1999 tour, featuring the Roly Polys, Craig Douglas and the Bachelors.
Dates and Locations
| 6th – 10th April | Wolverhampton Grand Theatre |
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| 15th – 17th April | Crewe Lyceum Theatre | |
| 23rd – 25th April | Hackney Empire Theatre | |
| 26th – 27th April | Swansea Grand Theatre | |
| 28th April | Treorchy Park and Dare Theatre | |
| 29th April – 1st May | Hanley Theate Royal | |
| 3rd – 5th May | Llandudno North Wales Theatre | |
| 6th – 8th May | Hull New Theatre | |
| 13th – 15th May | Darlington Civic Theatre |
Running Order
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Act One Overture Johnny Dennis Anne Duval The Roly Polys Luciano Fiorelli The Bachelors with John Stokes
Act Two Entr’acte Johnny Dennis Craig Douglas Cannon and Ball Finale |
Programme
Cannon and Ball
Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball are Britain’s funniest and most successful double act. In a career spanning over 30 years they have achieved a string of honours that puts them among the all-time greats of show business, and given millions a great night out.
On television they have starred in their own series practically every year since 1979, and have ‘guested’ on all major shows including Wogan, Parkinson, Sunday Night at the Palladium, as well as several Royal Variety-Shows. They have featured in a BBC documentary, Funny Business, based on double acts, which also included footage on Martin and Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, and Morecambe and Wise.
Recently, they have appeared on many major TV shows, including The Des O’Connor Show, Noel’s House Party and Talking Telephone Numbers.
To add to their pedigree, they remain the only act to have won three separate National Club Awards, and have been named as the Variety Club Personalities of the Year. Their feature film The Boys in Blue, in addition to its cinema success, has gone on to become a video best-seller. The boys have also been the subject of This Is Your Life.
During 1993 they were offered the chance to play a season in the USA – Orlando in Florida was the location. Their three-month season was such a success that they were immediately re-booked for April, May and June of 1994, starring at the King Henry’s Feast, Orlando, making several US television appearances during the same period.
As the undisputed Kings of Live Entertainment, Cannon and Ball have set standards that will never be equalled.
During the 1970s they built a strong reputation around the UK cabaret club circuit for being a great live act. They also toured extensively in the hotel circuits of Australia and South Africa.
In 1980 they ‘topped the bill’ for the very first time at the North Pier, Blackpool where they played to a capacity business for 22 weeks, a feat they surpassed in 1991 when they returned to the Pier and celebrated their 25th anniversary with a 25-week sell-out season.
Live theatre has always been what Tommy and Bobby do best; even with their TV and film experience, a live audience still gives them a ‘buzz’. Tommy and Bobby have broken records in theatres all over the UK, including London.
In 1981 they played a six-week season at the Dominion Theatre, when every seat was sold before the show opened. In 1988 their pantomime Babes in the Wood broke all the previous pantomime records at the world-famous London Palladium, where Cannon and Ball created the record for the largest box office amount taken in one week in British theatre history. With panto, summer seasons and shows across the world, Tommy and Bobby are still packing them in.
The Bachelors with John Stokes
John Stokes with Con and Dec Cluskey formed the original Bachelors in the 1960s and had many hits, including ‘I Believe’, ‘Diane’ and ‘Charmaine’.
The group went on to become one of the most successful acts throughout the sixties, seventies and into the eighties, when the group finally broke up.
Since the break-up, John has often been approached to start another Bachelors group to try to recapture the wonderful original sound.
The first recruit was Kevin Neil, a long-term friend and ex-guitarist with the Karl Denver Trio who also had many hits throughout the sixties.
Next, to finalise the trio, was Jonathan Young, a singer from Belfast who for many years has pursued a solo career. Jonathan has worked throughout Britain and has enjoyed great success in the United States.
Already the group are in great demand and are currently putting the finishing touches to a new single, with a planned album to follow.
The Roly Polys
The Roly Polys started in 1982 in a Les Dawson TV show, and since then have got bigger, in more ways than one! (all-round entertainers).
They are big favourites in pantomime, and also very busy in cabaret, summer season, television and commercials.
They have entertained many numbers of royalty, and also appeared at two Royal Variety Performances.
The Roly Poly cabaret act received the Club Mirror Award for Comedy Act of the Year, and their performances have taken them to many places, including South America and Japan!
The idea for the act was originated by Les Dawson especially for his BBC2 series, and, of the three original members, Mo did an act with her husband, Marie was a choreographer, and Sue had a dancing school. They are now joined by Sandy and Pat.
In December 1991 Mo was awarded the top accolade of show business by being chosen for TV’s This Is Your Life.
Christmas season 1992 they appeared with Michael Barrymore in Aladdin at the Opera House Manchester with enormous success, as they did in the West End of London at the Dominion previously.
They continue to raise the roofs of theatres around the country in pantomime, as well as undertaking a heavy schedule of cabaret spots and personal appearances.
Craig Douglas
It takes great talent to reach the very pinnacle of success in show business and enjoy acclaim the world over. It takes even greater talent to consolidate that success to remain a star for so many years…and still be very much in ascendancy.
Craig Douglas has talent in abundance. From a modest beginning he has carved an outstanding career all over the world, endearing himself to audiences everywhere he appears, and with a track record and reputation second to none.
His success has been built on hard work and endeavour, a natural singing voice of charm and maturity and more; a unique ability to remain one step ahead of the pack, knowing exactly when to diversify his talents, to move on and open up new and exciting showbusiness avenues to explore and enjoy. Quite simply, he has never been afraid of new challenges, which have paid off dividends over the years.
He was interested in music and singing as a youngster, and at the age of fifteen he entered a local talent contest singing ‘Mary’s Boy Child’. While many of his fellow contestants performed more fashionable rock numbers, he walked off with the first prize of £5. It was the spark that set him on the road to a successful musical career.
Within a few months he was recording for Decca Records and appearing on television in such shows as Six-Five-Special. Then a switch of record label to Top Rank heralded a change of luck. His first hit single for the new company ‘Teenager in Love’, a cover version of Dion’s American hit, reachied number 13 in the British charts in the summer of 1959. It was hastily followed by ‘Only Sixteen’ which went on to top the chart two months later, and proved the start of a highly successful recording career.
Over the coming years, Craig Douglas was rarely out of the best-selling lists, with an enviable string of hit singles to his name: ‘Pretty Blue Eyes’, ‘The Heart of a Teenage Girl’, ‘A Hundred Pounds of Clay’, ‘Time’, ‘When My Little Girl Is Smiling’, ‘Our Favourite Melodies’ and ‘Oh Lonesome Me’. He regularly undertook major concert tours and appeared on television, soon establishing himself as one of Britain’s most celebrated singers. On one particular tour he appeared in concert in Liverpool and was backed on stage by an up-and-coming local group called the Beatles.
Yet it was the emergence of the Beatles and their contemporaries in the mid-1960s, when popular music took off in a different direction, that brought its own change of direction for Craig himself. Before long, he moved almost effortlessly into films, stage work and television, and demonstrated a remarkable versatility as new and lucrative markets were developed internationally. He toured the world making major concert and cabaret appearances, and gaining new and appreciative audiences.
Since then, his career has flourished and thrived in no uncertain terms, and he continues to do what he does so well-and what he has done with great style for over thirty years: to entertain and bring happiness to many millions of people.
What’s more, he has never looked back. Today, Craig Douglas is established as a singer and entertainer of great distinction, great charm and sheer class. And, really, there’s no end to what he might achieve in the future.
Luciano Fiorelli
Luci was born in Castellina, a very picturesque town in the Tuscany, Northern Italy, where his parents had a small farm.
Luci emigrated to England and settled in London, taking work in an Italian restaurant in Soho.
Because of his friendly nature and inborn talents singing opera arias, impromptu regional dialects and impersonatinjg the voices of countless film stars and TV personalities, he has gained for himself an enviable reputation.
Luci has an uncanny insight of human behaviour which has led him into some funny and precarious situations but, because of his inherited Tuscany humour, he always takes control of predicaments.
Meeting up with Luci is entering the world of entertainment, where the stars constantly appear before your very eyes; the “inimitable” maestro, the one and only “Luci”.
Luci wishes you to be a part of his show, where concentrated humour and educated fun flows out in a constant, provocative and infectious manner.
Who is the real Luci? the singer, the impressionist, the philosopher? Who knows? Perhaps there is a little “Luci” in each and every one of us, ready to be identified in his singing, or by natural humour, or through impressions.
Luci is indeed a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered.
Anne Duval
Born in Ewloe, North Wales, Anne Duval has worked regularly in the theatre and cabaret supporting star names including Jimmy Cricket, Frankie Vaughan, Tom O’Connor, Charlie Williams, Ronnie Hilton, John Hanson, Norman Collier, Stan Boardman and Edmund Hockridge.
In addition to appearing in the music hall many times at the famous City Varieties in Leeds, Anne has also toured in music hall in the USA and Sweden, and has appeared in cabaret in Malta, Spain, Sicily and the Canary Isles.
Anne has appeared in twenty-two pantomimes (including fifteen as Principal Boy), with star names including Bill Maynard, Ken Goodwin, Geoffrey Hughes, the Bachelors, Stu Francis, Jimmy Cricket, Keith Harris and Paul Shane. In recent years Anne has played character roles, including the Wicked Witch in Mother Goose, Queen Natasha in Snow White and the Empress in Aladdin.
Sixteen summer season shows as leading lady have found Anne returning to most venues for a second or third time, including Great Yarmouth, Douglas (Isle of Man), Whitby, Skegness and Llandudno.
Versatility is certainly a good word to describe Anne’s career, which has also included leading roles in both plays and musical productions, including The Hollywood Musical, The World of Rodgers and Hammerstein and The Ivor Novello Story.
Johnny Dennis
Johnny Dennis has been playing the role of Music Hall Chairman for over 21 years.
He started at the famous Players’ Theatre in London, and still bangs the gavel there occasionally. His work has taken him from Australia to Alaska. He has cracked those terrible jokes at the Gala Nights at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York – and survived!
As an actor he has played in the Whitehall farce with Lord Rix, and Shakespeare with Sir Anthony Hopkins at Chichester Festival Theatre. His most enjoyable television appearances have been with Ken Dodd, Doctor Who, a manic compere in Surgical Spirit (typecasting?), and the flower-loving PC Yates in The Bill.
He loves filming – who wouldn’t, with Elizabeth Taylor in The Young Toscanini directed by Franco Zeffirelli, or with-Christopher Reeve in The Great Escape and The Final Chapter in the former Yugoslavia.
Johnny says two of his greatest honours have been to appear in the Royal Variety Performance with Danny La Rue in 1978, and to be asked by the late Barney Colehan to ‘chair’ at the Leeds City Varieties.
Johnny is a mad cricketer – you should see him play! He is a proud member of the Lord’s Taverners. Johnny is also President of the Green Room Club, the famous actors’ club just off London Strand.
The David Hale Trio
David was born and bred in Rotherham and started learning the piano at the age of six. After training with the Royal School of Music, he embarked on a varied career encompassing television, radio, cabaret, cruising, and David’s first love, the theatre. He has worked with many well known stars, and has played in all the major theatres in Great Britain. David will be seeing the new century in at the Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage as Co-Musical Director for the production of Aladdin, his 23rd pantomime.
Highlights of his career include conducting a 45-piece pit orchestra at the Birmingham Hippodrome in the presence of HRH Princess Anne, and conducting for Dickie Henderson, Telly Savalas and Dame Vera Lynn at the Gloucester Hall, Jersey with the Duke and Duchess of Kent in attendance. David was also Musical Director for Croft and Perry’s stage version of Hi-De-Hi! at the Victoria Palace London, Pavilion Theatre Bournemouth and the Blackpool Opera House, amassing 532 performances! David is once again looking forward to Brian Goddard’s nationwide spring tour of A Night at the Music Hall, and is looking forward to working once again with his two friends and colleagues, our keyboard players, Gregg Arrowsmith, and Jeff Parker, our percussionist.
Jeff is no stranger to the West End, having played in the pit orchestra for musicals such as the revival of Irene. Gregg will shortly be MD for the new musical play Noel and Gertie, a tribute to Noel Coward and Gertie Millar.
All three musicians will then join forces once again to play for the pantomime Aladdin, hoping that the production will be as successful as their collaboration was on last year’s production, Cinderella.