Dailey and Wayne Revisited

There's a couple of entries about the comedy act Dailey and Wayne on the blog and occasionally they strike a chord with someone.

Recently it was Karen who wrote all the way from Melbourne in Australia to say:

"Dear John

I stumbled upon your page today, after trying to find something about Dailey & Wayne.

I inherited a pile of old programmes and amongst them was one from 1971's Royal Variety Performance. Inside were several signatures by the appearing acts (including Tommy Cooper!) There was an autographed page, which I have included with this email, of the aforementioned comedians.

I know nothing about them, but thought you may be interested in seeing it.

Regards,
Karen"

Well thanks very much Karen for taking the trouble to write and send the photo. Any more links and memories out there, folks?

Dailey and Wayne [2]

And I've got the spelling right this time too!

I mentioned the 1960s-70s comedy duo Dailey and Wayne quite a while ago after a relative of Billy Wayne sent me a signed photograph of the pair.

Recently Dinah, the daughter of Pat Dailey has been in touch, leaving a number of comments on the post linked above, but she was also kind enough to send me some fabulous memorabilia on the act some of which I reproduce here with her permission.

Having been brought up in a time when Variety was one of the major types of entertainment, both in live theatre and on television, it always seems a shame to me that some of the great acts I remember - even if only vaguely - are never seen or heard about. Variety now seems to mean half entertainment and half showing people on television solely so we can laugh at their naivety and lack of sense of reality on shows like The X-Factor. It's a cross between the exploitation of the likes of the Jeremy Kyle show and Variety.



Some of the posters and programme covers Dinah sent were from shows that my parents had taken us to see, such as the one above right, which starred The Shadows at the ABC Theatre in Great Yarmouth in 1964.



I have a feeling we saw the Val Doonican show at Great Yarmouth too and I remembered with great fondness another show Dinah mentioned - that at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool in 1963 following the theatre's refurbishment and renaming with Cliff Richard as the headlining act. We must have seen that show at least three times that year with various female members of the family swooning...

Pat Dailey is involved in a new website that is currently in development and he and Dinah are involved in charity shows to give artists the experience of some professional productions and a chance to appear at no less than the ultimate starred place on any Variety map - The London Palladium.

So is there any chance of meeting up with Pat and Dinah and having a chat with someone who gave me so much laughter during my childhood that I can remember their names with great affection, even without remembering details of the act? Oh, I do hope so! And dare I wonder whether the world is ready for the band to tread the boards at The Palladium? All will be revealed...

Dailey & Wayne

Quite a while ago, before I started the blog that you are reading, I put up a series of web pages about nostalgia.

They contain my own personal memories of the 1950s and 1960s rather than being another news archive but in one of them where I am recalling theatre and variety acts, I mentioned a comedy duo named Dailey & Wayne, who I remembered seeing in variety shows in Blackpool.

I'd searched the Internet and found nothing about them and so I suppose anyone else searching for them would have eventually found my page listed on Google.

And so I got an email from Claire, who's Dad's cousin was Billy Wayne. I replied asking her if she had a photo of the act as I'd found it impossible to find any and she promised to try to find one. She also mentioned the sad news that Billy had passed on some years ago.

Anyway she was as good as her word and the other day this autographed photo arrived and is now, as far as I know, at time of writing, the only photograph of Dailey & Wayne on the web!