Regular Royal Queens

As the Edinburgh Festival draws to a close this week, it is worth reflecting that it was at this very festival 35 years ago that a certain magnificent pair of "old ladies" made their international debut.

Hinge and Bracket [for it is they] first became a double act with their regular bookings in the early 70s every Sunday lunchtime at a gay Kensington restaurant run by the iconic April Ashley. Their earliest breakthrough into the mainstream, however, was their smash hit appearance in 1974 at the Edinburgh Festival.

Patrick Fyffe (Dame Hilda Bracket) and George Logan (Dr Evadne Hinge) both had brilliant operatic singing voices, and their evocation of middle class gentility in the mythical "Stackton Tressel", suffused with smutty double-entendres, kept their flame alight until they were "discovered" by the BBC in 1977 - resulting in hit radio series such as The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket, followed by The Random Jottings of..., and At Home with....

As well as gracing us with their TV commercials for sherry, they appeared in two Royal Variety Performances, their own series of "Gala Evenings", starred on The Good Old Days, landed their own prime-time TV series Dear Ladies, and made a number of records. They also appeared in a televised Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus in 1983, conducted by Placido Domingo and starring Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde.

Our own precious copy of the Best Of Hinge & Bracket is often on an evening's playlist, not least for the pair's superlative versions of We'll Gather Lilacs, Zigeuner and A Regular Royal Queen.

Sadly Patrick died in 2002, and George moved to France to run a guest house. But we will never forget the sheer joy that Hinge & Bracket gave us...

Hinge & Bracket official website