Early life Robey was born at 334 Kennington Road,
Kennington, London, on 20 September 1869. was a civil engineer who spent much of his career on
tramline design and construction. Robey's mother, Elizabeth Mary Wade Keene, was a housewife; he also had two sisters. Three years later the family moved back to London, near the border between
Camberwell and
Peckham. At around this time, trams were being introduced to the area, providing Charles Wade with a regular, well-paid job. Charles Wade moved the family to Germany in 1880, and Robey attended a school in
Dresden. When he was 14, his father allowed him to move in with a clergyman's family in the German countryside, which he used as a base while studying science at
Leipzig University. To earn money, he taught English to his landlord's children and minded them while their parents were at work. Having successfully enrolled at the university, he studied art and music and stayed with the family for a further 18 months so he could complete his studies before returning to England in 1885. He later claimed, apparently untruthfully, to have studied at the
University of Cambridge. He learned to play the
mandolin and became a skilled performer on the instrument. This drew interest from a group of local musicians and, together with a friend from the group who played the guitar, Robey travelled the local area in search of engagements. Soon afterwards, they were hired to play at a charity concert at the local church,
St Mary and St Ambrose in
Edgbaston, a performance that led to more local bookings. For the next appearance, Robey performed an impromptu version of "
Killaloo", a comic ditty taken from the
burlesque Miss Esmeralda. The positive response from the audience encouraged him to give up playing the mandolin to concentrate instead on singing comic songs.
London debut in
Westminster, where Robey gave his first major performance By 1890 Robey had become homesick, and so he returned to South London, where he took employment in a civil engineering company. He also joined a local branch of the Thirteen Club, whose members, many of whom were amateur musicians, performed in small venues across London. Hearing of his talent, the founder of the club, W. H. Branch, invited Robey to appear at Anderton's Hotel in
Fleet Street, where he performed the popular new comic song "Where Did You Get That Hat?". Robey's performance secured him private engagements for which he was paid a
guinea a night. In 1891 Robey visited the
Royal Aquarium in
Westminster where he watched "Professor Kennedy", a
burlesque mesmerist from America. After the performance, Robey visited Kennedy in his dressing room and offered himself as the stooge for his next appearance. They agreed that Robey, as his young apprentice, would be "mesmerised" into singing a comic song. Later that year, he appeared as a solo act at the
Oxford Music Hall, where he performed "The Simple Pimple" and "He'll Get It Where He's Gone to Now". The theatrical press soon became aware of his act, and
The Stage called him a "comedian with a pretty sense of humour [who] delivers his songs with considerable point and meets with all success". In early 1892, together with his performances at the Royal Aquarium and the Oxford Music Hall, Robey starred alongside Jenny Hill, Bessie Bonehill and
Harriet Vernon at the Paragon Theatre of Varieties in
Mile End, where, according to his biographer Peter Cotes, he "stole the notices from experienced troupers". That summer, Robey conducted a music hall tour of the English provinces which began in
Chatham and took him to
Liverpool, at a venue owned by the mother of the influential London impresario
Oswald Stoll. Through this engagement Robey met Stoll, and the two became lifelong friends. Pantomime would become a lucrative and regular source of employment for the comedian. Cotes calls Robey's festive performances the "cornerstone of his comic art", and the source of "some of his greatest successes". As Clarence, Robey dressed in a top hat and frock coat and carried a
malacca cane, the garb of a stereotypical Victorian gentleman. For his
drag pieces, the comedian established "The Lady Dresser", a female tailor who was desperate to out-dress her high class customers, and "Daisy Dillwater, the District Nurse" who arrived on stage with a bicycle to share light-hearted scandal and gossip with the audience before hurriedly cycling off. With Robey's popularity came an eagerness to differentiate himself from his music hall rivals, and so he devised a signature costume when appearing as himself: an oversized black coat fastened from the neck down with large, wooden buttons; black, unkempt, baggy trousers and a partially bald wig with black, whispery strands of unbrushed, dirty-looking hair that poked below a large, dishevelled
top-hat. He held a short, misshaped, wooden walking stick, which was curved at the top. Robey later used the costume for his character, The Prime Minister of Mirth. The outfit helped Robey become instantly recognisable on the London music hall circuit.
Success in pantomime and the provinces At the start of 1894, Robey travelled to Manchester to participate in the pantomime
Jack and Jill, where he was paid £25 a week for a three-month contract. During one performance the scenery mechanism failed, which forced him to improvise for the first time. Robey fabricated a story that he had just dined with the Lord Mayor before detailing exactly what he had eaten. The routine was such a hit that it was incorporated into the show as part of the script. In the final months of 1894, Robey returned to London to honour a contract for
Augustus Harris at the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the details of which are unknown. For the 1895 and 1896 Christmas pantomimes, he appeared in Manchester and Birmingham, respectively, in the title role of
Dick Whittington, for which he received favourable reviews and praise from audiences. Despite the show's success, Robey and his co-stars disliked the experience. The actress
Ada Reeve felt that the production had a bad back-stage atmosphere and was thankful when the season ended, while the comedian
Barry Lupino was dismayed at having his role, Muffins, considerably reduced. They then moved to 83 Finchley Road in
Swiss Cottage,
Hampstead. Family life suited Robey; his son Edward recalled many happy experiences with his father, including the evenings when he would accompany him to the half-dozen music halls at which he would be appearing each night. By the start of the new century, Robey was a big name in pantomime, and he was able to choose his roles. Pantomime enjoyed wide popularity until the 1890s, but by the time Robey had reached his peak, interest in it was on the wane. A type of character he particularly enjoyed taking on was the
pantomime dame, which historically was played by comedians from the music hall. Robey was inspired by the older comedians
Herbert Campbell and
Dan Leno, and, although post-dating them, he rivalled their eccentricity and popularity, earning the festive entertainment a new audience. In his 1972 biography of Robey,
Neville Cardus thought that the comedian was "at his fullest as a pantomime Dame". In 1902 Robey created the character "The Prehistoric Man". He dressed as a caveman and spoke of modern political issues, often complaining about the government "slapping another pound of rock on his taxes". Robey was engaged to play the title role in the 1905 pantomime
Queen of Hearts. The show was considered risqué by the theatrical press. In one scene Robey accidentally sat on his crown before bellowing "Assistance! Methinks I have sat upon a hedgehog"; in another sketch, the comedian mused, "Then there's Mrs Simkins, the swank! Many's the squeeze she's had of my blue bag on washing day." Robey scored a further hit with the show the following year, in Birmingham, which Cotes describes as "the most famous of all famous Birmingham Theatre Royal pantomimes". Robey incorporated "The Dresser", a music hall sketch taken from his own repertoire, into the show. Over the next few years he continued to tour the music hall circuit both in London and the English provinces and recorded two songs, "What Are You Looking at Me For?" and "The Mayor of Mudcumdyke", which were later released by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company. Robey became associated with cricket by 1895 when he led a team of amateur players for a match at Turney Road in
Dulwich. In September 1904, while appearing in
Hull, he was asked by the cricketer
Harry Wrathall to take part in a charity cricket match at the
Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Robey played so well that Wrathall asked him to return the following Saturday to take part in a professional game. That weekend, while waiting in the pavilion before the game, Robey was approached by an agent for
Hull City A.F.C., who asked the comedian to play in a match that same afternoon. Robey agreed, swapped his cricket flannels for a football kit and played with the team against
Nottingham Forest as an
inside right. By 1903 Robey was playing at a semi-professional level. He was signed as an inside forward by Millwall Football Club and scored many goals for them. He also displayed a good level of ability in
vigoro, an Australian sport derived from both cricket and baseball which was short-lived in England. Two years later he became a member of the
Marylebone Cricket Club and played in minor games for them for many years. He gained a reputation at the club for his comic antics on the field, such as raising his eyebrows at the approaching bowler in an attempt to distract him. The writer Neville Cardus was complimentary about Robey's cricket prowess and called him "an elegant player" whose performances on the cricket field were as entertaining as they were on the stage. Robey was asked to help organise a charity football match in 1907 by friends of the Scottish football trainer James Miller, who had died the previous year. Robey compiled a team of amateur footballers from the theatrical profession and met Miller's former team Chelsea Football Club at their home ground. The match raised considerable proceeds for Miller's widow. Robey was proud of the match and joked: "I just wanted to make sure that Chelsea stay in the first division." In his spare time, Robey made violins, a hobby that he first took up during his years in Dresden. He became a skilled craftsman of the instrument, although he never intended for them to be played in public. Speaking in the 1960s, the violinist and composer
Yehudi Menuhin, who played one of Robey's violins for a public performance during that decade, called the comedian's finished instrument "very professional". He was intrigued by the idea that a man as famous as Robey could produce such a "beautifully finished" instrument, unbeknown to the public. Robey was also an artist, and some of his pen and ink self-caricatures are kept at the
National Portrait Gallery, London. In July 1912, at the invitation of the impresario Oswald Stoll, Robey took part for the first time in the
Royal Command Performance, to which Cotes attributes "one of the prime factors in his continuing popularity".
Film debut and The Bing Boys Are Here Robey's first experience in cinema was in 1913, with two early sound film shorts: "And Very Nice Too" and "Good Queen Bess", made in the
Kinoplasticon process, where the film was synchronised with phonograph records. The next year, he tried to emulate his music hall colleagues
Billy Merson and Charlie Austin, who had set up Homeland Films and found success with the
Squibs series of films starring
Betty Balfour. Robey met filmmakers from the Burns Film Company, who engaged him in a silent short entitled "George Robey Turns Anarchist", in which he played a character who fails to blow up the Houses of Parliament. He continued to appear sporadically in film throughout the rest of his career, never achieving more than a modest amount of success. In 1914, for the first time in many years, Robey appeared in a Christmas pantomime as a male when he was engaged to play the title role in
Sinbad the Sailor;
Fred Emney Sr played the dame role. Although the critics were surprised by the casting, it appealed to audiences, and the scenes featuring Robey and Emney together proved the most memorable. His appearances in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow were as popular as his annual performances in Birmingham. His wife Ethel accompanied him on these tours and frequently starred alongside him. Stoll offered Robey a lucrative contract in 1916 to appear in the new revue
The Bing Boys Are Here at the
Alhambra Theatre, London. Dividing his time between three or four music halls a night had become unappealing to the comedian, and he relished the opportunity to appear in a single theatre. He was cast as Lucius Bing opposite
Violet Loraine, who played his love interest Emma, and the couple duetted in the show's signature song "
If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)", which became an international success. and
Alfred Lester in costume for
The Bing Boys Are Here (1916) This London engagement was a new experience for Robey, who had only been familiar with provincial pantomimes and week-long, one-man comedy shows. Aside from pantomime, he had never taken part in a long-running production, and he had never had to memorise lines precisely or keep to schedules enforced by strict directors and theatre managers. and
Doing His Bit the following year.
Zig-Zag to Joy Bells Robey left the cast of
The Bing Boys during its run, in January 1917, to star at the
London Hippodrome in
Albert de Courville,
Dave Stamper and
Gene Buck's lavishly staged revue
Zig-Zag!. Robey included a sketch based on his music hall character "The Prehistoric Man", with
Daphne Pollard playing the role of "She of the Tireless Tongue". In another scene, he played a drunken gentleman who accidentally secures a box at the
Savoy Theatre instead of an intended hotel room. The audience appeared unresponsive to the character, so he changed it mid-performance to that of a naive Yorkshire man. The change provoked much amusement, and it became one of the most popular scenes of the show. In the Italian newspaper
La Tribuna, the writer
Emilio Cecchi commented: "Robey, just by being Robey, makes us laugh until we weep. We do not want to see either Figaro or Othello; it is quite enough for Robey to appear in travelling costume and to turn his eyes in crab-like fashion from one side of the auditorium to another. Robey's aspect in dealing with his audience is paternal and, one might say, apostolic."
Joy Bells ran for 723 performances. In the early months of 1919, Robey completed a book of memoirs,
My Rest Cure, which was published later that year. During the run of
Joy Bells he was awarded the
Legion of Honour for raising £14,000 for the French
Red Cross. he was appointed a
CBE by George V at Buckingham Palace instead. On the morning of the penultimate
Joy Bells performance, Robey was invited to Stoll's London office, where he was offered a role in a new revue at the Alhambra Theatre. On the journey, he met the theatre impresario
Sir Alfred Butt, who agreed to pay him £100 more, but out of loyalty to Stoll, he declined the offer and resumed his £600 a week contract at the Alhambra. On 28 July 1919, Robey took part in his second Royal Command Performance, at the London Coliseum. He and Loraine sang "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)".
Inter-war years Films and revues of the early 1920s A gap in the Alhambra's schedule allowed Stoll to showcase Robey in a new short film. "George Robey's Day Off" (1919) showed the comedian acting out his daily domestic routines to comic effect, but the picture failed at the box office. The British director
John Baxter concluded that producers did not know how best to apply Robey's stage talents to film. and Robey had completed the successful transition from music hall to variety star. Pantomime, which relied on its stars to make up much of the script through
ad lib, was also beginning to fall out of favour, and his contemporaries were finding it too difficult to create fresh material for every performance; for Robey, however, the festive entertainment continued to be a lucrative source of employment. Robey's first revue of the 1920s was
Johnny Jones, which opened on 1 June 1920 at the Alhambra Theatre. The show also featured
Ivy St. Helier,
Lupino Lane and
Eric Blore and carried the advertisement "A Robey salad with musical dressing". The revue
Robey en Casserole (1921) was next for Robey, during which he led a troupe of dancers in a musical piece called the "Policemen Ballet". Each dancer was dressed in a mock police uniform on top and a
tutu below. The show was the first failure for the comedian under Stoll's management. That December Robey appeared in his only London pantomime,
Jack and the Beanstalk, at the Hippodrome. His biographer, Peter Cotes, remembered the comedian's interpretation of Dame Trot as "enormously funny: a bucolic caricature of a woman, sturdy and fruity, leathery and forbidding" and thought that Robey's comic timing was "in a class of its own." while
Harlequinade visited the roots of pantomime. One of Robey's more notable roles under Stoll was
Sancho Panza in
Maurice Elvey's 1923 film
Don Quixote, for which he received a fee of £700 a week. The amount of time he spent working away from home led to the breakdown of his marriage, and he separated from Ethel in 1923. The year 1926 was lacking in variety entertainment, a fact largely attributed to the
UK general strike that had occurred in May of that year. He returned to Birmingham, a city where he was held in great affection, and where he was sure the audiences would embrace his new show. However, censors demanded that he omit the provocative song "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and that he heavily edit the sketch "The Cheat". The restrictions failed to dampen the audiences' enthusiasm, and
Bits and Pieces enjoyed rave reviews. It ran until Christmas and earned a six-month extension. Upon his return to England in October, he took
Bits and Pieces to
Bradford. In August 1928, Robey and his company travelled to Canada, where they played to packed audiences for three months. It was there that he produced a new revue,
Between Ourselves, in
Vancouver, which was staged especially for the country's armed forces. and followed this with
Marry Me, which was, according to his biographer A. E. Wilson, one of the most successful musical films of the comedian's career. By the later months of 1932, Robey had formed a romantic relationship with the Littlers' daughter Blanche (1897–1981), who then took over as his manager. The couple grew close during the filming of
Don Quixote, a remake of the comedian's 1923 success as Sancho Panza. Unlike its predecessor,
Don Quixote had an ambitious script, big budget and an authentic foreign setting. Robey resented having to grow a beard for the role and disliked the French climate and gruelling 12-week filming schedule. He refused to act out his character's death scene in a farcical way and also objected to the lateness of the "dreadfully banal" scripts, which were often written the night before filming.
Venture into legitimate theatre engaged Robey for the Adelphi Theatre's operetta
Helen! in 1932 Until 1932 Robey had never played in legitimate theatre, although he read
Shakespeare from an early age. That year he took the part of King Menelaus in
Helen!, which was an English-language adaptation by
A. P. Herbert of Offenbach's operetta
La belle Hélène. The show's producer
C. B. Cochran, a longstanding admirer of Robey, engaged a prestigious cast for the production, including
Evelyn Laye and W. H. Berry, with choreography by
Léonide Massine and sets by
Oliver Messel. The operetta opened on 30 January 1932, becoming the
Adelphi Theatre's most successful show of the year. The critic Harold Conway wrote that while Robey had reached the pinnacle of his career as a variety star, which only required him to rely on his "breezy, cheeky personality", he had reservations about the comedian's ability to "integrate himself with the other stars ... to learn many pages of dialogue, and to remember countless cues." After the run of
Helen!, Robey briefly resumed his commitments to the variety stage before signing a contract to appear at the Savoy Theatre as Bold Ben Blister in the operetta
Jolly Roger, which premiered in March 1933. The production had a run of bad luck, including an actors' strike which was caused by Robey's refusal to join the actors' union
Equity. The dispute was settled when he was included as a co-producer of the show, thus excluding him as a full-time actor. Robey made a substantial donation to the union, and the production went ahead. Despite its troubles, the show was a success and received much praise from the press. Harold Conway of the
Daily Mail called the piece "one of the outstanding triumphs of personality witnessed in a London theatre". Later that year, Robey completed his final autobiography,
Looking Back on Life. The literary critic Graham Sutton admired Robey for his honest and frank account, and thought that he was "at his best when most personal".
Shakespearean roles According to Wilson, Robey revered Shakespeare and had an "excellent reading knowledge of the Bard" even though the comedian had never seen a Shakespeare play. As a child, he had committed to memory the "ghost" scene in
Hamlet. Writing in 1933, Cochran expressed the opinion that Robey had been a victim of a largely conservative and "snobbish" attitude from theatre managers, that the comedian was "cut out for Shakespeare", and that if he had been frequently engaged in playing the Bard's works, then "Shakespeare would probably have been popular." In 1934, the theatre director Sydney Carroll offered Robey the chance to appear as
Nick Bottom in ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream'' at the
Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, but he initially declined the offer, citing a hectic schedule, including a conflict with his appearance in that year's Royal Variety Performance on 8 May. At the start of 1935 Robey accepted his first Shakespearean role, as
Falstaff in
Henry IV, Part 1, which surprised the press and worried fans who thought that he might retire the Prime Minister of Mirth. The theatrical press were sceptical of a music hall performer taking on such a distinguished role; Carroll, the play's producer, vehemently defended his casting choice. Carroll later admitted taking a gamble on employing Robey but wrote that the comedian "has unlimited courage in challenging criticism and risking his reputation on a venture of this kind; he takes both his past and his future in both hands and is faced with the alternative of dashing them into the depths or lifting them to a height hitherto undreamt of." Carroll further opined that "[Robey] has never failed in anything he has undertaken. He is one of the most intelligent and capable of actors."
Henry IV, Part I opened on 28 February at
Her Majesty's Theatre, and Robey proved himself to be a capable Shakespearean actor, though his Shakespearean debut was marred initially by an inability to remember his lines. A journalist from
The Daily Express thought that Robey seemed uncomfortable, displayed a halting delivery and was "far from word perfect". Writing in
The Observer, the critic
Ivor Brown said of Robey's portrayal: "In no performance within my memory has the actor been more obviously the afflicted servant of his lines and more obviously the omnipotent master of the situation". Another journalist, writing in the
Daily Mirror, thought that Robey "gave 25 percent of Shakespeare and 75 percent of himself". In any case, such was Robey's popularity in the role that the German theatre and film producer
Max Reinhardt declared that, should the opportunity arise for a film version, the comedian would be his perfect choice as Falstaff. Cotes described Robey as having "a great vitality and immense command of the [role]. He never faltered, he had to take his audience by the throat and make them attentive at once because he couldn't play himself in." Although he was eager to be taken seriously as a legitimate actor, Robey provided a subtle nod in the direction of his comic career by using the wooden cane intended for the Prime Minister of Mirth for the majority of his scenes as Falstaff. The poet
John Betjeman responded to the critics' early scepticism: "Variety artistes are a separate world from the legitimate stage. They are separate too, from ballet, opera, and musical comedy. It is possible for variety artists to appear in all of these. Indeed, no one who saw will ever forget the superb pathos and humour of George Robey's Falstaff". Later, in 1935, Blanche Littler persuaded Robey to accept Carroll's earlier offer to play Bottom, and the comedian cancelled three weeks' worth of dates. The press were complimentary of his performance, and he later attributed his success to Littler and her encouragement. and mentioned that, to relax, he would draw "comic scribbles" of himself as the Prime Minister of Mirth, which he would occasionally give to fans. As a result of the interview he received more than a thousand fan letters from listeners. Wilson thought that Robey's "perfect diction and intimate manner made him an ideal broadcast speaker". In the later months of 1936, Robey repeated his radio success with a thirty-minute programme entitled "Music-Hall", recorded for American audiences, to honour the tenth birthday of the
National Broadcasting Corporation. In it, he presented a montage of his characterisations as well as impressions of other famous acts of the day. A second programme, which he recorded the following year, featured the comedian speaking fondly of cricket and of the many well-known players whom he had met on his frequent visits to the Oval and Lord's cricket grounds over his fifty-year association. In the summer of 1938 Robey appeared in the film
A Girl Must Live, directed by
Carol Reed, in which he played the role of Horace Blount. A report in the
Kinematograph Weekly commented that the 69-year-old comedian was still able to "stand up to the screen by day and variety by night." A journalist for
The Times opined that Robey's performance as an elderly furrier, the love interest of both
Margaret Lockwood and
Lilli Palmer, was "a perfect study in bewildered embarrassment". Robey made his television debut in August 1938 but was unenthused with the medium and only made rare appearances. The BBC producer Grace Wyndham Goldie was dismayed at how little of his "comic quality" was conveyed on the small screen. Goldie thought that Robey's comic abilities were not limited to his voice and depended largely on the relation between his facial expressions and his witty words. She felt that he should "be forbidden, by his own angel, if nobody else, to approach the ordinary microphone". Nonetheless, Goldie remained optimistic about Robey's future television career. The journalist L. Marsland Gander disagreed and thought that Robey's methods were "really too slow for television". Robey married Blanche Littler, who was more than two decades his junior, at
Marylebone Town Hall. At Christmas, he fractured three ribs and bruised his spine when he accidentally fell into the orchestra pit while appearing in the 1938–39 pantomime
Robinson Crusoe in Birmingham. He attributed the fall to his face mask which gave him a limited view of the stage. The critic Harold Conway was less forgiving, blaming the accident on the comedian's "lost self-confidence" and opining that the accident was the start of Robey's professional decline.
Second World War Aware of demand for his act in Australia, Robey conducted a second tour of the country at the start of 1939. While he was appearing at the
Tivoli Theatre in Sydney, war broke out with Germany. Robey returned to England and concentrated his efforts on entertaining to raise money for the
war effort. He signed up with the
Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) for whom he appeared in a wide range of shows and also in his own one-man engagements. He would sometimes turn up unannounced to perform at hospitals, munition factories, airfields, anti-aircraft posts and other venues where there was an audience of just a few people. During the 1940s, Robey appeared predominantly in troop concerts as himself Cotes wrote that Robey was not a politician, merely a jingoist, who "lived long enough to feel [that] his little-Englander outlook [was causing him] acute embarrassment, and his army of admirers deep dismay." In a 1944 review of the film, Robey was described as being "convincing in [an] important role" but the film itself had "dull moments in the simple tale". That Christmas, Robey travelled to
Bristol, where he starred in the pantomime
Robinson Crusoe. Cine-variety introduced Robey to the
Astoria in Finsbury Park, London, a venue which was used to huge audiences and big-name acts and was described as "a super-cinema". During the early months of 1944, Robey returned to the role of Falstaff when he appeared in the film version of
Henry V, produced by
Eagle-Lion Films. The American film critic
Bosley Crowther had mixed opinions of the film. Writing in
The New York Times in 1946, he thought that it showcased "a fine group of British film craftsmen and actors", who contributed to "a stunningly brilliant and intriguing screen spectacle". Despite that, he considered the film's additional screenplay poor and called Falstaff's deathbed scene "non-essential and just a bit grotesque." Late in 1944, he appeared in
Burnley in a show entitled
Vive Paree alongside Janice Hart and Frank O'Brian. In 1945, Robey starred in two minor film roles, as "Old Sam" in
The Trojan Brothers, a short comedy film in which two actors experience various problems as a pantomime horse, and as "Vogel" in the musical romance
Waltz Time. He spent 1947 touring England, while the following spring he undertook a provincial tour of Frederick Bowyer's fairy play
The Windmill Man, which he also co-produced with his wife.
Last years Decline in health In June 1951, now aged 81, Robey starred in a midnight gala performance at the London Palladium in aid of the family of
Sid Field who had died that year. For the finale, Robey performed "I Stopped, I Looked, I Listened" and "If You Were the Only Girl in the World"; the rest of the three-hour performance featured celebrities from the radio, television and film mediums. The American comedian
Danny Kaye, who was also engaged for the performance, called Robey a "great, great artist". The same month, Robey returned to Birmingham, where he opened a garden party at St. Mary and St. Ambrose Church, a venue in which he had appeared at the beginning of his career. On 25 September he appeared for the BBC on an edition of the radio series
Desert Island Discs for which he chose among others "Mondo ladro", Falstaff's rueful complaint about the wicked world in
Verdi's opera
Falstaff. For the rest of the year Robey made personal appearances opening fetes and attending charity events. which paid tribute to the British music hall. For his performance, he adopted an ad-lib style rather than use a script. The following month Robey undertook a long provincial tour in the variety show
Do You Remember? under the management of
Bernard Delfont. After an evening's performance in
Sheffield, he was asked by a local newspaper reporter if he considered retiring. The comedian quipped: "Me retire? Good gracious, I'm too old for that. I could not think of starting a new career at my age!" In December, he opened the Lansbury Lodge home for retired cricketers in
Poplar, East London; he considered the ceremony to be one of the "happiest memories of his life." By early 1952, Robey was becoming noticeably frail, and he lost interest in many of his sporting pastimes. Instead, he stayed at home and drew comic sketches featuring the Prime Minister of Mirth. In May he filmed
The Pickwick Papers, in which he played the role of old
Tony Weller, a part which he had initially turned down on health grounds. The following year, and in aid of the games fund, he starred as
Clown in a short pantomime at the Olympic Variety Show at the
Victoria Palace Theatre. Organisers asked for him to appear in the Prime Minister of Mirth costume instead of the usual clown garb, a request the comedian was happy to fulfil.
Knighthood and death In the early months of 1954, a
knighthood was conferred on Robey by
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace. During the following weeks, his health declined; he began using a wheelchair and spent the majority of his time at home under the care of his wife. In May he opened a British Red Cross fete in
Seaford, East Sussex, and, a month later, made his last public appearance, on television as a panellist in the English version of ''
The Name's the Same''. Wilson called Robey's performance "pathetic" and thought that he appeared with only "a hint of his old self". By June he had become housebound and quietly celebrated his 85th birthday surrounded by family; visiting friends were organised into appointments by his wife Blanche, but theatrical colleagues were barred in case they caused the comedian too much excitement. Robey suffered a stroke on 20 November and remained in a semi-coma for just over a week. He died on 29 November 1954 at his home in Saltdean, East Sussex, and was cremated at the Downs Crematorium in Brighton. Blanche continued to live on the Sussex coast until her death at the age of 83 in 1981. ==Tributes and legacy==