'Revue 1912'
Robert Hale
Although there had been spasmodic earlier attempts to introduce ' Revue' into London, the first winner was Everybody's Doing It at the Empire in 1912, when Robert Hale was in the lead. He appeared in at least twelve different characters, from Lord Lonsdale to Burgess swimming the Channel, and most of the changes had to be made while the chorus did a song.
In revue in those days there was no limit to the topicality, and politicians, home and foreign, were mercilessly skitted by Hale-Lloyd George , Bottomley, and the rest-as well as judges, business men, and singers, such as Darling, Lipton, and Caruso. To keep your place in revue you had to learn to play the great horn, the sleigh bells, and the xylophone, to box, and to be a trapeze artist and acrobat. Tonight, in the first of a new series, Robert Hale is to give listeners some idea of what it was like.