Merseyside Mirth Makers - Robb Wilton

Robb Wilton was born on the 28th of August 1881, Robert Wilton Smith, at 34 Tillotson Street in Everton, a district of Liverpool. He had initially trained as an engineer but in 1903 he joined a repertory company specialising in melodramas, the same year marrying the actress Florence Palmer, who regularly performed as his partner in sketches. He had made his stage debut in his home town of Liverpool in 1899 playing melodramatic villains and went on to play character parts, but finding that he was getting laughs he decided that comedy was the path he should follow. Originally billed as 'The Confidential Comedian' he later became justly famous for his sketches, in which his stock in trade was incompetent officialdom. His comedy emerged from the tradition of the English Music Hall and he is acknowledged as a contemporary of Frank Randle and George Formby Senior. His characters were usually work-shy, henpecked husbands or dithering, ineffectual authority figures. As such he portrayed the human face of bureaucracy, rubbing his face in a world-weary way, fiddling with his props whilst his characters blithely and incompetently 'went about their work', his humour embodying the everyday world and its absurdities.

Robb Wilton to this day is still revered as one of the finest exponents of gentle character-based humour ever seen on the British variety stage. Not for him the quickfire repartee of a Max Miller or a Tommy Trinder, as when Robb indulged in jokes, it was usually a meandering monologue, full of references to the down to earth participants and their odd quirks. As the Music Hall evolved into Variety after the First World War, Robb progressed steadily up the billing. In 1926 he participated in that year’s Royal Variety Performance, performing his celebrated 'Magistrate sketch' and, with the coming of sound movies soon after, made his debut in front of the cameras. A series of Pathe shorts captured all his notable stage routines and by the mid-1930s he had become a regular face in a plethora of supporting roles in full length features.

He was lured to B.B.C. radio in 1937 for the first of an ongoing series of quarter hour segments featuring him as Mr. Muddlecombe JP. Over the next sixteen years, the basic character would move from the court room to an office setting, become an A.R.P. Warden and, after the war, a private detective.
The Second World War led to Robb’s greatest success with his portrayal of the Home Guard volunteer getting ready to stave off the Hun with the help of several mates from the pub, in a routine that began with the immortal words “The day war broke out …”. 

So popular did it become that he was asked to perform the sketch for the Royal family at a special concert at Windsor Castle in 1942. 

The phrase was taken from his opening routine for radio which was "The day war broke out, my missus said to me, 'It's up to you...You've got to stop it'. I said, 'Stop what?'. She said, 'The war." This was one of several monologues delivered in the person of a layabout husband who wryly takes part in the Home Guard. This gentle, if pointed, manner of comedy is said to have been an influence on the TV series 'Dad's Army, the wistful adventures of the widely acclaimed Walmington-on-Sea platoon.

He died on the 1st of May 1957 but even in his later years, happily, his advanced age suited the characterisations and he encountered no lessening of popularity as his career drew to a close.

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