ADDIDI INSPIRATION AWARD WOMEN IN HISTORY - Angela Budett-Coutts NOMINEE Singer and Comedienne(1870-1922) Matilda Alice Victoria Wood was an English music hall singer, best known as Marie Lloyd. Her ability to add lewdness to the most innocent of lyrics led to frequent clashes with the guardians of morality. Her performances articulated the disappointments of life, especially for working-class women. Born in Hoxton, Matildaï¿½s early interest in the music hall was fostered by her father, and as the eldest of 9 children, she formed her sisters into a singing group called the Fairy Bells Minstrels, singing in local missions and church halls. In her teens, Matilda adopted the name Marie Lloyd and quickly became one of the most famous of English music hall singers and comediennes. Her first major success was The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery. Marieï¿½s songs, although perfectly harmless by modern standards, began to gain a reputation for being "racy" and filled with double entendre, largely thanks to the manner in which she sang them, adding winks and gestures, and creating a conspiratorial relationship with her audience.

She liked to claim that any immorality was in the minds of the complainants. In one famous incident, when the moralists objected to her song "I sits among the cabbages and peas", with its daring reference to urinating, she transformed the lyrics, and sang instead "I sits among the cabbages and leeks" to the roars of laughter of her adoring audience. Despite her own success she supported other performers during the Music Hall War of 1907, when performers demonstrated outside theatres for better pay and conditions. During the First World War, she enthusiastically supported recruitment for the army. In particular she sang the song I didn't like you much before you joined the army, John, but I do like you, cockie, now you've got your khaki on. She also sang in many free concerts for the masses of wounded returning from the trenches. Famed for her generosity and good humour, Marie scandalised respectable society with her rebellious attitude and with a string of love affairs, which were salaciously covered in the tabloid papers. Marie Lloyd was married three times.

She was famously refused entry to US in 1913 for "moral turpitude" when she arrived with her 3rd husband Dillon as "Mr. and Mrs. Dillon" but unmarried. On 4 October 1922 Marie collapsed on stage and died 3 days later. She is buried in Hampstead Cemetery - more than 100,000 people attended Marie's funeral. In the funeral procession there were twelve cars full of flowers, and on top of the hearse was the long ebony cane with the sparkling top hat that she had used in her act. In 2009, the BBC produced a film, Miss Marie Lloyd - Queen of the Music Hall depicting her rise to fame. The film features some of Marie's most famous songs, including My Old Man Said Follow the Van and her theme song A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good. Has pop music always been about sex? | Express Yourself | Comment | Daily Express VIDS Has pop music always been about sex?

YOU may not be familiar with the song Rude Boy by the Caribbean singer Rihanna but if you have a 10-year-old daughter or granddaughter, the chances are she is “Come here rude boy, boy, can you get it up?” she can probably trill by heart. “Come here rude boy, boy, is you big enough?” 00:00, Tue, Aug 24, 2010 Britney Spears: is pop music too graphic? [] On the other hand she may prefer the Britney Spears song If You Seek Amy, with its chorus: “Oh baby baby if you seek Amy tonight/Oh baby baby we’ll do whatever you like.” That may sound respectable enough – until you realise the title is a word-trick spelling out a four-letter message beginning with F and ending with K. The once proudly virginal Britney has a nocturnal plan that has nothing to do with anyone named Amy. This overt sexualisation of music aimed at teenagers and younger makes Mike Stock, co-founder of the wholesome Eighties’ pop factory Stock, Aitken Waterman, see a deep shade of red.

“I have a problem with the diet of almost exclusively sexually explicit lyrics and imagery that impoverishes all of us, including the young kids that can’t be sat in front of a telly any more,” he told yesterday’s Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. He said it was perverse that the output of music channels such as MTV gets less sexual after the watershed. “Not only is there more of the explicit stuff about but it’s targeted at the younger age group,” he said. “That is a crime. I want there to be some forum for the broadcasters, the record labels and the fashion industry to stand up and say we believe it’s wrong to target over-sexualised images of a graphic nature to kids under 11 or 12.” Rihanna: You may not know her song Rude Boy, but your granddaughter might His words will strike a chord with parents who have cringed listening to their children singing along to Lady Gaga’s Lovegame, which involves frequent repetition of the line: “I want to take a ride on your disco stick.” It has prompted one public-spirited blogger to set up an internet advice page entitled “Mommy, What’s a Disco Stick? – What To Tell Your Kids”.

Stock concedes that pop has always been about sex. It is aimed at teenagers, a breed with sex on the brain, so it should come as no surprise that selling records has constantly been about giving young people what they want. Take a song about a dentist called Long John. He is so skilled that the lady singer keeps finding new excuses to visit him. Recalling her first time in his chair, she croons: “Long John, Long John, you’ve got that golden touch/You thrill me when you drill me and I need you very much.” It’s wrong to target over-sexualised images of a graphic nature to kids under 11 or 12 Mike Stock, of Stock, Aitken and Waterman It’s smut, pure and simple – but the identity and era of the singer may come as a surprise. Long John Blues was released as a single by Dinah Washington in 1949, when it got to No3 in the US rhythm and blues chart. Two decades before the Summer Of Love and the dawn of the permissive society, it was possible for the Queen Of The Blues to sing about sex and hardly raise an eyebrow.

A similar level of innuendo pervaded Meri Wilson’s Seventies classic Telephone Man, with its boast: “I got it in the bedroom and I got it in the hall”, while the music magazine Billboard cites as its sexiest song of all time Olivia Newton-John’s Physical. The video featured the Aussie girl-next-door working out at the gym but it wasn’t hard to grasp that the lyrics referred to physicality of a different kind. This nudge-nudgery is timeless. The Edwardian musical hall singer Marie Lloyd delighted fans and scandalised moralists with double entendres such as: “I sits among the cabbages and peas” (say it aloud and it takes on a whole new meaning), or her racy song A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good. Daily Express music critic Simon Gage says the adoption of “rock ’n’ roll” as a musical term tells you all you need to know about the relationship between pop and sex: the expression started as slang for intercourse. “All those blues songs were always a bit rude and the whole fun of naughty lyrics is thinking, ‘Oh my God, how do they get away with saying that?’” he says.

“It’s like the Chuck Berry song My Ding-a-Ling, which Mary Whitehouse tried to get banned. It was supposed be about a little bell and if you were very innocent or very young you could still believe that.” He says something will be lost if explicit description is allowed to take the place of cheeky metaphor. “I remember being a bit taken aback by George Michael’s I Want Your Sex because it was so direct. It gets boring if you spell it out because there’s no fun involved.” Tell that to the vulgar London band N-Dubz, who leave little to the imagination in their single entendre song Sex. “I don’t mean to be pushy, pushy/ I’m just in it for the p***y, p***y,” sings one of them. Mike Stock admits there have always been controversial singles, such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax in the Eighties which talked openly about gay sex. But where such directness was once the exception, he says, it has become normal. And even if the lyrics are mild, the video for the songs may not be.

“Images are the most important thing, so if your song isn’t very good, just make the video sexy.” Critics say the turning point in this respect was Madonna’s 1990 video Justify My Love, filmed in the style of a European art film and showing a series of couples in fetish outfits. Causing huge controversy at the time, it paved the way for a later generation such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera to sex up their own performances. The current videos of Katy Perry, whose cartoonish persona makes her appeal to a very young female audience, contain enough sex and nudity to constitute soft porn. Sexing up doesn’t have to mean stripping off. In the video to the current No1, Green Light by the London “grime” collective Roll Deep, clothed female dancers raise their skirts and dance suggestively close to the camera lens, leaving no doubt as to what they are “green-lighting” – or giving permission for – the male singers to do. So it may be true that pop was always about sex but it used to find better ways of disguising it. It allowed the target audience to take the meaning without their younger brothers and sisters or nosy parents catching on.

But the target audience has got younger and when musicians no longer bother using metaphor to keep up the pretence, it should come as no surprise that alarm bells have started ringing. “I’m just taking as my guide the mothers who are telling me this,” says Stock. “Unless someone does something, we are just going to talk about it again tomorrow and next year. So why don’t we do something about it now?” THE VIRTUAL VICTORIAN: MARIE LLOYD ~ THE ONE AND ONLY ~ THE QUEEN OF THE MUSIC HALLS... 03/05/2014 MARIE LLOYD ~ THE ONE AND ONLY ~ THE QUEEN OF THE MUSIC HALLS... Recently the VV was invited to take part in a spectacular event when, as one of 32 Londoners , she gave a talk on the London Eye. Her event was based on Marie Lloyd, a superstar of the London halls and theatrical entertainments, whose career spanned the later nineteenth, and early twentieth century. Below is a transcript of that talk - Today there are many people who know nothing at all about Marie Lloyd - which shows how ephemeral fame can be, and how the years so often dim collective, treasured memories.

Because, in her time Miss Marie Lloyd was known as ‘The One and Only, The beloved Queen of the Music Halls '- famed at home, and internationally, and who, at the time of her funeral was mourned by 100,000 fans who lined the streets of London, even though they’d never met her. I wish I could have met her. I think she could have told some tales when I wrote my first novel, The Somnambulist , which is based on a fictional family who live in the East End of London – and who have strong links to the music halls, in particular to Wilton’s, in the Wapping/Whitechapel area. Wilton's opens its doors to the public today for various shows, and also tours. If you happen to go there I’m sure you’ll agree that, despite the building’s state of decay, as soon as you enter the doors of the hall you feel as if you’ve travelled in time ... right back to its Victorian heyday. You can almost hear the pop of champagne corks, the laughter and singing, the instruments playing. You can imagine the chandelier that once sparkled on mirrors around the walls.

You can still see the cast iron barley twist pillars that hold up the single balcony – and the glorious papier mache frieze that laps around the front of that – from which you could reach down with your arms to touch anyone on the stage below. That’s how intimate the venue is. And why am I talking about Wilton's? Well, it’s simply because that music hall would not really have been all that different from the venues where Marie Lloyd performed at the very start of her career - so many of which no longer exist. I wanted to give you some idea of the setting and the atmosphere – with the costers and dockers, and West end swells who tipped top hats while ‘slumming it’ with the East End shop girls and prostitutes – and over whose whistles, shouts and laughs – through the fug of cigar smoke and fumes of gas, and without the aid of a microphone (which is something we take for granted today) Marie Lloyd would have had very little more than her natural charisma and confidence with which to reach out to that audience. And to have them eating out of her hand.

I don’t think Marie sang at Wilton’s – with the doors of that hall having been closed for immoral behavior and decadence at the time when a cheeky East End girl made her debut in The Grecian Hall - which was situated in Hoxton, and only a street or two away from where the future Queen of the Halls had been born and spent her childhood. Born on February 12, 1870, she lived at 36, Plumber Street (what is known as Provost Street today). Her father’s name was John ‘Brush’ Wood – Brush being a nickname that came about because he liked to be smartly dressed and always carried a clothes brush in his pocket. John was quite artistic too, employed in making artificial silk flowers. But he also boosted the family coffers by waiting on tables in halls and bars, of which there were very many around, with Hoxton being in the midst of the East End’s thriving theatrical world. John’s wife was called Matilda, and she was a dressmaker by trade – with quite a talent for design – a talent inherited by her daughter, which came in useful later on, when Marie often designed and made the costumes that she wore on stage.

But here, I am running ahead of myself... This photograph can be viewed in the National Portrait Gallery. Marie is seated in the middle, to the right of her mother. Matilda Alice Victoria Wood – more usually known as Tilley then – was one of eleven siblings, of whom nine survived to adulthood. A headstrong and determined child, she spent far more time playing truant from school than studying behind a desk. She preferred to help her mother at home, looking after the younger family members, or organizing singing games. Always dramatic by nature, she loved being the centre of attention – so much so that when still very young she often haunted the graveyards around, attending the funerals of strangers, where she wept and wailed so convincingly that every eye would turn her way. Eventually, her passion was more usefully directed into The Fairy Bell Minstrels – which was a family singing act.

And while Tilley’s brother Johnny sold programmes to advertise the events, she and her other siblings performed – decked up in the costumes their mother made while appearing at the Nile Street Sunday School, and the Blue Ribbon Gospel Temperance Mission (yet another name for the Hoxton Hall when its ownership was more spiritual) where the children sang lyrics that warned about the evils of alcohol, such as - Throw Down the Bottle and Never Drink Again...’ which, as you will come to discover, proved to be somewhat ironic when considering Marie’s later years... For then, Marie was still Tilley, and Tilley’s only addiction was a burning ambition to go on stage; an ambition encouraged by the fact that her mother’s sister once danced in halls – when Aunt Louisa was transformed into the glamorous Madame Patti. But, however stage-struck Tilley had been, encouraged by hardworking, respectable parents who knew how uncertain and perilous a life on the stage could be, she managed to find some employment elsewhere – in making shoes for babies, or curling feathers for dressing hats. But such employment did not last long, before she was sacked by the factory foreman for climbing onto the tables to sing and distracting all the other girls.

Tilley’s parents were very soon forced to agree that – in the words of their daughter later on: they couldn’t kick their objections as high as she could kick her legs! And so, John Wood arranged for his Tilley to take a turn at the Grecian Hall, which was served by the Eagle Tavern – which was where he happened to be employed, with both buildings being part of the same complex, on the corner of Shepherdess Walk – where it adjoins the City Road, very near to Old Street Roundabout. Was Tilley nervous that first night, when she performed as Matilda Wood, when even with her father nearby to keep an eye on everything we can only imagine the rush in her blood when she put on her costume while still at home and then made her way to the music hall. And we know exactly what she wore: a figure hugging bodice, and a skirt to show her petticoats, and on her head a mantilla of lace to drape around her long blonde curls – through which shone blue eyes, and large white teeth in a face, not conventionally beautiful.

But she did exude charisma, and her personality set her apart when she stood behind the bright stage lights to brave whatever cacophony was going on in the hall below. She sang a sentimental song entitled “In the Good Old Days” – which was probably rather slow and nostalgic for one so very young. And that was swiftly followed on by the ditty, My Soldier Laddie - after which she danced an Irish jig! That debut performance went so well that new invitations came rolling in for the singer – now going under the name of Miss Bella Delamere – to appear at various halls around, such as the Collins Islington – and the Hammersmith Temple of Varieties – and the Middlesex Hall in Drury Lane. And despite some early controversy, when Bella stole ballads from other stars and was threatened with legal injunctions, somehow she had the wit and nerve to carry on and escape the worst – with her future finally ensured when performing at Bethnal Green’s Sebright Hall, where she met the composer, George Ware.

George then became her manager, and he also gifted the girl with a brand new stage name – from then on to be known as Marie – Marie as in starry - which was thought to be more sophisticated - with the Ooh la la nuance of being French. And the surname of Lloyd was said to have come from a copy of Lloyds Weekly Newspaper – though it could just as well have been the name on a box of matches close to hand. A sample of 'The Boy I love', from the 1966 documentary, 'The London Nobody Knows'. But, George Ware’s greatest gift of all was to give his new protégé a song: one that had previously been performed by the singer, Nelly Power, but never with the same success as when the sixteen year old Marie Lloyd performed The Boy I love... at the Falstaff Hall on Old Street.

After that night her star was lit and her rise was meteoric, with earnings soon so lucrative that she could afford to pay other composers to create unique material - songs suiting her brazen, ad lib style such as Whacky Whack, and Tiggy Vous, and When you Wink the Other Eye – during which she would give what soon became Marie Lloyd’s trademark expression: a knowing smile and a cheeky wink, not to mention the high kicking dancing style designed to expose silk bloomers – of which the writer Compton Mackenzie who saw her perform when just a boy, wrote that he had been “amazed that any girl should have the courage to let the world see her drawers as definitely as Marie Lloyd.” Perhaps she had been singing these lyrics from The Tale of the Skirt – which went: “By correct manipulation, she her figure can display, And the ankles, and the, er, well, it’s hard to turn the eyes away...

And she murmurs ‘Saucy Monkey’ when a rude boy shouts, What ho!...” Well, whatever they shouted, the eyes of all would have been wide in amazement during a London pantomime when, egged on by her co-star, Little Tich, Marie knelt down to pray by a bed and then added some improvisation by reaching underneath it, as if in search of a chamber pot. The audience thought that hilarious, though Augustus Harris, the director, insisted his star never do it again. But hard to restrain Marie’s character and natural ebullience - and for that and other 'vulgarities', such as during one of Marie’s acts when she struggled with a parasol and then proclaimed when it was up, ‘Thank God, I haven’t had it up for months!’ – she was to offend more prurient souls, even if what was deemed outrageous then would be viewed as mild innuendo now.

Still, a woman called Laura Ormiston Chant, a sort of Mary Whitehouse figure, became so shocked and scandalised that she successfully campaigned to have Marie Lloyd hauled up before the Theatre’s Vigilance Committee; specifically in relation to the scatological inferences in the lyrics of her popular song: ‘I sits among the cabbages and peas'. That song alluded to outside lavatories which were built at the bottom of gardens, and where – as the lyrics quaintly describe – a young woman, “sits and shells with ease. Till the pretty little peapot’s full of peas." Imagine singing that too fast...and how sits and shells might get confused! But, Marie was clever and worked her charm, offering to change the words around – to cabbages and leeks instead – which really was taking the ... Well, I think you must see what I mean...but while still up before the Committee, Marie sang, ‘Oh, Mr Porter!’ (A song about going too far on a train – and too far in other ways as well) – and “A Little of what you fancy does you good’ - and both so coy and demurely done that no-one could find a thing to condemn.

And, finally, in an act of defiance she sang the lyrics of Tennyson’s poem, ‘Come into the Garden Maud’ with such a carnal knowing air at every utterance of ‘come’ that everyone present was stunned into silence - because Marie Lloyd had made her point. Obscenity was all in the mind – and her career could not be stopped by Orniston Chant, or anyone else. Rather than being banned from the stage, she went on to receive such rave reviews as this one from Black and White Magazine when, at the age of 29, Marie had the starring role in the Pantomime, Dick Whittington: Firstly, Miss Marie Lloyd is the Dick, and a better Dick, a more kindhearted, jolly young blade you will not find in London Town this season. Apart from her natural gift of jollity, which no one can deny, Miss Lloyd has serious claims to be considered an artist. I fancy some of my superior readers lifting their eyebrows and exclaiming: "What! Marie Lloyd an artist!" Yes, indeed!

If you have one scrap of appreciation for art in your soul...you roar when she sings and winks that roguish eye of hers: you roar so heartily that you forget to ask why you roar and how she makes you roar. Her songs are often, alas! mere badly rhymed strings of inanities, her speeches silly punning "lengths," but it is not exactly what she says, it's the clever way she says it, that brings an audience to her feet. She knows when to be restrained, when to be ebullient; she may be vulgar at times, but she is always humorous...and she has the faculty of captivating her audience by talking and singing to them - taking them into her confidence - rather than at them. Then she can make her brilliant white teeth flash on you so suddenly that you are dazzled; her wink tickles you; her smile warms you; her chuckle rouses you to responsive merriment. But it is useless trying to set down in the space of a half-column the multifarious delights of Miss Lloyd's art. She is great, and she must be seen to be appreciated. You go doubting – you come away her slave.

This view was shared by 'superior souls' such as T S Elliot who insisted that Miss Marie Lloyd “had the capacity for expressing the soul of the people - which made her something quite unique.” Well, Marie was certainly unique, unashamedly singing her risque songs, all delivered with guts and gusto – and her fans far less prudish than we might suppose, for they liked nothing more than to have some fun. And Marie dished out the fun in spades – truly leaving the audience her slaves. But, for every conquest made from the stage during the height of her career, Marie’s love life was never such a success. She was first married at seventeen, when her private life might have mirrored her act - when she might have gazed up at the balcony, while singing the words of this famous song: “The boy I love is up in the gallery, The boy I love is looking now at me, There he is, can’t you see, waving his handkerchief, As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.” The boy who gazed back at Marie was most likely her brother, Johnny, who, at that cue would smile down and wave his handkerchief about.

But I like to think that, now and then, it would have been Percy Courtenay – the silver-tongued Stage Door Johnny, and race course ticket tout, of whom we hardly know much more; except that he hailed from Streatham, and managed to steal Marie’s heart – and also her virginity. A baby daughter, Myria, was born six months after the wedding day. The newly weds had a marital home in two rooms in a house in Arlington Square, which is just off the New North Road. But this was far from a dream come true. Marie’s pregnancy left her shell shocked, fearing her career was lost. And she also discovered she’d married a drunkard; a man who frequently gambled their money, and was jealous of his wife’s success, resenting her friendships with theatre friends such as Dan Leno, and Little Tich, Lottie Collins and Albert Chevalier – the friends who, like her family, were welcomed at any time of day, with her home run more like an informal hotel. The rift between Marie and Percy was soon irreparable.

She exhausted herself with theatre work, throwing herself into pantomimes which were lucrative and near to home, but physically demanding, with the runs going on for months on end. So, perhaps it is little wonder that Marie’s second pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage. Marie was only nineteen years old, but she was determined to carry on, and carry on she did with style - at The Empire, and Alhambra in Leicester Square, The Trocadero off Shaftsbury Avenue, and the Royal Standard in Victoria. It was during the pantomime, Little Bo Beep, that Percy Courtenay – entirely drunk – broke into her Drury Lane dressing room and attempted to slash at his wife’s throat with a sword that was used as one of the stage props. There was also another occasion when he beat her with a walking stick, screaming in the street for all to hear, ‘I will gouge your eyes out and ruin you!’ Enough was enough. Marie left their home to embark on a tour of America, and when she returned to England again a restraining order was enforced to prevent her husband coming near – by which time she was otherwise involved with the singer, Alec Hurley.

Alec Hurley was a gentle bear of a man who’d been raised just a mile or two from Marie’s own Hoxton family home. Solid, and dependable, the ex-costerman and tea store clerk was often to share his lover’s stage when, during a ten year courtship, the handsome ‘cockney couple’ travelled as far as America, Australia, and South Africa. They shared many other interests – such as their trips to the races, for which they kept houseboats on the Thames, to be nearer to their favourite tracks. Sunbeam was used during the day, and Moonbeam in the evenings, and there was much talk of their owners often ending up in the river too when a meet had gone particularly well. They shared a home in Hampstead, but never forgot their East End friends - proud of being working class right down to their very bootstraps. They showed great support and gave monetary aid when the Amalgamated Musicians Union went on strike for fairer pay; when Alex Hurley and Marie helped to fund the Music Hall War of 1907 – and that just a year after they wed, when Marie’s divorce at last came through.

But, by then, there were wars at home as well, and the lyrics that Alec was famous for, ‘I aint nobody in perticuler,’ reflected the fact that many now addressed him as Mr Marie Lloyd – or the star who had married a planet. And when on the verge of bankruptcy, due to gambling and failed business interests, Marie upped and left all their troubles behind for a new and passionate affair – this time with a jockey, half her age! She left Alec – some say - when he needed her most - and moved to a house in Golders Green to live with Bernard Dillon, who was famous for his Derby wins, as well as the 1000 Guineas stakes – who was lauded in the music halls, and a sporting pin up for Vanity Fair. But Dillon was also infamous as a drinking, bullying, gambling man, who’d lost his riding license when involved in a betting scandal. This new relationship was doomed, just as the other two had been, with Dillon resenting the fact that his fame was eclipsed by his wife’s flamboyant charm.

More scurrilous members of the press wrote of their troubled private life, and perhaps this affected her public persona when, in 1912, she was not asked to play a part in the very first Royal Command Performance. Some said that was due to her scandalous life, some to her crude performing style, and others because of her politics – because of the enemies she’d made amongst the theatre managements when supporting the musician’s strike. But whatever the reason for the slight, Marie – though inwardly furious – refused to be cast aside, performing herself on the very same night where the London Pavilion posters announced: Marie Lloyd, Queen of the halls; and placards outside the theatre proclaimed: “Every performance by Marie Lloyd is a command performance – by command of the British public!’ It was a great success, but the gossiping press had a field day again, and worse was to come when the couple embarked on a trip to tour America – when before they’d even left the ship, someone informed the authorities that, although they’d shared a cabin on board the SS Olympic, she and Dillon were not wed.

When detained as ‘Undesirables’, and accused of ‘moral turpitude’, the farce was only to carry on when Dillon was arrested on charges of importing Lloyd as a product of the white slave trade! The affair may seem almost laughable now, but Marie was at the end of her tether and later admitted she’d never forget ‘the humiliation to which I have been subjected ...I shall never sing in America again, no matter how high the salary offered.’ I wonder if that humiliation was made worse by the fact that her sister, Alice (who had also followed a singing career, as many of her siblings did), was far more popular in New York. By contrast, when Marie’s tour went ahead, even though she played to packed houses, some reviews were very cruel. Her pride was hurt, and her guard was down, and perhaps she was trying to hide her pain when the news came from England that Hurley had died of pleurisy and pneumonia.

He was only 42 year old, and – according to many friends, still professing his love for her up till the end – whereas she responded with the words: “with all due respect to the dead, I can cheerfully say that’s the best piece of news I’ve heard in many years, for it means that Bernard Dillon and I will marry as soon as this unlucky year ends.” But Bernard Dillon brought no luck. The man who Marie then legally wed at the British Consulate in Portland, Oregon, in the February of 1914 was nothing but trouble from the start. At least when back in England, nearer to friends and family, Marie felt on safer ground, resuming some provincial tours. And then, in 1915, at the age of 45, she was rolling up her sleeves, involved in the First World War Effort. She travelled around the country to visit hospitals and factories, and entertained the frontline troops with, ‘Now You’ve Got your Khaki on’ – that hit performed to 10,000 men in the Crystal Palae in South London. And what a show it must have been, with all of those soldiers cheering her on.

A very old recording of Marie Lloyd singing 'Now You've Got Your Khaki On'. But Dillon was less supportive. He might have joined the army too, but then spent every moment trying to leave, either claiming to be too obese to be fit enough for army life, or that he was needed to go and care for his family back in Ireland. His behaviour was often shameless, such as on the occasion when Marie came home to find her husband in her bed, making love to another woman! She endured so many beatings when Dillon was out of his wits with drink that it became quite commonplace for the police to have to intervene - and with Dillon eventually sentenced to work a month’s hard labour. But, only when he assaulted her father – with John Wood by then very old and frail – did Marie make a final break. Emotionally and physically, she was a wreck, often drinking herself to ease her woes. And yet she still achieved success with ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van', when she stood on the stage in a costume of rags and carried a bird cage in one hand, to show the plight of the homeless poor - those forced to do a midnight flit when they hadn’t the money to pay the rent.

And ironically, as so often before, this song was to mirror Marie’s life. Not that she was homeless as such, but she was always travelling about, and despite having earned what were then vast sums – as much as £11,000 a year – her handouts to husbands, family, and friends, meant that Marie ended up in debt. My Old Man - sung by Jessie Wallace, from the BBC dramatisation of the life of Marie Lloyd Forced to sell the marital home, she went to live in Woodstock Road – another house in Golders Green, owned by her sister, Daisy – and one one which Bernard Dillon could have no monetary claim. Still, it was hard to make a new start. Marie was being side-lined by other, more popular music hall acts. And caught in a downward spiral of grief, the woman who’d reached her half century was no longer so young or resilient. She became less and less reliable, very often not showing up for work – as illustrated by the night when booked for the London Palladian, when instead of walking onto the stage she stayed at home to write her will; and wrote her husband out of it.

Her act was unpredictable too, often stumbling into scenery, or else supported by the hand of someone behind the stage curtain. Many times her performance was curtailed, such as on the night in Cardiff when she lasted only six minutes before heading back to her dressing room. And then, there was the occasion, cruelly described by Virginia Wood who saw her at Camden’s Bedford Hall, and afterwards went on to write about: “A mass of corruption – long front teeth – a crapulous way of saying 'desire', – scarcely able to walk, waddling, aged, unblushing...” A shadow of her former self, Marie’s frame was so shrunken, her face so drawn, some said that she looked like a man in drag. And perhaps severely blackened teeth were the proof that she’d had to use mercury to contain the symptoms of syphilis, caught from her promiscuous husband. When on the stage of the London Alhambra she sang with a greatly weakened voice, “It's a bit of a ruin that Cromwell knocked about a bit” – and then collapsed onto the boards, as if in a drunken stupor.

The audience roared with laughter and thought this was simply a part of the act, when all along she was dying before them, exhausted and ravaged by alcohol. Three days later, at the age of just 52, Marie Lloyd was pronounced as dead. On the death certificate, it said: Mitral regurgitation, 14 months. Nephritis, 14 months. Uraemic coma, 3 days. In short – heart and kidney failure. She must have suffered terribly, but she never wanted pity. Right up until the very end, she preferred to put a brave face on things, saying: “Let them think I died of good living – don’t leave them crying.” This sentiment was echoed by the words inscribed on her gravestone: Tired she was, although she didn’t show it, Suffering she was, and hoped we didn’t know it, But He above – and understanding all, Prescribed “long rest, and gave the final call. Marie Lloyd's funeral procession - the funeral was conducted by A.

France & Son Funeral Directors But, Marie did leave them crying – and she still had one performance to make, which was to be her funeral, with an audience larger than ever in life, with 100,000 of her fans coming out to line the London roads on Thursday, October 12, in the year of 1922. T S Elliot was so distraught that he wrote an open letter saying that he would not be attending any literary events for the next two months. Max Beerbohm, the famous essayist wrote that London had not seen such a funeral since the death of the Duke of Wellington. Today, we can only compare those scenes with the intense outpourings of grief that were shown for Diana, The Princess of Wales - when so many people had the sense that this was a woman who’d touched their hearts, who felt they’d lost a personal friend. Mourners came from near and far, with huge crowds having gathered in Woodstock Road – to where Old Kate, a race card seller, had walked the 75 miles from Newmarket.

An empty floral birdcage was to signify that in ‘My Old Man...” but no hope of the hundreds of tributes sent being able to fit on the coffin lid – a coffin so small that none could believe it contained the great Marie Lloyd. The hearse left the house at 11am, topped with Marie’s old stage prop, of an ebony cane wreathed in orchids. At the cemetery in West Hampstead, mourners stood twelve deep around the grave, and the cemetery gates had to be closed before the internment could take place. So many wept that autumn day for a woman they said could not be replaced – and whether or not she ever was, the music hall era had entered its twilight: all the crowds who once laughed and drank in halls no longer so keen on saucy songs, preferring to dance to jazz instead, or else flocking in droves to cinemas to enjoy the cult of silent film. And after the horrors of World War 2, many more stayed at home with their TV sets – upon which they might have been content to watch programmes like The Good Old Days – that title to echo the very first song that their Queen once sang in the Grecian Hall.

The BBC's 2007 dramatisation of the life of Marie Lloyd which stars Jessie Wallace is available to buy here , or various clips can be searched for and viewed on Youtube. Finally, if you would like to read more about the life of Marie Llloyd there is much to be found online, and the VV also recommends these sources - Midge Gillies's biography Marie Lloyd: The One and Only, published by Orion. This may no longer be in print, but the VV did manage to find a copy on Amazon Marketplace. There were biographies by Naomi Jacobs and Walter Macqueen-Pope, who published their personal reminiscences concerning Marie Lloyd's earlier years Daniel Farson has written about the violence in Marie's life - particularly in respect to the behaviour of Bernard Dillon during her final years. Richard Anthony Baker, a writer and presenter with BBC radio, has drawn on contemporary press accounts regarding the life of Marie Lloyd.

Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Music-halls was published by Hale in 1990 Posted by Double Entendre | The Daily Omnivore The Daily Omnivore « Paraprosdokian | The 48 Laws of Power » Double Entendre A double entendre is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Typically one of the interpretations is rather obvious whereas the other is more subtle. The more subtle of the interpretations may have a humorous, ironic, or risqué purpose. It may also convey a message that would be socially awkward, or even offensive, to state directly (the Oxford English Dictionary describes a double entendre as being used to ‘convey an indelicate meaning’). A double entendre may exploit puns to convey the second meaning. Double entendres generally rely on multiple meanings of words, or different interpretations of the same primary meaning. They often exploit ambiguity and may be used to introduce it deliberately in a text. Sometimes a homophone (i.e. a different spelling that yields the same pronunciation) can be used as a pun as well as a ‘double entendre’ of the subject.

A person who is unfamiliar with the hidden or alternative meaning of a sentence may fail to detect its innuendos, aside from observing that others find it humorous for no apparent reason. Perhaps because it is not offensive to those who do not recognize it, innuendo is often used in sitcoms and other media considered suitable for children, who may enjoy the comedy while being oblivious to its second meanings. For example, Shakespeare’s play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ used this ploy to present a surface level description of the play as well as a pun on the Elizabethan use of ‘nothing’ as slang for vagina. A triple entendre is a phrase that can be understood in any of three ways, such as in the cover of the 1981 Rush album ‘Moving Pictures.’ The left side of the front cover shows a moving company carrying paintings out of a building. On the right side, people are shown crying because the pictures carried by the movers are emotionally ‘moving.’ Finally, the back cover features a film crew making a ‘moving picture’ of the whole scene.

Another example can be observed in the 1995 film ‘GoldenEye,’ in which the female villain is crushed to death beneath a tree, to which James Bond quips, ‘She always did enjoy a good squeeze.’ This references her death, her method of executing men (crushing them with her legs), and her sexual appetite. Another example is a sports bar at the bottom of 5th Street in Benicia, California, named ‘Bottom of the Fifth,’ referring to (1) the address, (2) baseball’s fifth inning, and (3) a measure of consumption of a common quantity of alcoholic beverage. In contrast, comedian Benny Hill, whose television shows included straightforward sexual gags, has been jokingly called ‘the master of the single entendre.’ The expression comes from French ‘entendre’ (‘to hear,’ ‘to understand’), however, the English formulation is a corruption of the authentic French expression ‘à double entente.’ Modern French uses ‘double sens’ instead; the phrase ‘double entendre’ has no real meaning to a native French speaker.

The related term, ‘adianoeta’ (Greek: ‘unintelligible’), refers to expressions that, in addition to an obvious meaning, carry a second, subtle meaning (often at variance with the ostensible meaning). Double entendre is common in Western arts and literature. The title of Damon Knight’s story ‘To Serve Man’ is a double entendre, it can mean ‘to perform a service for humanity’ or ‘to serve a human as food.’ An alien cookbook with the title ‘To Serve Man’ is featured in the story, implying that the aliens eat humans. Examples of sexual innuendo and double-entendre occur in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (14th century), in which the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ is laden with double entendres. The most famous of these may be her use of the word ‘queynte’ to describe both domestic duties (from the homonym ‘quaint’) and genitalia (‘queynte’ being a root of the modern English word cunt).

The title of Sir Thomas More’s 1516 fictional work ‘Utopia’ is a double entendre because of the pun between two Greek-derived words that would have identical pronunciation: with his spelling, it means ‘no place’ (as echoed later in Samuel Butler’s later ‘Erewhon’); spelled as the rare word ‘Eutopia,’ it is pronounced the same by English-speaking readers, but has the meaning ‘good place.’ In Homer’s ‘The Odyssey,’ when Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, he tells the Cyclops that his name is Outis (No-one). When Odysseus attacks the Cyclops later that night and stabs him in the eye, the Cyclops runs out of his cave, yelling to the other cyclopes that ‘No-one has hurt me!,’ which leads the other cyclopes to take no action, allowing Odysseus and his men to escape. Often, older media contain words or phrases that were innocuous at the time of publication, but have a more obscene or sexual meaning today, such as ‘have a gay old time’ from ‘The Flintstones’ (‘gay’ means ‘happy’ in this context).

One possibly intentional example is the character Charley Bates from Charles Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist,’ frequently referred to as Master Bates. The word ‘masturbate’ was in use when the book was written, and Dickens often used colorful names related to the natures of the characters. Shakespeare frequently used innuendos in his plays. Indeed, Sir Toby in ‘Twelfth Night’ is seen saying, in reference to Sir Andrew’s hair, that ‘it hangs like flax on a distaff; and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off;’ the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ says that her husband had told Juliet when she was learning to walk that ‘Yea, dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;’ or is told the time by Mercutio: ‘for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon’; and in ‘Hamlet,’ Hamlet torments Ophelia with a series of sexual puns, viz. ‘country’ (similar to ‘cunt’).

In the UK, starting in the 19th century, Victorian morality disallowed innuendo in the theatre as being unpleasant, particularly for the ladies in the audience. In music hall songs, on the other hand, innuendo remained very popular. Marie Lloyd’s song ‘She Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas’ is an example of this (music hall in this context is to be compared with variety shows, the one common, low-class and vulgar; the other demi-monde, worldly and sometimes chic). In the 20th century there was a small crackdown on lewdness, including some prosecutions. It was the job of the Lord Chamberlain to examine the scripts of all plays for indecency. Nevertheless, some comedians still continued to get away with it. Max Miller, famously, had two books of jokes, a white book and a blue book, and would ask his audience which book they wanted to hear stories from. If they chose the blue book, he could blame the audience for the lewdness to follow (the white book was rarely used).

In Britain, innuendo humor did not transfer to radio or cinema at first, but eventually and progressively it began to filter through from the late 1950s and 1960s on. Particularly significant in this respect were the ‘Carry On’ series of films and the BBC radio series ‘Round the Horne,’ although this humor is carried because of the apparent ‘nonsense’ language that the protagonists use but in fact are having a ‘rude’ conversation in Polari (gay slang). Spike Milligan, writer of ‘The Goon Show,’ remarked that a lot of blue innuendo came from serviceman’s jokes, which most of the cast understood (they all had been soldiers) and many of the audience understood, but which passed over the heads of most of the BBC producers and directors, most of whom were ‘Officer class.’ In 1968, the office of the Lord Chamberlain ceased to have responsibility for censoring live entertainment, after the Theatres Act 1968.

By the 1970s innuendo had become widely pervasive across much of the British media, including sitcoms and radio comedy, such as ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ and ‘Round the Horne.’ For example, in the 1970s series ‘Are You Being Served?’, Mrs. Slocombe frequently referred to her pet cat as her ‘pussy,’ apparently unaware of how easily her statement could be misinterpreted, such as ‘It’s a wonder I’m here at all, you know. My pussy got soakin’ wet. I had to dry it out in front of the fire before I left.’ Someone unfamiliar with sexual slang might find this statement funny simply because of the references to her cat, whereas generally a viewer would be expected to detect the innuendo (‘pussy’ is sexual slang for vulva). Bawdy double entendres, such as ‘I’m the kinda girl who works for Paramount by day, and Fox all night,’ and ‘I feel like a million tonight—but only one at a time,’ were the trademark of Mae West, in her early-career vaudeville performances as well as in her later plays and movies.

Double entendres are popular in modern movies, as a way to conceal adult humor in a work aimed at general audiences. The James Bond films are rife with such humor. More obvious examples include Pussy Galore in ‘Goldfinger’ and Holly Goodhead in ‘Moonraker.’ The double entendres of the Bond films were parodied in the ‘Austin Powers’ series. Double entendres are very common in the titles and lyrics of pop songs, such as ‘If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me’ by The Bellamy Brothers, which is based on an old Groucho Marx quote, where the person being talked to is asked, by one interpretation if they would be offended, and by the other, if they would press their body against the person doing the talking. Songs in the blues style often employ double entendre. The first meaning is usually rather prosaic while the second meaning is risque. For example, Bessie Smith sang: ‘I want a little sugar in my bowl.’ It is clear that on one level she is referring to a sugar bowl, but the second or hidden meaning refers to her female genitalia; the sugar is a man’s semen.

Another blues double entendre refers to thoroughbred racing: ‘My daddy was no jockey oh but he could ride/My daddy was no jockey but sho’ could ride. He said jes git in the middle and sway from side to side.’ Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan, in his somewhat controversial song ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,’ repeats the line ‘Everybody must get stoned.’ In context, the phrase refers to the punishment of execution by stoning, as described in the Bible, but on another level it means to get stoned, a common slang term for being high on narcotics (specifically cannabis). AC/DC’s unintended hit ‘Big Balls’ off their album ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ refers to ballroom dancing, but the lyrics suggest masturbation of the testicles.

Sometimes, even when the prosaic meaning is more obvious, the risque one is thought of as the factual one: in the Ted Nugent song ‘Wango Tango,’ the singer talks about his Maserati and says he is looking for a garage so he can ‘put his Maserati away’; The Maserati is referring to his member, and he finds a garage [female] (‘You think you see a garage up ahead and the damn thing is open – get it on’). Likewise, the humorous Bruce Springsteen song ‘Pink Cadillac’ uses a pink Cadillac car as a metaphor for a woman’s vagina. ZZ Top’s song ‘Tush’ uses the prosaic and risque meaning in exact equal portion, as in the band’s native Texas ‘tush’ has two meanings: when rhyming with ‘bush’ refers to the female buttocks but when rhyming with ‘rush’ is a slang term for ‘good enough’ or ‘adequate.’ Rapper Jay-Z is well known for his musical triple-entendres.

In the song, ‘So Appalled,’ he says, ‘Not only am I fly, I’m fucking not plane’ using the word ‘plane’ literally to mean not being an airplane, the homophone of not being plain like other rappers, and another homophone of the word playing or ‘playin,’ the phrase ‘I’m not playing’ to mean he is serious or is not playing with other rappers. In another song, ‘Otis’ with fellow rapper Kanye West, he says, ‘Cock back / snap back / see my cut through the holes.’ In this case, the can be in reference of snapback hats cocked (or faced) backwards so that his hair-line or ‘cut’ is visible through the holes in the hat strap. It also translates to the act of shooting, where the hammer in the gun is snapped or cocked back before shooting and the cut of his diamond can be seen in the hole of the car window. And thirdly, it refers to American football, where the ball can be snapped or passed by the quarterback to the running back who sees the holes in the opposing team’s defense and cuts through. Double entendres often arise in the replies given to inquiries.

For example, the response to the question ‘What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?’ would be ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ The dual meaning arises in the iteration (though from a first-person perspective) of the definitions of both terms within the reply (‘I don’t know’ defining ignorance, and ‘I don’t care’ defining apathy). In the more obvious sense, the reply may simply indicate that the replier neither knows nor cares about what the difference is between the two words. Another instance of double entendre involves responding to a seemingly innocuous sentence that could have a sexual meaning with the phrase ‘that’s what she said.’ An example might be if one were to say ‘It’s too big to fit in my mouth’ upon being served a large sandwich, someone else could say ‘That’s what she said,’ as if the statement were a reference to oral sex.

This phrase was used in the ‘Wayne’s World,’ ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits, and was a recurring joke on the US sitcom ‘The Office.’ The phrase ‘…as the actress said to the bishop’ is used in a similar way, usually in England, and United States military pilots often use the term ‘so to speak,’ and will deliberately construct sentences to avoid giving others the chance to call double entendres. Related

Question: Which music hall singer was famed for her rude songs, including 'I Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas'?
Answer: Marie Lloyd