Will Hay - Music Hall excerpt (What Does It Matter) (1936)

Will Hay made at least 5 appearances on the BBC's long-running variety series Music Hall, 02/03/1935, 02/11/1935, 18/01/1936, 17/10/1936, and 14/11/1936. The seccond of these, 02nd November 1935, was the infamous edition where Hay was faded out at the end due to a shortage of time, and he complained he would never work for the BBC again, but the BBC apologised and he was back on 1st January 1936. This edition is either the 18/01/1936 or 17/10/1936 edition.
William Thomson "Will" Hay (6 December 1888 -- 18 April 1949) was an English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer.
Hay was trained as an engineer and joined a firm of engineers, but at the age of 21 he gave up that profession for the stage. Starting in Manchester as a juggler, self-taught after seeing W C Fields doing it in a film, later he took up acting. He had a relatively brief screen career: by the time he made his first film he was in his mid-40s and an established music hall artist, and his last role came less than a decade later. But between 1934 and 1943 he was a prolific and popular film comedian. He was credited on several films as a writer or co-ordinator, and was arguably the dominant "author" of all the films in which he appeared, in that they were built around his persona and depended on the character and routines he had developed over years on the stage.
He worked at the British film studios of Elstree, then Gainsborough, then Ealing; the Gainsborough period was the most consistently successful, particularly when he worked with the team of Marcel Varnel (director), Val Guest and Marriott Edgar (writers), and Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt (supporting cast) - as on the railway film Oh, Mr Porter! (1937), his most fondly remembered picture with its catchphrase, 'The next train's gone!', spoken by Marriott as the decrepit old deputy stationmaster. Hay decided to break up the partnership with Moffatt and Marriott and brought in Claude Hulbert as his side-kick for The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941). The Goose Steps Out for Ealing (1942) was an effective anti-Nazi piece of slapstick, and while he was never quite the same again without Moffatt and Marriott, My Learned Friend (1943) again with Hulbert, is considered a masterpiece of black comedy which some regard as his best.
Will's first regular appearances on radio, after occasional appearances on shows like variety Music Hall, were in the less humorous mode of quizmaster on the Double Or Quits segments featured on the Army editions of Merry-Go-Round, which he began several months before launching a comedy series. In all, he appeared on over two dozen of these segments up to February 1946.
On Good Friday 1949 he addressed an audience of his peers at a dinner organised by the Grand Order of Water Rats. He seemed in fine form and his health appeared to be improv­ing, but sadly another stroke a couple of days later proved fatal. At 60 years of age, Will Hay had passed away at the official retirement age for schoolmasters.

[@Gastradamus]

Proper comedy legend! Pure Class.So called "before my time", but always loved it.