It was in 1937 that 16-year-old Mick Crossley saw the chorus singer Florrie Forde at the Palace Theatre in Bradford. It triggered a lifelong love of the variety theatre which he continued to pursue at the nearby Alhambra after the Palace closed in 1938.
"I had the pleasure of theatregoing in what we call the Golden Days of Variety, seeing the great dance bands, the illusionists, comedians, vocalists and speciality acts of the day," writes the 86-year-old ex-policeman in the introduction to All for a Laugh, the splendid book he has co-written and had published privately.
Mick's main interest, though, was comedy and he began to collect press cuttings and magazine articles on comedians and comedy acts with a view to collating the information in book form. His efforts have finally made it into print with the help of Blackpool theatre historian Barry Band, who has added dozens of stars from sitcoms, the legit theatre and contemporary comedy.
Together they've assembled the biographies (sometimes potted, sometimes quite expansive) of more than 500 British comedy performers from the early years of the last century to the present day. Given that both men are sticklers for accuracy, it's a marvellous, authoritative reference work, packed with highly-readable detail including local connections where possible.
From it, for instance, I was able to learn a great deal more about Harry Korris, the former concert-party entertainer who my grandmother worked (and flirted) with during her brief career as a pierrot before the First World War. All I knew about him other than what my grandmother used to tell us about him was that he found national fame during the Second World War on the radio with a show called Happidrome.
Thanks to this book I now know much more - including that after beginning his show-business career in Douglas (he was born in the Isle of Man) he was seen by promoter Will Ambro and booked for various venues in Bradford and Shipley. From there his success took him to Morecambe and later to Blackpool, where he lived for nearly 50 years and where his wife, the former soubrette Connie Emerson, became a town councillor.
A learned, too, that Albert Modley, one of the best-liked Northern comics of the 1940s and 1950s famed for his "daftness", was born in Barnsley but moved with his family to Ilkley where his first job was as a railway porter. Finding he had a talent for making his workmates laugh, he began working the local clubs and was spotted by impressario Ernest Binns who hired him to appear in the Arcadian Follies at the South Pier, Blackpool and launched him on his professional career.
The authors of All for a Laugh write: "Small in stature with an ever-smiling face, usually topped by a flat cap, Albert was one of those comics who could make an audience laugh without opening his mouth. He told simple jokes, played the piano, xylophone and drums and often confided to his audience Isn't it grand to be daft?'" And I discovered that Keighley-born Mollie Sugden, best-loved as Mrs Solcombe in Are You Being Served?, became typecast in the "over-fussy" female roles out of which she has made such a successful career after playing snobby neighbour Mrs Crispin in BBC's Hugh and I series from 1962-66.
The book comes bang up-to-date with entries on the likes of Julian Clary, Barry Humphries, Eddie Izzard, Peter Kay ("the comedy sensation of the new millennium") and his sidekick Dave Spikey.
- Copies of All for a Laugh, by Mick Crossley and Barry Band, can be obtained for £15 each, including postage and packing, from Mr Crossley at 10 Flower Haven, Bradford BD9 6LW.
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