THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ECCENTRIC COMEDIAN

Mucking out stables, dodging landladies, and ducking rotten vegetables thrown by a rowdy crowd were all in a day’s work for an up-and-coming acrobat, singer, and comic in the rough-and-tumble days of English music halls in the late nineteenth century. With a sympathetic ear, Robert Demeger captures T.E. Dunville’s Midlands accent, Victorian sensibilities, and sly, self-depreciating wit. Demeger even sings the lyrics to a few of Dunville’s loonier hit songs, such as “Bunk-a-doodle-I-do.” Anyone interested in entertainment history will be spellbound by this 1911 account of a long-lost era when a boy might run away from an apprenticeship in a countinghouse to become one of the Edwardian era’s most popular comedians. B.P. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2011]