Sir Ben Fuller Tells The Story of His Life

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 24, 25 November 1938, Page 5

Sir Ben Fuller Tells The Story of His Life

"A SELF made man who has made a good job of himself.’ Thus did Mr. Henry Hayward introduce Sir Benjamin Fuller. to an audience which filled the Strand Theatre, Auckland, one night last week when Sir Ben kept those in front rippling with laughter as he narrated incidents of his progress from waxworks to vaudeville, from concert appearances in the smallest New Zealand towns to grand opera, Talk, which was really the story

of his life, was given under the auspices of the Auckland Rationalist Association. In racy style, Sir Benjamin confessed he got his first job at the age of nine as a juvenile pianist to Annie Besant’s free-thought lectures. Bach night he earned half a crown. "One night," he said, "a great lady patted me on the head and said I was a clever boy. Well, ever since then I’ve tried to be a clever boy." Afterwards, in: turn, he was pianist at a "free and easy," baggage boy to a conjuror, bass fiddler in an itinerant band, the "bones" in a nigger minstrel show, and cicerone at a panorama. And he eveu worked his passage across the Tasman to New 4GZeaJand as a waiter and violin player in a ship’s orchestra. Sir Benjamin urged the study by children of all the cultural arts, particularly music which could be a solace to them ail their lives. "My dead old dad used to shut me in the parlour every evening for an hour and make me practice the piano," Sir Ben said. "But I became so clever with my exercises that I could read a ‘Diamond Dick’ and do my seales at the same time,"