So, I was thinking, as I so often do, of the golden age of the Bodger’s Spinney Variety Theatre, and then, over at Ragbag, I came upon this marvellous list of music hall acts:
“The joy, perhaps as much in memory as at the time, was in the variousness: the magician Ali Bongo (‘The Shriek of Araby’), the illusionist Cingallee, the pigeon act Hamilton Conrad, the animal and bird impersonator Percy (‘I Travel the Road’) Edwards, the drag act Ford and Sheen, the mind-reader The Amazing Fogel, the lady whistler Eva Kane, the male impersonator Hetty King, the foot spinner and raconteur Tex McLeod, the yodelling accordionist Billy Moore, the human spider Valantyne Napier, the mental telepathists The Piddingtons, the novelty xylophonist Reggie Redcliffe, the speciality dancer Bunty St Clair, the pianist Semprini, the aereliste Olga Varona, and many, many others – inhabitants of a lost world.”
Later today I will be attempting to contact The Piddingtons, via mental telepathy of course, and I shall keep you informed of the ensuing revelations.
Good luck with The Piddingtons.
I shall be hoping to contact Bunty St Clair … not, I hasten to add, in any way motivated by the intimate description sublimally implicit in her anagrammatical stage-name (to publish which would violate the treasured chastity of Hooting Yard).
Should anyone wish to be entertained by a yodelling accordionist might I recommend a visit to the City Folk Club in Chichester where Ray Hedges regularly gets down with his bad self in the aforementioned manner.
(O.K. he plays a melodion rather than accordion but I defy anyone to tell the difference on a dark night.)
I’d give a week or two before traveling any distance as Ray is having by-pass surgery at the moment.
O.S.M. B:52
I know Billie Moore he is my Wife’s cousin. he was an exeptional Yodeller and Acordion player.
He came from a show buissness Family, his mother was cissy cave and father william moore, who appeared on much radio during the 2nd world war.
He has two 2nd Cousins still in the buisness know as Bradley and Stewart James,t/a The James Boys.
Great songwriters and record pruducers they wrote No 1 hit Every loser wins for Nick berry