SHOCK FOR COMEDIAN

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20995, 23 December 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

SHOCK FOR COMEDIAN

INJURED IN AIR RAID “A NOSY OLD FOOL" Harry Tate, sixty-seven-year-old comedian, suffering from air-raid shock at his Northolt, Middlesex, home, declared that his illness was caused through being a “nosy old fool.” He said, “I walked out into an air raid in Scotland, and got hit. It was a stupid thing to do and with my experience in the last war I ought to have known better.” Four times during the last war he escaped death by inches—“three times because I was nosy. In future I am going to lie on the floor and bury my head in a large pillow as I’ve learned my war lessons.”

It was while appearing in variety in Scotland that Harry got hit. “I looked out of my bedroom window during the night on November 7 and saw an aeroplane flying past about one hundred yards away and very low. It had been chased from the Forth Bridge by our fighters. I rushed out into the street to see the fun. Powder was falling all round like oatmeal. “I must have got hit by some behind my ear, on my right hand and near my eye. I’m not a nervous man but it has shaken me up and I shall have to rest for a bit.”