Comic Songs (23)

When you delve into the humour of a previous genration you inevitably find the comic songs reflect the attitudes and culture of the day. Our selection today is case in point, particularly in the cultural appropriation of the calypso. However having said this it important to reflect the cultural journey that has been made as the UK found itself being open up to the world around us. e.g migration from the Carribean, holidays in mainland Europe.

Lance Percival, was an English actor, comedian and singer, best known for his appearances in satirical comedy television shows of the early 1960s and his ability to improvise comic calypsos about current news stories. He later became successful as an after dinner speaker. Percival was born in Sevenoaks and was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, where he learnt to play the guitar. In 1955 he emigrated to Canada where he worked as an advertising copywriter, writing jingles for radio. He also formed a calypso group as “Lord Lance” which toured the US and Canada.

He first became well known in the early 1960s for performing topical calypsos on television shows such as That Was The Week That Was, after having been discovered by Ned Sherrin, performing at the Blue Angel Club in Mayfair. A tall thin man with a distinctive crooked nose and prominent ears, he also appeared in several British comedy films including the Carry On film Carry On Cruising (1962).

Working, like many British comics of the era, with George Martin at Parlophone, Percival had one Uk Singles Chart hit, his cover version of a calypso-style song entitled “Shame and Scandal in the Family” which reached number 37 in October 1965, and recorded several other comedy songs, including “The Beetroot Song” (“If You Like Beetroot I’ll Be True To You”, 1963), written by Mitch Murray, and “The Maharajah of Brum” (1967), written with Martin.

Later he provided the voice of both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr for the cartoon series The Beatles (1965), leading to his voicing the central character “Old Fred” in the Beatles animated film ‘Yellow Submarine. He also appeared as an “upper class tramp” in the Herman’s Hermits film Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (1968). During the 1960s and 1970s, on BBC Radio 4 and on its predecessor the Home Service, he was a regular panelist on Many A Slip.

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