Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue

Subject: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:47 PM

Does anyone know if Dan Leno's monologue about a much-intermarried and intermated family ("...follow me closely now, this is rather intricate...and there was a milkman in there...") is online anywhere? I know there's a recording of him doing the monologue extant, and once saw it quoted in a book, though I've never found the book since. What a song it would make!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:20 PM

Didn't find the monologue in question, but I did find an interesting page about Leno here (click).
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 07:22 PM

I can't get Joe's link to work but there is also this article on Dan Leno at The English Music Hall website.

The monologue was called My Wife's Relations and it was included in a LP (EMI World Records; Retrospect Series SH350 1979) "Playing The Halls" of remastered recordings by the original artists. Dan Leno recorded the monologue in 1901.

It is superb, but so much depends on his phrasing and timing that I don't know whether it will come across on the page. I'll try to write down as much of it as I can decipher.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:10 PM

There is also a CD of Dan Leno's recordings with this on: Windyridge Music Hall CDs - Dan Leno 1901-1903

Mick

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 07:07 AM

Any luck, Matthew, or are you stuck on the second wife's first cousin's stepsister's mother-in-law?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 09:41 AM

I think I've got most of the story off the recording, but there are still some bits I'm not sure about so please bear wth me a little longer!
It may be an effect of the old recording process but Leno's voice seems very high-pitched, with a rather affected reedy tone to it.

This is one of those convoluted comic stories about marriages that flirt with the taboo of incest. I'm sure that there are many more such songs and tales, like Billy Butler's Nell where:-

Now Nell is her mother's own mother,
And her father becomes her own son;
Her mother's first child was her father-in-law,
And her granny's the son of a gun!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: IanC
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 11:25 AM

Matthew

Dan Leno's voice was very high pitched. He was the original Pantomime Dame.

:-)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 12:48 PM

No, that's not the one, Matthew, though thank you for transcribing it. The one I'm after is an interminable, very fast prose piece told in the first person, about a complex family, intermarried to the point of hilarity. The signature line is: "Follow me closely, now; this is rather intricate..."

Subject: Lyr Add: MY WIFE'S RELATIONS (Dan Leno)
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 23 Jul 04 - 03:54 PM

My Wife's Relations

Monologue recorded by Dan Leno 19 Nov 1901

"There's a rather a peculiar item occurred, if I can explain it to you if I'm not keeping you waiting.

There's a bit of money come into our family, and we can't tell who is really entitled to it. And of course none of us likes to take it, you know, - not knowing who it belongs to. Well, as a matter of fact, they won't let us.

But its through my stepfather...You see when my Dad died...Dear old Dad, I can see him now. He used to come home from work once a year. He was a hot-cross bun maker. He used to sit me on his knee and pat me on the shoulders, well, not always on the shoulders...but, well of course I was his son and he could pat me where he liked of course.

But its through our stepfather that we can't find this...who this money belongs to. You see my stepfather married twice; well when he married our second mother, my brother and I we were away at the time. My brother, he's dead now. He died of agoraphobia. He had false teeth and he took 'em out and put 'em in his coat tail pocket, sat down on 'em and bit himself. However, that's running away from the subject.

Well, when my brother returned from his work where he'd been - he'd been working for the...not masonry exactly...but the Government had some stones they wanted breaking and my brother got the contract. Well, when he came back, I came back at the same time. I'd only been away for five years. And during that time our stepfather had married our third mother and [?] was also our second mother. So my brother met our third mother and fell in love with her and married her. Well now that's where the trouble commenced because, you see, that made me my brother's son and my sister-in-law was really my mother.

Well; now then, follow me closely, will you: there was an aunt by marriage, she had and adopted daughter, left to her for rent or something, and she, this daughter, fell in love with the man that [built?] the house for our second mother. Do you see what I'm getting to?

Well; now then, stick close to me, will you; this is rather intricate. You see the outcome was that the...oh no, I'm wrong...no...yes, that's right...oh, and there was a postman in it as well. Well, however, I know we got so mixed up that my brother was his own father at the finish; I know. That's how it wound up.

Of course I didn't want to occupy your time with that, and I hope you won't think anything of what I said about Dad...Dear old Dad...I'll tell you more about Dad later on only I'm busy now, I'm going to have something to eat. I've just got ten minutes to go to a teetotal lecture and if I don't hurry I shan't be able to get a drop of something before I go.

There are a couple of bits that the wax cylinder hiss, the scratches on my LP, Dan Leno's accent and my poor hearing have combined to render indecipherable.

My reference to Billy Butler earlier should of course have read Billy Bennett whose recording of Nell is still available from Topic Records TSCD780 "Almost A Gentleman".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 24 Jul 04 - 02:58 PM

LOL! That's the one. Thought I was sure there was a milkman in there somewhere - oh, I see it's a postman! Thanks! It has exactly the tone of those working-class stories that were so much a part of my childhood; you can still hear them on the bus, if you take the right bus.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Dan Leno's family monologue
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 25 Jul 04 - 12:06 PM

JTT, I don't know what kind of bus you travel on regularly but that kind of story seems to have vanished on Merseytravel, although I'm sure I remember hearing a long while ago one old lady reassuring a very pregnant and anxious young girl "Don't worry; it'll all come out in the end!"

From all I can gather, Dan Leno varied his patter a lot and improvised in collaboration with his audience - a lot like Frankie Howerd - so the postman could have easily become a milkman or a coalman in different renditions.