Douglas Byng

Douglas Coy Byng (17 March 1893 – 24 August 1987) was an English comic singer and songwriter in West End theatre, revue and cabaret. Billed as "Bawdy but British", Byng was famous for his female impersonations. His songs are full of sexual innuendo and double entendres. An openly gay performer, Byng was noted for his camp performances in the music halls and in cabaret. Byng made a large number of recordings, many of which have been transferred to CD. Byng was also a noted pantomime dame and appeared in over 30 pantomimes.

Byng was born 17 March 1893 in Basford, Nottinghamshire. His father was a bank manager and his mother was a former school teacher. They did not encourage his early theatrical leanings, and when he was ten, they sent him to live in Germany with his elder brother, who owned a lace factory there. Byng studied music and German, but following the trade of his brother he concentrated on fashion. After his return to Britain, he worked for the costume designer Charles Alias in London.

In 1914 Byng answered an advertisement for a light comedian for a seaside concert party and made his first appearance on stage at Hastings. At the age of 21, playing a middle-aged diplomat, he toured more than a hundred towns in the musical comedy The Girl in the Taxi. He continued his theatre work throughout the war, playing character parts in touring comedies and eventually achieving a juvenile lead in 1920. In the 1920s he took to pantomime, playing the Grand Vizier in Aladdin at the London Palladium in 1921, and in 1924 creating the first of his many pantomime dames as Eliza in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the New Theatre Oxford.

In 1925 Byng appeared at the London Pavilion in C. B. Cochran's revue On with the Dance, written by Noël Coward. Byng remained with Cochran for five years in a succession of revues. During this period he opened his own nightclub in central London, where he first performed the cabaret drag songs for which he is best remembered, described by the critic Sheridan Morley as "a curious mixture of sophistication, schoolboy humour and double entendre." An example is his Mexican Minnie:

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