George Formby

[Nicholas Peter Spencer]

One of the key things about George Formby is that he was from Wigan, not
Scotland as was previously suggested on the list.  Wigan is an industrial
town midway between Manchester and Liverpool and, as  any British person
will tell you, the ne plus ultra of preterite English towns.  One of
George's hits was about Wigan Pier, and he popularised this phenomenon.
The song was a joke because the 'pier' in Wigan is a two-foot long jetty
that hangs over the Leeds-Liverpool canal.  Coal from some of Wigan's many
pits was carried along rail lines and deposited from the pier onto
awaiting barges.  Orwell's 'The Road To Wigan Pier' solidified the
legendary status of this piece of preterite ephemera.  One other thing:
Dennis Potter's name has been mentioned recently.  Much of Potter's work
draws on the British music hall tradition (equivalent to American
vaudeville).  George was a music hall star before getting into movies, and
he made his name at the Wigan Hippodrome, sadly now defunct.  Wigan had
the highest concentration of music halls in England in the years before
tv.  Preterition, Orwell, mythic ephemera: it all suggests that the
comparison between Slothrop and George fits all too well.

Nick Spencer