CHARLIE DREW – The Life & Times of a Music Hall Minstrel

From a few scraps of information about a great uncle the writer had barely heard of several years of research have produced an absorbing account of the entertainers he worked with from Sir Harry Lauder to a Parachuting Cat! His story takes us from the back streets of Birmingham and work in a bicycle factory to performing with a troupe of 100 London Palladium Minstrels. From rolling up in a Landau carriage to impress his Birmingham based relatives to a burial with 7 other poor souls in a paupers grave in Manchester. With so little to go on it took several years to even obtain an authenticated photograph of Charlie but the information kept flowing and the diligent work of Edwardian newspaper reporters, particularly in the seaside town of Rhyl, now enable us to smile at the comic songs he sang and even read verbatim the words he actually spoke when addressing his audiences. We learn something of the stars he appeared on the bill with and details of the hilarious Fred Karno Sketch, "The Mumming Birds" in which he almost certainly took part and the tantalising possibility that he worked alongside Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin.