Arthur Roberts
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Arthur Roberts (21 September 1852 - 27 February 1933) was an English comedian, music hall entertainer and actor. He was famous for portraying the pantomime dames and later for his comic characters and "gagging" in farces, burlesque and musicals.
[edit] Life and career
Roberts was born in London. Beginning in 1871, Roberts entertained in music halls as a vocal comedian and mimic and developed a reputation for relatively "blue" songs.[1]
In the legitimate theatre, he starred as Dr. Syntax in Mother Goose (1880), as Mrs. Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe (1881 and 1886), in Sindbad the Sailor (1882; a show he repeated in 1906), in H. B. Farnie's Nell Gwynne (1884), Joe Tarradiddle in Offenbach's La vie parisienne, In Town (1892), Captain Arthur Coddington in Don Juan, Stanley the exporer in Joan of Arc (1891 popularising the song "I went to find Emin"), Claude Du-Val (1894), Gentleman Joe (1895), Black-Eyed See-Usan, and Dandy Dan the Lifeguardsman (1898), among others.
At the Royal Wedding of the Prince of Wales in the 1890s, Roberts headlined the programme at the Gaiety Theatre with his hit song: "Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow".[2]
In 1907, Roberts was a leader in the "Music Hall War," striking for better working conditions, which led to the founding of the Variety Artist's Federation. At the end of his career, Roberts played in variety shows.[3]
Roberts originated the word "spoof" which was popularised by a card game that he invented called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. The first recorded reference to the game is in 1884. Soon the word took on the general meaning of "nonsense, trickery," first recorded in 1889. The verb spoof is first recorded in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive." These senses are now less widely used than the noun meaning of "a light parody or satirical imitation," first recorded in 1958, and the verb sense "to satirize gently," first recorded in 1927.[4]
Later in his career Roberts starred as Charioteer in Phi-Phi (1922). In 1926, he popularised the song "Topsey-Turvey", which he also used as the basis for a short film. In 1927, Roberts wrote an autobiography called Fifty Years of Spoof.
He died in London at the age of 80 and is buried in Paddington Cemetery, London.
