Leslie Sarony - At The Old Pig and Whistle / The School Song (1933)
Leslie Sarony (born Leslie Legge Frye 22 January 1897 - 12 February 1985) was a British entertainer, singer and songwriter. Sarony was born in Surbiton, Surrey and died in London.
Sarony became well known in the 1920s and 1930s as a variety artist and radio performer. In 1928 he made a short film made in the Phonofilm sound-on-film system, Hot Water and Vegetabuel. In this film, he sang, interspersed with his comic patter, the two eponymous songs -- the first as a typical Cockney geezer outside a pub, the second (still outside the pub) as a less typical vegetable rights campaigner (\"Don't be cruel to a vegetabuel\"). Leslie Sarony wrote many of the top novelty records of the 30s, many of which were covered by other artists including Max Miller, Gracie Fields and many others.
He went on to make a number of recordings of novelty songs, such as He Played his Ukulele as the Ship Went Down, including several with Jack Hylton and his Orchestra.
Sarony continued to perform into his eighties, moving on to television and films. In the 1970s he appeared in hit programmes including the Harry Worth Show, Crossroads, Z-Cars, The Good Old Days, and The Liberace Show, as well as the famous sitcom Nearest and Dearest. He took over from Bert Palmer as the senile Uncle Stavely (\"I heard that! Pardon?\") in the fourth and final series of I Didn't Know You Cared in 1979.
In 1983 Sarony appeared as one of a number of elderly insurance clerks in the The Crimson Permanent Assurance segment of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. His son Peter Sarony is a successful gunsmith with a business in London.
