The death of Ian Wallace

"Distinguished opera singer and long-running Radio 4 panellist Ian Wallace has died at the age of 90, it was announced today. The singer, also a celebrated raconteur, was well-known to a generation for the performance of his signature tune The Hippopotamus Song, otherwise known as Mud, Glorious Mud."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2009/10/the_death_of_ian_wallace.shtml

Flanders And Swann - Live 1967 - All Gall - Horoscope - Armadillo

"Flanders And Swann - Live 1967, uba rare british comedy stage show clip from a 1992 british video they made in the US toward the end of their careers."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSF8OUyuldc

Flanders and Swann - A Song of Patriotic Prejudice (1967)

"A song calculated to offend almost everybody"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=1vh-wEXvdW8

Flanders & Swann - Madeira M'Dear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=OW_zi8n4HDQ

The Lego Gasman Cometh

"Lego animation of an old (very English) Flanders & Swann song."

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mOA_SUKEZRE

The Greensleeves Monologue Annotated

"The most erudite segment of the long-running 1950s two-man show "At the Drop of a Hat" was a fanciful monologue about the origin of the tune Greensleeves by Michael Flanders. This page is an annotated transcript.

Explaining jokes is the surest way of killing them, I hear you say. Well, certainly -- and I'm quite sure very few readers of this page need "tight as Andronicus" or "Angry Young Man" explained. But considering that this extremely witty monologue was intended to appeal to a culturally savvy audience of London theatregoers in the 1950s, it would hardly be surprising if a few of the puns and sly references were lost on an audience in the 21st century. Some of them are so clever that they deserve resurrection, or at least preservation in some sort of cultural formaldehyde.

Here, then, is the "Greensleeves" monlogue explained to death, in an amalgam of the version recorded for vinyl in 1957 and that recorded for CD at the last performance at the Fortune Theatre, May 2, 1959."

http://www.beachmedia.com/gorbuduc.html

Pontings

A pic of Pontings in 1959 (on the corner of Ken High Street & Wright's Lane) as mentioned in the intro to the Gnu. There were 3 stores in the block, Barkers (which became Biba for a time) with its famous roof garden, Derry & Toms and Pontings. Though all 3 were owned by Barkers, they retained their individual identities.
Pontings itself closed in 1971.

http://www.archives.gla.ac.uk/gallery/barkers/buildings/hf051-8-1-1-3%5Bph30%5D.html