is a committed Freemason. He is the kind of person who puts everything, plus a further ten per cent, into anything he undertakes and his contagious enthusiasm for the Craft certainly gets that.