As the Music Halls declined in popularity, it was gradually replaced by Variety. Variety also known as ‘variety arts’ or ‘variety entertainment’, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a compere (master of ceremonies) or host. The variety format made its way from the Victorian Music Hall stage in Britain and America to radio and then television. Variety shows were a staple of English language television from the late 1940s into the 1980s.
One of purveyors of the comedic song who began in Music Hall and successfully made the transition to Variety was Tommy Handley, an English comedian, best known for the BBC radio programme It’s That Man Again (“ITMA“) which ran between 1939 and 1949. Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, Handley went on the stage in his teens and after military service in the First World War he established himself as a comedian and singer on the music hall circuit. He became nationally known as a pioneer broadcaster. From 1924 onwards he was frequently heard on BCC variety programmes as a solo entertainer and an actor in sketches.
After the war, Handley auditioned for the impresario Rupert D’Oyly Carte, and impressed him with his performance of the Major General patter song from The Pirates of Penzance. Carte wrote to offer him a place in a new D’Oyly Carte touring company, but by the time the invitation arrived Handley was contractually committed elsewhere. He toured in musical comedy and in the music halls as a comedian and singer. He became known in the leading role of the officer in the sketch The Disorderly Room, a parody of military life, written by Eric Blore, in which military disciplinary proceedings were comically set to popular tunes of the day. The sketch remained in his repertory from 1921 to 1941, and according to Handley’s biographer Ted Kavanagh “it must have been played on every music-hall stage in the country”.[
Handley’s greatest success came in 1939 with the BBC radio comedy show It’s That Man Again, which, after an uncertain start, caught the British public’s imagination and reached an unprecedentedly large audience. He starred as the good-natured, fast-talking anchor-man around whom a cast of eccentric comic characters revolved. The show was credited for its important part in keeping up morale in Britain during the Second World War.
