Chic Murray (1919-1985) and his wife Madie Dickson, c1960.
Comic duo Chic and Maidie, affectionately known as "The Tall Droll and the Small Doll", toured Scotland's music halls and variety theatres from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Their act involved Madie singing and playing the accordion, and Chic interrupting with jokes and off-beat patter. Their fame spread and they performed latterly on stage in London and on television and radio. Madie retired in the late 1960s and Chic continued as a solo act with his trademark tartan "bunnet". His own one-man cabaret, The Chic Murray Show, featured characters and stories drawn from former workmates and the stories they had told him during his youth while working in Kincaid's shipyard in Greenock.
Chic Murray's surreal humour and dead-pan delivery made a lasting impression on the following generation of Glasgow comics, with Billy Connolly as one of his greatest admirers. In later years the Greenock-born comic appeared in films, most notably in the Bond spoof, Casino Royale (1967) and Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl (1981).
Reference: STA Fj 11/3a
Glasgow University Library, Special Collections
Keywords:
accordionists, accordions, actors, comedians, fashions, music halls, musicians, shipyard workers, singers, stages, variety
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