Christopher Beeching's 'The Heaviest of Swells' is highly recommended (by me, of course!) as the best researched, best illustrated and most astonishingly comprehensive biography of a great music hall singer so far attempted. Essential for anyone interested in the early music hall, it covers the 'classic' period, 1860s to 80s, well before the final flowering in the 1890s and early 1900s. And if you doubt my assessment of its comprehensiveness, take aboard the fact that this is called 'Volume 1'!

Beeching is an accomplished performer, whose presentation of George Leybourne's songs bring the man and the period to life. I beg leave to doubt (just a bit) his new explanation of 'PRFG', attractive though it is, but that's an unimportant 'by the way'.

What we need now is an equally detailed account of Harry Clifton and his songs.