Blackpool Showtime Ephemera

Last weekend I was having a root through my "stuff" and came across an old box which had once contained 10"x8" photographic paper. I used to get through quite a lot of these sheets as I used to freelance to local and the odd national magazines.

In the 1980s I must have kept this particular box to store leaflets and pamphlets and posters from Blackpool's theatres. I'll add a few of these latter from 1983 to this article, but apart from shows there were posters from bus companies and advertisements.

Around this time some theatres were finding that the traditional and well established summer season show started to slow down as the summer season progressed. The Central Pier (top photo) for their 1983 show split the season into four and staged different shows for each. We went to see the Bachelors if I remember rightly.

We used to go to the Tower Circus pretty much every year too, but I gave wrestling a miss ever since going with a few mates in Margate around 1972. From our front row seats (that we were pretty excited about) we were able to see easily just how much wind there was between a forearm smash and a chin and also were sadly able to hear one wrestler saying to the other "Corner!" before he grabbed their arm and whizzed them off into the corner post. Sort of put me off wrestling, that. The main bout had been Les Kellett and Jackie Pallo and I'm willing to believe theirs had been a professional bout, but the icing on the cake of disillusionment was after laughing at the little old lady who came down to the ring to wave her umbrella at bad man Pallo, on our way out we saw the promoter paying her...

The Russ Abbott show was hilarious. By this time Russ was already an established household name and we had seen and enjoyed him several times with the comedy group The Black Abbotts.

Over at the Winter Gardens, Paul Daniels was doing his comedy show in the Opera House for the season. I can't remember going to this one - we must have missed at least one of the shows that year...

We did go to this one though! And before anyone scoffs, I have to say that this was in Keith Harris's heyday, but even years after he had hung up his duck we saw him come back to stand in for someone who was ill and that night he was absolutely superb. He was brilliant on stage. Also in the cast of the show was Bobby Crush who had written Orville's Song which went way up the charts and the gorgeous Jacqui Scott who married Keith Harris just before the season began.

I can't remember going to this particular show either, but we certainly saw Bernie Clifton on stage a few times and he was brilliant as well.

And I'll finish this time with the Sunday show from the North Pier. Again we didn't see this show, but Candlewick Green were another comedy group - there were several around this time, along with the Black Abbotts there were the Grumbleweeds, Barron Knights, etc. Anyway I do remember another year when we were sitting on the front row at a Candlewick Green show on the South Pier, being somewhat resigned to find the lead singer, in drag, sitting on my knee as part of the act...

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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!