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Monday, February 22, 2016

Welcome return of The Good Old Days...




My Daily Express piece on the return of a much-loved television favourite....

Dramatist John Osborne wrote in the 1950s: “The music hall is dying and with it a significant part of England. Some of the heart of England has gone, something that once belonged to everyone…” But now music hall is back.
The Good Old Days, British television’s longest-running variety show, broadcast from 1953 to 1983, is being re-shown on Fridays on BBC Four. 
What a pleasure it has been to watch once again great speciality acts of the past: trick cyclists, comedy drunks, ventriloquists, knife throwers. The Good Old Days aimed to recreate the golden age of music hall. 
The programme came from the ornate Leeds City Varieties Theatre, a Grade II-listed music hall built in 1865. The audience all wore Edwardian-era clothes....


You can read the whole article here.   Above, you can watch a really excellent edition of The Good Old Days, from 1976.
If you enjoy that, here is a petition to the BBC asking them to reshow all existing episodes. It's got 600 signatures at the moment- let's try and get it up to 1,000!

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