The Music Hall flourished in the second half of the 19th century AD, providing mass entertainment in large towns. By 1875, there were more than 300 Music Halls in London. Performers like the singer Marie Lloyd (1870-1922) and the singer and comedian Harry Lauder (1870-1950), knighted for entertaining the troops in World War I, were huge stars.

The Music Hall was already threatened by ‘picture houses’ before 1914, and suffered more from the huge increase in cinemagoers in the 1930s. It survived as ‘variety theatre’, pantomime, and sea-side entertainments, though radio, begun in 1922, and the cinema provided work for many variety performers.

The advent of mass television in 1950s really spelled the end of Music Halls and Variety Theatres, but the new medium also recruited their performers to fill its programmes. The popular Sunday Night at the London Palladium (1955-67) leaned heavily on native variety acts and stars, but ended up with big American singers topping the bill. The Good Old Days, a recreation of Victorian Music Hall, from the City Variety Theatre, Leeds, ran as a TV programme through the 1970s, and the Annual Royal Variety Performance limped along for years after there was no more ‘Variety’ elsewhere.