Page 1 of Xylophone Man, Nottingham (RIP) and other town centre "characters"...

Nottingham is today mourning the passing of Xylophone Man, aged 73. Full details of this amazing local character, and an overwhelming amount of RIP messages, can be found here, including suggestions that a tram be named after him, which I think would be a very touching gesture. Somehow, walking down Listergate won`t be the same anymore without the pretty yet out-of-tune twinkling from the man`s instrument (n.b. on a point of order, he actually played a glockenspiel, rather than a xylophone, but once these names stick...).

So, do you have any interesting characters like Xylophone Man in your town centre ?

I seem to recall there was the Accordion Man in St Albans, outside WH Smiths, bending his body in tune to his instrument - did he wear a beret and a stripey jumper - I`m sure he did...

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Clayts, Moderator, DVD Reviewer
UK webmaster for Area 450 the independent Sampo/Maxent DVD site

Please sign up here to get the FX289 channel on NTL/Telewest for old repeats of NYPD Blue and X Files - thanks !

I saw him!! (on my one and only trip to Nottingham)...and funnily enough I`m still a little sad about it. You`re right about town centre characters and their busking...always remember a dreadful penny whistle `player` in Swansea outside one of the market entrances. he could only play about 8 notes, in varying orders, and then finished his tune in about 20 seconds as if it was a Mahler symphony or something....always got 50p off me (cos these were the days when giving a quid was far too lavish). I think he died as well....or possibly went on to produce some chart stuff..but I think he died.

My collection

This item was edited on Wednesday, 7th July 2004, 18:54

There was a guy a few years ago who used to stand near the bank on the highrow in Darlington, he was always there with a scruffy dog on a string playing the mouth organ VERY badly...imagine what you did when you were a kid and you got one..you blew into it as hard as you could up and down it (this is starting to sound rather filthy but bear with me LOL) and drove your parents mad...well thats what he did, but all the time he was tapping his foot like a good un. Im sure in his head it was a great tune...but to us all walking past it was an earsplitting noise ..even his dog looked p***ed off LOL

Waaaay back when I used to work in Coventry street (connects Leicester square and Piccadilly Circus) The Cinema queues used to be worked by The Earl of Mustard with a gramaphone in a pram and quite a good tap dance routine. When he was off shift there was a good Chaplin imitator there as well.
A good few years later, always at the junction of Grays Inn road and Theobalds road there was a gentleman of much reduced stature Long raincoat and wellies (no gap in between) and a flat cap very enthusiastically directing traffic, none of which was taking a blind bit of notice.
After that it was just a flood of scumbags with manky sponges and squeegees trying to clean your windscreen.

Snaps

I dunno if he is still around, but when I used to drink in Newcastle there was always an old man on the last Metro home who would sing sad songs from the olden days in a style that only the old can perform.

It has always been to my eternal shame that on one journey he was getting laughed and insulted by a group of teenagers and I didn`t stand up for him. :(

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a scruffy dog on a string playing the mouth organ VERY badly

Come on give him a chance how many other dogs have you seen / heard playing a mouth organ ?
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Hey at least us Notts people still have the blues singing man with the guitar and the very bad sounding amplifier. Oh and that annoying git if you have bumped into him that wants to sing you a song for money he is actually quite good though .........

Hell yeah - the Muddy Waters guy - he`s actually rather good :D

Whatever happened to those South American performers - a group with guitars, panpipes and a rather funky backing track ? They used to perform the East Midlands circuit (I`ve seen them on the streets of Nottingham, Leicester and Loughborough). Are they still going ? They were a bit better than the characters on the Fast Show, whose name escapes me....

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Clayts, Moderator, DVD Reviewer
UK webmaster for Area 450 the independent Sampo/Maxent DVD site

Please sign up here to get the FX289 channel on NTL/Telewest for old repeats of NYPD Blue and X Files - thanks !

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Whatever happened to those South American performers Yeah I`ve seen them, they sometimes play in Hereford. Are they the ones always selling their cassettes out of a suitcase while they busk? With the sound system they have, which looks like it cost a few bob, I`d rather give my change to one of the `real` busker`s.

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Whatever happened to those South American performers - a group with guitars, panpipes and a rather funky backing track ? They used to perform the East Midlands circuit (I`ve seen them on the streets of Nottingham, Leicester and Loughborough).

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Yeah I`ve seen them, they sometimes play in Hereford

Christ they must have done a UK tour as I have seen them in Newport twice.

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They were a bit better than the characters on the Fast Show

I thought it was them off the Fast Show :D
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This item was edited on Saturday, 10th July 2004, 23:17