GEORGE ROBEY ANGRY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19687, 14 January 1926, Page 10

GEORGE ROBEY ANGRY.

FAMOUS SONG BANNED. ACTION IN BIRMINGHAM George Robey’s well-known song, “So I Stopped, and I Looked, and I Listened,” has been banned in Birmingham—where a few days previously one of the dancers in Mine. Pavlova’s company was prohibited from dancing with her legs bare. Mr Robey has been singing the song for 10 years He sang it at the first house of the Grand Theatre in Birmingham recently. Among the audience were police officers representing the licensing justices. They—but let Mr Robey tell the story himself, just as he told it in his hotel. “They sent a note round to the management, after the first house, telling me not to sing the song again in Birmingham. 1 tell you, if it hadn't been for the management I’d have thrown up the engagement then and there. I was furious. “Of course I left the song out of my show in the second house. , “Understand it! I just can’t. ‘lt's ludicrous. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely insulting. Goodness knows what the Birmingham licensing magistrates could have found in my song—a thing I’ve been singing for years. I never try to force a double moaning.’ Mr Robey was also notified that a sentence in his sketch, “The Cloak,” must be cut out. The sentence is not, apparently, in the script licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, and in Birmingham the authorities are very strict concerning such matters. Mr Robey contends that with the sentence cut out the sketch has no dramatic climax. ‘‘These sketches are invariably polished up after their introduction,” ho says, although he admits that technically the Birmingham authorities are right.