The Good Old Days
 The Good Old Days ran for thirty years from 20th July
1953 and was introduced for the majority of its run by celebrated
chairman Leonard Sachs (who took over from Don Gemmell).
The show was broadcast from the City Varieties in Leeds, one of
the last true Victorian Music Halls still in existence. On its
present site since 1865, the City Varieties is one of the few
remaining music halls in Britain and of those, undoubtedly the
best preserved.
The assembled audiences for The Good Old Days were
expected to dress in period costume (and stick-on side-whiskers
and fake moustaches) and 'ooh' and 'aah' in all the appropriate
places as Sachs introduced the next act with alliterative attacks
of alarming alacrity in a constipated display of perspicacious
polysyllabic peripatetics, culminating in the banging of his
gavel, which heralded the appearance of a teaming torrent of
tempting talent . . . for our delight and delectation, naturally.
Authenticity was a very important factor. Women were forbidden
from smoking in the hall (they didn't in the 1900s) and the
audience were discouraged from using cigarette lighters - they
hadn't been invented back then.
Regular acts on the show were Ken Dodd, Danny La Rue, Roy Hudd,
Arthur Askey, Hilda Baker and Les Dawson.
At the end of each show
the audience would join in with the performers in a rousing chorus
of Down at the Old Bull and Bush.
At the height of its popularity, in 1975, there was an audience
waiting list of over 24,000 people.
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