Feeling My Age

Marriott Edgar’s comic monologue The Lion and Albert was hugely popular when I was a kid in the 50s. It was made famous by the masterly interpretation by Stanley Holloway – who first performed it at London’s Savoy Follies in 1931.

Grateful acknowledgement to Paul Burman’s blog for the image above, in which Mr Ramsbottom bears an uncanny resemblance to my Lincolnshire grandad. The full length text goes on a bit – my friend Herry used to recite a (mercifully abridged) version when we were teenagers:

There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That’s noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.

A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle,
The finest that Woolworth’s could sell.

They didn’t think much to the Ocean:
The waves, they was fiddlin’ and small,
There was no wrecks and nobody drownded,
Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.

So, seeking for further amusement,
They paid and went into the Zoo,
Where they’d Lions and Tigers and Camels,
And old ale and sandwiches too.

There were one great big Lion called Wallace;
His nose were all covered with scars —
He lay in a somnolent posture,
With the side of his face on the bars.

Now Albert had heard about Lions,
How they was ferocious and wild  —
To see Wallace lying so peaceful,
Well, it didn’t seem right to the child.

So straightway the brave little feller,
Not showing a morsel of fear,
Took his stick with its ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle
And pushed it in Wallace’s ear.

You could see that the Lion didn’t like it,
For giving a kind of a roll,
He pulled Albert inside the cage with him,
And swallowed the little lad whole.

Then Pa, who had seen the occurrence,
And didn’t know what to do next,
Said ‘Mother! Yon Lion’s ‘et Albert’,
And Mother said ‘Eeh, I am vexed!’…

The Ramsbottoms call the police, but an unsympathetic magistrate refuses to award them compensation on the grounds that they can simply have another child to replace Albert. In the followup poem, Albert’s Return, the kid kicks up such a fuss inside Wallace that the lion vomits him back out:

Old Wallace felt better directly,
And his figure once more became lean,
But the only difference with Albert
Was his face and his hands were quite clean.

Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Had gone home to tea, feeling blue;
Ma says ‘I feel down in the mouth like’
Pa says ‘Aye, I bet Albert does, too’

‘Let’s look on the bright side’ said Father;
‘What can’t be helped must be endured;
Every cloud has a silvery lining,
And we did have young Albert insured’

A knock on the door came that moment,
As Father these kind words did speak.
Twas the man from t’Prudential – he’d called for
Their tuppence per person per week…

When the young man had heard all the details,
A purse from his pocket he drew,
And he paid them, with interest and bonus,
The sum of nine pounds, four and two.

Pa had scarce got his hand on the money
When a face at the window they see,
And Mother says ‘Eeh! look, it’s Albert’
And Father says ‘Aye, it would be’

Young Albert came in all excited,
And started his story to give,
And Pa says ‘I’ll never trust lions
Again, not as long as I live’

The young man from the Prudential
To pick up the money began,
And Father says ‘Eeh! just a moment,
Don’t be in a hurry, young man’

Then giving young Albert a shilling,
He said ‘Pop off back to the Zoo.
‘Ere’s yer stick with the ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle –
Go and see what the Tigers can do! ‘

 

The unedited full-length text is here on poemhunter.com