Monday, June 01, 2009

So farewell then, Daniel Patrick Carroll, known professionally as Danny La Rue (French for 'the main drag', in the words of Ray Martine) . Apart from his own dazzling career, La Rue was responsible for helping to launch Barbara Windsor, Barry Cryer and Ronnie Corbett professionally when they worked at his West End cabaret club. Not a bad epitaph, but if you want more, have this false modesty-free self-assessment from his autobiography, From Drags to Riches:

"There will never be another Danny La Rue. There are very few one-offs in show business. I am unique...a complete one-off, and this is not conceit or big-headedness in any way, it is simply my professional side talking. There has never been anyone like me before...no one has made history like me in virtually every medium of the entertainment industry."
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5 comments:

  1. Kolley Kibber1 June 2009 at 17:11

    My parents took me to see him live when I was ten. The humour was so smutty that I only understood about a quarter of it, but his fabulous frocks have lived on in my memory ever since. There'll never be another, whether that's a good thing or not.

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  2. Matthew Rudd2 June 2009 at 15:12

    The England squad of the 1966 World Cup visited Danny La Rue's club on the evening of July 30th, having won the competition at Wembley earlier the same day. That is as big an endorsement as any of La Rue's talents and charisma - a bunch of pre-PC footballers were happy to spend the biggest celebration of their lives in his company.

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  3. Louis Barfe2 June 2009 at 16:32

    Which one of the Charlton brothers was it that woke up on a stranger's sofa, having passed out wherever they'd ended up and been taken in by this good Samaritan? The La Rue club was one of the 'in' spots of the time.

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  4. Matthew Rudd2 June 2009 at 17:25

    That was Jack. He was always the more active on the social whirl. Bobby would have gone home for Horlicks if he'd been given the choice.

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  5. Apres la Guerre4 June 2009 at 23:05

    I remember Danny la Rue telling an anecdote on "Daytime Live" during a school holiday, prefacing it with the words, "now here's one for the kiddies." The anecdote ended with the exclamation, "Oh, piss off!"

    Cue the collapse of Judi Spiers. Didn't see him much on the telly after that...

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