Harry Gordon was a man of many guises, all of them entertaining. One

hundred years after the birth of the Aberdonian, Gordon Irving pays

tribute to a great talent

I LIKE to remember Harry Gordon as the complete businessman comedian

and entertainer. In a Scottish variety world where too many performers

tossed scripts into hampers and made a mess of their income returns,

Harry would have been a computer buff had today's technology been around

in his mythical Inversnecky world of the twenties, thirties and through

to the fifties.

The wee kilted Aberdonian, Harry Alexander Ross Gordon, born in

Aberdeen a century ago, burned the midnight oil in his flat in the

then-posh Kelvin Court, Glasgow. He was writing yet another of those

sketches for his revues in the variety halls of Scotland, and filing all

with an efficiency that would have done justice to the most devoted of

business company secretariats.

After his Aberdeen days, when he was king of the seafront at the Beach

Pavilion in the late twenties and thirties, Harry tackled the bigger

world of Glasgow and Edinburgh, eventually buying his Glasgow apartment

and striding the streets of Glasgow en route to the theatre, immaculate

in his Gordon kilt. He became part of the Glasgow theatre scene, notably

at the former Alhambra Theatre in a happy pantomime partnership with

that other master of Scots characterisation, Will Fyffe.

I regularly dropped in to their between-shows dressing-room teatime

break, backstage at the Alhambra. Will and Harry were buddies with great

tales to tell of touring concert party days up and down Scotland.

For Harry the creation of a sort of pre-Brigadoon village,

Inversnecky, was just part of his script-writing flair. He was its laird

and the residents were individuals -- the wee shopkeeper, the village

doctor, the daft loon, the country bumpkin, the postie. Even Scottish

TV's Glendarroch was never like this!

I know that Harry built up one of the largest collections of sketches,

quickies and gags in Britain. He had more than 200 original character

studies, more than 100 character doubles with his ''feed'', Jack Holden.

He was also -- and not many people knew this -- a talented

black-and-white artist as well as a keen amateur film maker whose

backstage film scenes are preserved in the Scottish Film Archive at

Glasgow.

But, to older readers, Harry Alex Ross Gordon is remembered for many

happy summer runs at the Aberdeen Beach Pavilion, where he produced

Harry Gordon's Entertainers from 1924 to 1940, a record surely in show

business, and not just of the Scots variety.

He pioneered resident shows in the music halls of Glasgow, Edinburgh

and Dundee, and joined the household names of Lauder, Willis and Gordon

in a famous newspaper cartoon.

For Glaswegians and thousands in the west of Scotland, his triumph was

to star for 11 years in a row in pantomime for Tom Arnold at the Glasgow

Alhambra in Waterloo Street, seven of these co-starring with Will Fyffe.

His summers were spent in city revues for Howard and Wyndham; his

autumns he enjoyed in short bursts of touring to communities in North

America or South Africa. Some of his best audiences were lumberjacks in

the backwoods of British Columbia.

In a world of changing comedy values the Laird o' Inversnecky was one

of the better quality British pantomime dames. His wardrobe was a

delight, and just before he died he was to have repeated his 1954

Edinburgh King's Theatre success in a partnership with Jack Radcliffe in

Dick Whittington at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. (In fact, the man who

took over from Harry was a young Andy Stewart, making a brave stab at

the pantomime dame honours.)

Wherever he went, even into the none-too-sympathetic arms of the

English, Harry, in a smart Gordon tartan kilt, was a good ambassador for

Scotland. His short, bespect-

acled figure was familiar from Sauchiehall Street to Union Street,

Aberdeen, and he maintained the dignity of a Bohemian profession by

always being immaculately dressed.

Harry's wife Jose -- he had dozens of ''wifies'' in his stage sketches

-- kept a low profile, but was a fine Principal Boy in pantomime. Their

daughter Bunty danced in her dad's Five-Past Eight revues, and gave up

her stage work when she married a Canadian, Norman MacLeod, leader of

the singing act, The Maple Leaf Four.

On the old Scottish Home Service, enjoying a strong listenership in

pre-TV days, Harry was a stalwart. He sent his canny couthy jokes and

sketches, many smarter than the average (even today), into Scottish

homes in hundreds of broadcasts from the wee Beach Pavilion.

One of his feats was to star for two solid years in Glasgow, playing

only two theatres -- the King's and the Alhambra. And he once played

three shows 100 miles apart inside three hours. He performed his act at

the Beach Pavilion, Aberdeen, boarded a plane to Inverness, did a second

show, then flew right back to Aberdeen to continue his show there.

London, as with so many Scottish comics, was not his scene. But his

act was known and appreciated by exiled Scots in the south, where he had

a brief stab at UK fame with an appearance at the London Palladium in

October, 1929.

The Inversnecky Laird's well-respected place at the top of the light

entertainment and theatrical ladder in Scotland was hard to fill. A near

perfect family show comedian, he would have been a misfit in today's

world of alleged funnymen whose language is littered with four-letter

words. He never let a ''blueish'' tinge mar his homely Scottish comedy.

When Will Fyffe died, just before a Glasgow pantomime, I called on

Harry Gordon at Kelvin Court, and he instantly wrote out for readers a

tribute in verse to his pantomime companion. These lines apply every bit

as much to merry little Harry Gordon:

The curtain falls -- the music dies away,

And we are left with the memory of a man who, in his day,

Had reached the stellar heights of the profession he adorned,

In life he was applauded, in death he's sadly mourned.

The north-east laddie who made his first breakthrough as an

18-year-old with Monty's Pierrots at Stonehaven did a pretty good job in

his lifetime. One hundred years after his birth he is surely worth

remembering.