With gratitude to a posting on the Streatham,Balham & Tooting Memories Facebook Group, talking about the Streatham Odeon, I remembered going to see as a small child, Dick Emery (amongst others) in panto there. I did a bit of Googling to find out about it and found out quite a bit – not least through the blogpost linked above.
So, that year I saw Dick Emery, Joe Brown and no doubt some other names I would now recognise, in a production by Audrey Lupton & Arthur Lane.
An article on It’s Behind You! – Pop Stars In Panto, describes this aspect of Joe Brown’s performance:
In 1968 Joe was at the Odeon Streatham in Cinderella with Dick Emery. Joe played Buttons and as part of his routine to entertain Cinderella he performed a multi instrumental spot. In this he played guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo lutes and even a mandolin!
Is it possible that my later-day love of early music and stringed instruments for the playing thereof was formed all the way back then? Unlikely as I had no memory of Joe Brown’s multi-instrumentation.
More likely is that I caught an earworm at that performance – Joe Brown singing I’m Henery The Eighth, I Am – the hive mind of the Streatham, Balham & Tooting Memories Facebook Group seems pretty sure that Joe sang that song in this panto. For sure I picked it up as a party piece when still a very small nipper – probably at my parents’ behest as they were keen Players’ Theatre-istas before my time and loved that sort of music hall song.
I have found an official review of this panto -in the Guardian – written by an un-woke eleven-year-old named Victoria Bourne:
Victoria Bourne Cinderella Guardian 27 Dec 1968, Fri The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
The thing that made the event especially memorable for me, was being summoned onto the stage by Dick Emery himself and answering some fiendishly difficult questions in a manner that, for some reason, seemed to make the audience laugh.
This occasion might, technically, have been the first time I ever “trod the boards” personally and certainly my first interaction with a professional performer.
I was not to see my fine words dealt with by a professional performer again until 1992, when the late great Chris Stanton (coincidentally another fine comedy actor who latterly did good panto) was the first of many to perform my lyrics in NewsRevue.
So why did Dick Emery pick on me for the honour of joining the cast on stage and being an unwitting, unpaid comic? The answer is lost in the mists of time.
Possibly I waved my hand and shouted “me! me!” more vigorously than anyone else. Or perhaps my mum did the vigorous waving and shouting for me. Or maybe I just looked like the sort of cocky little kid that central casting would have chosen for the role.
We returned the following year to see Peter Noone and Norman Vaughan in Aladdin, but that, as they say, is another story.
I didn’t get summoned to the stage that second time.
What’s become of my pantomime performing career?…
…I should have asked, that following year.
It’s behind you!…
…the audience should have shouted.