- 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray
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'Monsewer' Eddie Gray (10 June 1898 – 15 September 1969) was an English stage comedian who performed in Music Halls.
He was born in Pimlico, London, as Edward Earl Gray. He became a professional juggler, but by the time he was twenty, he had extended to comedy. He discovered what became his trademark of "Cockney-French" while performing in Paris, France, when he spoke on the stage in his very bad French. The audience, however, liked it and he used it in his act from then on. His stage costume included a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a looped moustache.
He joined with the comedy pair Nervo and Knox in the Crazy Shows, but went solo in the early 1920s. He rejoined them again in 1957 when he was associated with the Crazy Gang shows at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London.
He married Pattie Loftus Jones in 1931 and they had two sons. He died on 15 September 1969 in Worthing, Sussex.
Eddie and his wife Pattie lived in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, throughout their 38 year marriage. Pattie had a singular claim to local fame as it was an aunt of hers, Marie Loftus, a well known Music Hall artiste at the beginning of the 20th century, who was responsible for founding the show business colony that thrived on Shoreham Beach throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Originally a shingle bank, Marie fell in love with the place and had a primitive bungalow built there. This started a fashion and more show business people did likewise giving birth to a community known as Bungalow Town. At its peak, practically every star of the Music Hall of the time had a home or holiday retreat there. These mostly consisted of two railway carriages, acquired from the nearby Lancing Carriage Works, placed on a concrete base and joined between with wooden roof and walls.
Eddie's wife lived on in Shoreham for many years after Eddie died. At the time of her own death she was probably the only remaining link in Shoreham to the old show business community that, by then, had long disappeared.
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