When I started out in stand-up, if I needed to stay overnight after a gig, I usually had a choice of hotels. However, half a century ago, I wouldn’t have been so fortunate.
The chain hotels we’re so used to seeing these days didn’t really exist until the 1970s onwards, so comedians and other performers who needed accommodation overnight, for a week or a long summer season, stayed in ‘theatrical digs’.
They could be a spotless home from home or resemble the Addams Family house, with a permanent whiff of boiled cabbage wafting from room to room.
Whatever its condition, it was run by that legendary character…the theatrical landlady.
Over the years I’ve collected some wonderful stories about these ladies, told by comedians of the past.
Here’s just a couple…
Tommy Handley was a popular comedian of the 1940s whose long-running radio series “It’s That Man Again!” (ITMA) was a huge morale booster during World War Two.
He stayed in one theatrical digs where the loo was next to the dining room and one evening after a show he was in his room when he suddenly had to ‘go’.
He ran downstairs, went into the dining room, only to find the landlady and her family were sitting down to supper.
Embarrassed, but with no alternative, Tommy opened the loo door and went in.
Ten minutes later, when he tried to pull the chain… it wouldn’t budge!
Tommy tried every combination. One long pull and two short ones. Two long ones and a short one etc. Nothing worked. He started to panic, not knowing what to do. Then he heard the landlady call out from the dining room. “You’ve got to surprise it, Mr. Handley!”
Some, but not all, theatrical landladies would have a late meal ready for their guests when they returned from the theatre.
When a comedian wrote to enquire of a Blackpool landlady if she’d be prepared to do this, she wrote back “I would be more than happy to caper for you!”
My favourite was the landlady who told Leslie Phillips when he arrived at her digs “I won’t allow you to use the downstairs lavatory . . . but you can use the piano!”