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Sandy Powell (comedian)


Sandy Powell MBE (30 January 1900 – 26 June 1982) was an English comedian best known for his radio work of the 1930s and for his catchphrase Can You Hear Me, Mother?. He first said this in a theatre in Coventry. Fifty years later, deciding he needed a rest from the business (he planned a cruise around the world with his wife), he again said it in a Coventry theatre, for the last time.

Born Albert Arthur Powell in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England in 1900, he attended White's school in Masbrough where he helped his mother (stage name of Lily le Maine) to put on a marionette show. At age nine, she put him in a velvet suit with a lace collar and he went on stage and sang. After he left school he became a music hall entertainer, often wearing a kilt in the guise of a Scottish comedian. During this part of his career he was associated with the singer Gracie Fields, and released several records where he collaborated with her.

He made a total of eighty five 78rpm records between 1929 and 1942, mostly double-sided sketches with him in various occupations. He sold seven and a half million records, earning a penny a side, so over £60,000. The first, The Lost Policeman on the cheap Broadcast label, sold almost half a million copies (he had turned down a flat fee of £60 for this), and his subsequent recordings for Broadcast and Rex were extremely popular. He said in a 1982 interview that he used his stage work to advertise the records, rather than the other way about, though it was later said of him that his records introduced him so wherever he went to put on a show, they already knew him..

Sandy had a stooge in his act during the 1930s, the boy soprano, Jimmy Fletcher, father of the actor Gerard Fletcher, of Emmerdale, Coronation Street and other TV. From 1930 he took his own revue, Sandy Powell's Road Show, on tour – it ran for ten years and was extremely popular despite having only a handful of performers and two backdrops.

In the 1930s he began to work on the radio, always introducing his show with catchphrase Can You Hear Me, Mother? Powell said that the catchphrase originated on an occasion when he had dropped his script and was killing time at the microphone while rearranging the pages. It is also attributed to his mother's coercion and her hardness of hearing, during his early career. At his next booking, the theatre manager asked him to say it again as everyone was saying it now. He also appeared in a number of films during the 1930s, usually as himself. In 1939 he was voted the fifth most popular British star at the local box office.


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