1960's - Buckmaster Puppets

Touring Theatres, Clubs and the Pier Summer Shows

It’s 1960. We played the Continental Hull, Hulme Hippodrome Manchester and the Pavilion Theatre Liverpool. Our first summer season together was on the South Pier Blackpool with Jack Crosbie and Rita and Arthur & Company. I performed the puppet act and Julie performed on trumpet and concertina. At the end of the summer we returned to our home in London but on the way we spent a week in the Manchester area playing our first engagement at a new Sporting Club which had opened in Stockport, as they were booking Variety Cabaret Acts.

We had a very busy Winter season and at the beginning of November our baby son, Stephen, arrived, just in time for the Christmas rush, but the show must go on… and it did. The next year we did a season on St Anne's Pier in their Summer Revue. This year we were being watched, not only by the audience, but by our Son in his pram from the side of the stage! We returned home once again to fulfil all of our repeat bookings and, as always, make several new puppets and props, as we were to return to Blackpool on the South Pier Rainbow Theatre Show, this time with Sonny Farrar heading the bill. This of course ran until the end of September when the Blackpool Illuminations were lit. On our way home we played cabaret at Nightclubs in Rochdale, Accrington, Bury, Manchester and not forgetting the Greaseborough's Working Men's Social Club, Yorkshire.

It was now 1963 and most of our bookings were in the North of England and we had another arrival to the family in April, a daughter, Susan. This meant Julie decided to put her trumpet away and I became a single act again with my puppets. We purchased a caravan for the summer months and parked ourselves near Doncaster with other Pros whilst I commuted to all the various club venues.  Summer 1964 saw us take the caravan to Filey for a season in the Sun Lounge resident show. We all returned home and I became very busy with Cabaret dates as the Working Mens Clubs were now booking Variety Acts in the South & South Wales.

Reviews

"The Buckmaster Puppets are one of the cleverest, and most skillfully and strikingly presented acts of its kind... one of the highlights being the single handed manipulation of five puppets simultaneously." (Skegness News)

"By far the best act is that of the Buckmaster Puppets, presented by a young man with crisp modern ideas. They are attractively presented and most entertaining." (Manchester Chronicle)

"The Buckmaster Puppets are an act with plenty of novelty and slick presentation. Their original "Three-Tier Puppetry" is a clever example, this being a puppet of the operator manipulating a smaller clown." (The Stage)

"Undoubtedly the stars of the show are the Buckmaster Puppets." (North Western Mail)