REGARDING your interesting article on the show at the old Hippodrome, Accrington, I used to work there as a 16-year-old part-timer for seven shillings and sixpence for six nights, two shows a night, in 1948. I would have been a paying customer, 17-years-old.
The pianist you mentioned was perched on a high stool and the man swallowing goldfish had the stage name of Afrique. He drank roughly 50 half pints of water then finished off with a goldfish tank holding roughly two gallons with live goldfish and frogs.
He talked for a few minutes, all the time regurgitating live fish and frogs, placing them in the empty tank. Then his female assistant stood a few yards away and he filled the tank from his mouth as if it was coming from a hosepipe.
About the same time, a woman with the stage name Koringa wriggled and squirmed on a bed of broken glass with not a scratch to show. She also ran up and down a ladder of razor-sharp swords in bare feet.
Happy days!
FRANCIS CROSS (Mr), Royds Street, Accrington.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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