Twice Brightly

Twice Brightly is a 1974 comic novel by Harry Secombe, fictionalising his experiences as a recently demobbed Welsh serviceman and army comic returning from the battlefields of North Africa and Italy and struggling to make a living in the British Variety Theatres after the Second World War. The lead character is a Welsh comic called Larry Gower, Secombe's alter ego. The title is a pun on the phrase "twice nightly".

Plot summary

For young servicemen who had spent six years fighting fascism, postwar Britain was a drab, oppressive place. For a young and untried army comic keen on the Marx brothers and Jimmy Cagney, a Yorkshire Variety theatre in February was a vision of Hell itself.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

It was dramatised as a 60 minute Radio 4 radio play by Harry's son David Secombe in 2006, first broadcast that year and repeated on Saturday 19 May 2007. This ended with Gower as a success, leaving for London to take part in "Crazy People", a play by his fellow ex-soldier and comic Jim Moriarty - this is a fictionalisation of the initial stages of the Goon Show, and Moriarty (deriving his name from the Goon character Count Jim Moriarty) is a fictionalised Spike Milligan.

Cast

• Larry Gower (Secombe's alter ego)...... Christian Patterson
• Wally ...... Dominic Frisby
• Tom ...... Philip Jackson
• Julie ...... Becky Hindley
• April ...... Katy Secombe (Harry's daughter)
• June ...... Ella Smith
• Joe ...... Gerard McDermott
• Jim ...... John Cummins
• Mrs Ma Rogers, landlady ...... Carolyn Pickles
• Hubert ...... Geoffrey Beevers
• Director Steven Canny