Variety from Manchester

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 14

Variety from Manchester

()NE of the highlights of the BBC’s North Region for something like five years, Ronnie Taylor’s fast-moving show Variety Fanfare is soon to be broadcast in New Zealand. The show was born in February, 1948, and ran for 34 weeks in the North of England Service before being taken up on a nation-wide basic by the Light Programme. It is recorded every week at Manchester’s Hulme Hippodrome. Variety Fanfare features many well-known performers, but also gives an opportunity to scores of little-known artists, especially those from the north of England. Among the famous are Frankie Howerd, with his particular brand of flustered craziness; "Two-Ton" Tessie O’Shea, the ukulele-playing singer of stage and films; Rawicz and Landauer, whose names are synonymous with finished technique on two pianos; Barbara Leigh, the Australian soprano, whose name will be familiar to followers of the Much-Binding series; Charlie Chester, the comédian who led a somewhat crazy gang in Stand Easy, ‘a BBC show broadcast by NZBS stations about three years ago; and Tony Fayne and David Evans, whose impressions of sports commentators like John Arlott are uncannily lifelike. Among the personalities Ronnie Taylor has introduced tu the microphone are Morecambe and Wise, a Lancashire pair who will be heard in the opening: programme, and Ken Frith, whose "magic pianos" act will be heard in the fourth programme. Listeners will hear Ken playing three pianos simultaneously, striking an average of just under 5000 notes in any one minute. He does it by accompanying two recordings of himself which are synchronised and played back to him over headphones. For every minute he is on the airs Ken spends something like three hours in the recording studio. He is the perfect answer to anyone who still thinks show people don’t work like navvies for their rich returns. He js not the only unorthodox musician in Variety Fanfaré, however. There are the Welshmen Albert and Les Ward, who go in for such embellishments as a motor horn and a scrubbing board, and Jimmy Leach and his Organolians, whose equipment ranges from an electronic organ to a double bass and an electric guitar, : Variety Fantare will be broadcast from all ZB stations oa 2ZA on Sunday evenings at 7.15 p.m., beginning October 11. The programmes, which are of 30 minutes’ duration, are also being broadcast by National stations.