sunday night at the london palladium

We had no TV for many years and a real treat for us would be an invite for us all to go to our good friends and neighbours the B…..’s to spend a Sunday evening. Sometimes we would start out with a game of Monopoly but the real treat was watching their TV. It meant we could stay up late with our best friends and it always seemed more fun at their house. The two families together created a great buzz for me, Mrs B. had a natural quick wit and always had us laughing.

“Sunday Night at the Palladium” was a family variety show very popular then, hosted by Bruce Forsythe. There would be a mix of entertainers – a comedian, a singer, magician or someone spinning plates on the end of sticks but always a star performer to finish. This star would usually be the reason for our invite, someone who was a particular favourite of mum or dad – Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Frankie Vaughan, Matt Munro, Sammy Davis Jnr. etc. It was also a novelty to see commercials on tv. The only other tellies we could watch were our grandparents or uncle Frank’s. They only had the one BBC channel (no commercials) but our friends had ITV as well. There was one advert where a small guy in a white overall was telling us how good it was to buy “low suds in Cheer” washing powder. We all thought he looked like dad (he was a painter and decorator who wore white overalls) that seemed to amuse us all no end. Wasn’t entertainment simple then?

Mrs B. would usually have bought a big bag of mixed sweeties, which would be handed around every so often much to my delight. My favourites were “chocolate butter dainties” which were toffee lumps filled with chocolate. Not really dainty at all as they had a tendency to rive your tooth fillings out! The show always ended with the “Tiller Girls”. They were rather like the dancers in the Follies Bergere - scantily clad young women in skimpy costumes with long legs. They would link arms and high kick their legs in synchronicity while rotating around – bizarre or what? It was always a point of amusement to us because as soon as they came on Mr B. would don his spectacles and lean forward to get a clearer view. I was too young to understand what was so interesting about them – pretty boring to me. It didn’t click until I was about 13.