Page 18 - Colin Wheeler's Memories

Redditch Heritage My Palace Theatre and other Memories

Several large scale shows which had toured the Number One’s ie the Moss

empires Circuit came to the Palace in a smaller scaled down version, two I
remember were Randles Scandels, starring Frank Randle, and Benson Dulay and

Company, you may recall his son Peter Dulay who together with Jonathan Rouse
used to present that long running television programme Candid Camera, I had

seen both these shows previously on the Birmingham Hippodrome and Dudley
Hippodrome. After a very successful week with Randles Scandels, after

executing as a result of a dare, to everyone’s surprise, a brilliant tap dance on
stage, Jack announced that the show would be returning in six weeks. Six weeks
later, on the Monday night I was at home watching a popular television

programme called What’s My Line when the mystery guest walked onto the
screen and it was Frank Randle. All television was live in those days and so I

thought Frank should have been at the Palace, however when the Monday night
audience discovered he wasn’t in the show, word got around and no one turned up
on the Tuesday and the cast walked out on the Wednesday.

As a result Jack sued in the courts and Franks defence was that he had had the

publicity changed and it didn’t include his name as appearing. The Judge awarded
Jack £106 damages.

Page: 18 © Redditch Heritage 2018