Alfred Lester "Always Merry and Bright"
One of the subjects of my forthcoming book The Lost World of Music Hall (Bear Manor Media, 2021). Excerpt below:
"Alfred Lester was a lugubrious comedian who avoided the jolly idiot approach and perfected the persona of the ultimate pessimist. It could be argued that he channelled the underlying fatalism of Music-Hall into his stage characters, although much of that outlook was decidedly his own. He found his greatest popularity in Britain on the revue stage from the Great War up until his sudden death in 1925. If he had been reincarnated as a film comedian it would have been one in the Buster Keaton mould. Unlike Keaton, Lester is almost completely forgotten and liable to remain so. However, he was a good example of a different type of comic approach and one who successfully straddled the music hall and revue stage, pointing the way forward for others."
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