29.08.20.
Laurel and HarDay 2020
Don’t forget the annual event, which this year will occur on Zoom.
Contact wiganconvention@gmail.com if you are interested in attending. Highly recommended.
Saps at Sea Tent meetings are back
We had our Saps meeting and 32 people attended. That included two new faces - the rest of their bodies were there as well!. It all worked out really well as we had an extra room, creating more space for social distancing. Ray was in good form with his introduction and some funny jokes. We paid tribute to six people connected with the Sons/Saps/Club who have perished during the Covid19 crisis.
It was good to be back.
Roger Robinson
On the Queen Mary
Peter Jones spotted a splendid clip: Laurel and Hardy aboard the Queen Mary (28 Jan 1952).
From Beau Chumps Tent blog
Oh dear!
Mark Rodgers spotted the above on the front cover of the Daily Mail newspaper on 18/08/2020, relating to the UK Government's shambolic handling of 'A' level exam results in England.
Prime Minister Johnson is featured as Ollie and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson as Stan.
John Burton
This was also spotted by Mike Jones
Beau Chumps Tent meetings to return
We are having a ‘proper’ Beau Chumps Tent Meeting on Wednesday 9th September at 7.30pm.
16 have confirmed so far, so there is still plenty of room before we exceed the Ditchburn Suite limit of 40 persons.
Scots’ day out
The Bonnie Scotland Tent had a virtual day out on board the Waverley paddle steamer.
Says Janice Hawton, “We had a guided tour - especially of the engine room - courtesy of Tom, and there were the usual Waverley meals of good old fish and chips and macaroni.
Quiz wise, the Covid Cup was keenly contested, with Kenny and Mags’s names now on the “shielding” shield.”
"Silent" Brats revived
Lawrence Dunn reconstructed the silent version of Brats with a live accompaniment by Gladstone’s Bag, on the Facebook page of the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in Glasgow on 22nd August.
A classic!
Bowlers revisited
Go to the Beau Chumps website for terrific updated versions of articles which appeared in Bowler Dessert in 1990 and 1988. Billy Gilbert and Anita Garvin are highlighted.
https://beauchumps.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/bowler-dessert-revisited-2/
Thanks go to Mike Jones for a great bit of work.
New DVD box set
From the wonderful Reknown Films/Talking Pictures TV comes this.
Stephen Barlow noted a DVD collection which includes Pick a Star aka Movie Struck (1937). It’s an American musical comedy film in which a young country girl comes to Hollywood and achieves movie stardom. Starring Rosina Lawrence, Jack Haley, Patsy Kelly and Mischa Auer. Includes some great scenes with Laurel & Hardy.
Headstone appeal for Lyle Tayo
Bob Satterfield writes I would like to bring your attention to the fact that actress Lyle Tayo’s grave is unmarked. She is a true member of the Hal Roach Stock Company. Randy Skretvedt says this about Tayo in the chapter about Laurel and Hardy’s “Should Married Men Go Home?” in his book “The Magic Behind the Movies”:
Ollie’s wife, just as much of a “bloodhound” according to him, is played by Lyle (pronounced “Lily”) Tayo. She had made her first of nine appearances with Stan and Ollie in Call of the Cuckoo, and had been hit by a pie while tending to a flowerpot in The Battle of the Century. Her real name was Lyle Shipman, and she was born on January 19, 1889, in Elmdale, Kansas. She would be memorable as an unmarried prospective Christmas tree customer in Big Business, and as an outraged next-door neighbor in Perfect Day. Our Gang fans remember her for her role in Shivering Shakespeare as the apoplectic mother who admonishes her son Chubby, who’s onstage in a school play about ancient Rome, every time he lifts up his toga to see what his next line is (“Norman! Norman!!”). She made about 50 films from 1921 to 1934, almost exclusively for Roach, with a couple of excursions to Paramount in the early ’30s. Marrying a man named Barton, she retired to be a wife and mother, except for a 1948 appearance in the Frank Sinatra-Fred MacMurray movie Miracle of the Bells. She died on May 2, 1971, in Hollywood at 82.
To find out more about the appeal, go to
Travis and Stan
We came across this snippet from The Times Saturday Review. It is from an interview with Fran Healy from the group Travis.
Most of the article covers his interests in music, literature and performing arts. He talks about F Scott Fitzgerald, Squeeze, Larkin and Chopin amongst others. It was therefore somewhat surprising, but really pleasing, to see him finish with this recognition of Stan .
Nick and Helen Williams
And finally. . .
Matthew Cooper on Facebook says, “I told my suitcase we’re not going on holiday this year.”