Today is the 109th anniversary of the first public performance by Douglas Byng, who graced the stage of the Palacette, Hastings, dressed as a farmer, singing “She’s Fat and She’s Beautiful … in a thick Somerset accent” — but he wasn’t destined to play male characters for long…
Son of a bank manager, he was from upright middle class stock, so when he told his mother he wanted to go on the stage, she said “I hope, dear, you will never come to that.” But he didn’t fight in WWI because he was “rather thin and weedy”, and a chap has to keep busy, so…
He toured in comedies, gave his first pantomime dame in 1924, and the following year was in an early revue of Noël Coward’s — and then he was off into the world of drag cabaret, which was his true talent. In the words of Simon Callow:
One of his numbers, for example, was Doris, Goddess of the Wind:
I blow through the bedrooms and blow out the light
I blow to the left and I blow to the right
My life’s just one blow through from morning to night
It’s the wind, it’s the wind
Or there was Ceres the Goddess of Plenty (“and plenty I’ve had in my time”). Theatre critic James Agate said his act was not near the knuckle, “it was the knuckle itself” — for its time, at least.
This was Britain, in the 1930s, and he couldn’t be out, so he settled for lyrics such as this, from The Cabaret Boys (reproduced in Old Time Variety — an illustrated history):
Callow’s description — “he would suddenly appear at high velocity down a gangplank, conventionally attired in tails or dinner jacket, and would then … throw on a wig, the front of a dinner gown and a feather boa” can be seen in this old Pathé newsreel:
You can also see him (grainily) giving us his Mayoress of Mold-on-the-Puddle, and understand why Callow says “The effect was of Hinge and Bracket rolled into one, on speed, with a hefty dose of Max Miller thrown in”.
He said of his panto dames that they were “always extremely well-educated and very gracious. None of your rubbish” — and can be seen going into more detail (“I was rather more ‘refayned’”) in this documentary clip:
He could make £300 a week in the 1930s, and in 1934 was the first person to sing Cole Porter’s Miss Otis Regrets. He also had a royal friend — George, Duke of Kent, who, says Callow, “must have spent the 20s and 30s almost permanently horizontal”. They had a fling, but the rest of the time their relationship was as described in Old Time Variety:
George, the Duke of Kent, would come in at about one o’clock in the morning just as I had finished my act and, if he had an eye for a young man, he would have to come round to my dressing room and ask who they were. The manager would have to be sent to the young man with a message to say that ‘Mr Byng would like to see you’ and the pretty boy would be sent round and I would have to say ‘I’m so glad to meet you. Have you met my friend, the Duke of Kent?’ Then, the drinks would appear and everyone would disappear. It was all very subtle, very upper class.
You can find some of his songs on YouTube and Spotify, and you might be able to track down Bawdy but British, the book about him that Simon Callow was reviewing in that Grauniad article. But for now, here’s what he said was his filthiest gag:
