I remember sitting in my dressing room thinking that I'd been an actor for eight years without making the limelight and had been in variety five weeks, hadn't uttered a word and was at the London Palladium," he says. I adore Hylda Baker, I just love her unique brand of humour, and of course she's great, it must have been hard to find roles for someone so unique, she would definitely find her place with Nearest and Dearest and Not on your Nellie. Her mishaps with words are present, but used sparingly.

KEN Rowland, the champion fund raiser about whom we wrote on May 25, is recovering from a queer do (to use the medical term) involving pulmonary embolism, a condition with which the column is uncomfortably familiar. Even now I hear voices on television and recognise them from rep in Darlington. I saw Charles 20 years ago in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Civic. He hadn't changed a bit." Her biggest success, however, was in a sitcom called Nearest and Dearest, the story of Nellie Pledge, would-be queen of Colne, and her family of preserving cases. It's to promote the second volume of How It All Began in Yorkshire - like how Armitage's Seeds grew from a stall in the Beast Market in Huddersfield, that sort of thing. Jean Ferguson recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in her book, She Knows You Know! reproduced here with kind permission of the author...WITH a host of memorable catchphrases and hilarious malapropisms, all delivered in an inimitable Lancashire brogue, Hylda Baker was a comedy star unlike any other. The store became Oxendale and Barker, then just Barkers, with no apostrophe to suggest how singular it has all become. Harrison in those days, Audrey was also there in 1946 when fire destroyed almost everything they'd built up at the old Temperance Hall in Gladstone Street. "We put on a show that night in the Mechanics Hall, then moved to the Co-operative Hall and up to the Royal Astoria. She continued making occasional appearances, including a hilarious 1978 musical parody with Arthur Mullard of the hit song from Grease, “You’re the One That I Want”. Dressed in costumes and wigs to ape Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, the 73-year-old Baker and 68-year-old Mullard gave one of the most bizarre “Top of the Pops” performances ever to a studio audience of bemused teenagers after their version reached number 22 in the charts.

In a coda to her musical career, she teamed with Arthur Mullard in 1978 to record a comedy version of " You're the One That I Want" from the film Grease. Baker and Mullard, then aged 73 and 68, dressed in wigs and costumes similar to the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John characters from Grease and appeared on the BBC show Top of the Pops and the Granada Television music show for children Get It Together. Their version reached #22 in the UK’s BBC singles chart. [9] The two entertainers recorded an album of pop covers entitled Band on the Trot. [10] Joan Sanderson was great here as the opposing battleaxe, Marilyn's mother, she had such a stoic delivery, it's funny she looks as old here as she would thirty years later in After Henry.Ken, 56, is presently confined to his own bed after an operation on Monday, though things are looking brighter. "He's canny," says Muriel, and probably says it all. Finally, two over-arching issues. Nicola Sturgeon requires to perform an elegant gavotte with regard to independence. When Coronavirus is finally subdued, she will return to her demand that the UK Government should accede to a further referendum on independence.