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Showing posts with the label Buses

Buses’ star ‘an inspiration’ for Canning Town’s Madalaine

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It’s a long way in many senses from London’s East End of London to the tranquil coastal setting of Budleigh Salterton. But for thousands of fans who look back with nostalgia at the age of British sitcoms like The Rag Trade and On The Buses   the little East Devon town is making quite a name for itself. An exhibition at the local museum, free vintage bus rides and pebble art on Budleigh’s famous beach… it’s all to mark the centenary of Reg Varney, better known by many including more than 12.5K members of the On the Buses Fan Club as Cockney comic bus driver Stan Butler. There’s even a musical show in his honour, staged at the local Football Club. But  Before The Buses, as the show is called, deliberately focuses on his little-known early years when he started out as an 15-year-old self-taught pianist and singer playing in the tough environment of working men’s clubs. By pure chance one of the show’s stars, Madalaine Pe...

Shakespeare and On the Buses?

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  This image that I posted on Fairlynch’s Facebook page got a fair bit of interest recently. Yes, ‘there is a connection’ I wrote, but I left it at that. So here’s  a bit of what I’ve found during the research for my forthcoming booklet about Reg Varney which will accompany the 2016 exhibition ‘Our Little Clown’ at Fairlynch Museum.  Yes, Reg did indeed play Shakespeare. Here he is as the clown or ‘wise fool’ Touchstone, a performance for which he won praise in a 1953 production of  As You Like It at the celebrated Mermaid Theatre.  The above booklet, published in 1951 and found among Reg's papers, tells the story of the 20th-century Mermaid Theatre, the life's work of actor Bernard Miles with his wife, Josephine Wilson. His original Mermaid Theatre was a large barn at his house in the St. John's Wood area of London. This seated 200 people, and during 1951 and 1952 ...