Sir,– Appreciating that there will be many who wish to record personal memories of the wonderful funnyman Frank Carson, I decided to get my retaliation in first.
In my childhood Frank was an outrageously ad libbing regular in the pantomimes staged in St Columb’s Hall in Derry where, as Buttons, he once famously informed Cinderella that he couldn’t marry her because she was a Protestant and he a Catholic.
However, my abiding memory is of the night he interrupted the performance to inquire of a lady returning to her seat whether she could still hear the show out in the toilets. “No, Frank” came the somewhat abashed reply. “That’s strange”, quipped Carson, “because we could hear you in here!”. It all went downhill from there. – Yours, etc,