In October 1951 one of the biggest celebrities of British radio entertainment went missing in the course of a railway journey from London to Leeds. His disappearance coincided with Labour's defeat in the general election, and to many people it came as an even greater shock. He had been doing his cheeky-boy routines on the wireless since 1944, and for the past two years had been starring in his own show on the Light Programme and getting a weekly audience approaching 12 million (roughly the same as Coronation Street today). In retrospect and on paper his act may look dull and formulaic: he simply got uppity with a luckless straight man called Peter Brough and showered him with childish insults. But he was able to bring on a troop of co-stars - Max Bygraves ('I've arrived . . . and to prove it, I'm here!'), Tony Hancock, Gilbert Harding, Harry Secombe, Beryl Reid, Bernard Miles and Hattie Jacques, not to mention the pre-teen Julie Andrews - without ever being upstaged. In performance he would always hit the spot.

LRB 10 May 2001 | PDF Download