Jimmy Clitheroe Collection : Miscellaneous Recordings
From the Jimmy Clitheroe collection . This promotional tape about textile weaving, made for The John Lewis Partnership, was acquired by Jimmy Clitheroe for personal reasons, because both of his parents had been weavers, working in the Lancashire textile industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Jimmy spent his childhood in a small weaving community in a village in rural Lancashire. He went into showbusiness because the only local employment available (other than farming) was as a textile weaver -- but he was too small to reach the looms! Recordings from the collection of open reel tapes in the personal collection of professional English comedian Jimmy Clitheroe. In the 1950s he bought one of the newly invented tape recorders, which were sold to the public from 1955 onwards. He used this mainly in order to record his stage act. But he also used it as a hobby, and recorded items in which he was interested from radio, television and records. The diminutive Jimmy Clitheroe lived in Blackpool, Lancashire, the Mecca of British showbusiness, and appeared professionally in the Variety theatres, in the Cinema, on BBC Radio and on ITV Television doing a cheeky schoolboy act. He is most famous as the star of the radio comedy series The Clitheroe Kid which ran from 1956 until 1972. The 50 year period of broadcast copyright under section 14(2) of the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ( www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/14 ) has expired for all broadcast items included in this collection.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.