Once upon a time Charlie Clapham - the one with the toothbrush moustache and the dithering brain - was a barrister's clerk. He enlisted in the war and was given a commission in the machine-gunners. In those days he managed to play straight parts in war-time concerts without making his audience laugh - a feat he would probably have difficulty in performing now.
After serving in the war, Bill Dwyer followed the family tradition - his father was a Moore and Burgess minstrel - by entertaining. He met Clapham, and in 1925 they worked together for the first time. The following year they had an audition at Savoy Hill, and Clapham, who loses everything off the stage and on, found they had arrived without songs. They talked nonsense as no one else can, and they have done so ever since.