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Hinge and Bracket star dies
Fyffe (left) formed the duo with George Logan in 1974

Patrick Fyffe (left) formed the duo with George Logan in 1974
 

Actor Patrick Fyffe, best known as one half of the singing duo Hinge and Bracket, has died at the age of 60 after a battle against cancer.

The stage and TV star, who played Dame Hilda Bracket, passed away on Saturday.

The duo launched their drag act at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival to great acclaim and Mr Fyffe continued to tour with his partner George Logan, who played Dr Evadne Hinge.

They have appeared on two Royal Variety shows, and performed before royalty on more than 15 occasions.

They also hosted their own BBC Two series, Dear Ladies, in 1983 and 1984.

Solo

Mr Fyffe's agent and manager, Phil Dale, said: "He had been fighting cancer since Christmas when he suddenly had to cancel his pantomime."

Although best known as a duo, Mr Fyffe also made several solo appearances.

He appeared as Dame Hilda in The Mikado as the venomous Katisha and played Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance.

One of the highlights of the duo's career was appearing on stage at the Royal Opera House in London.

They appeared in a New Year's Eve performance of Die Fledermaus, conducted by Placido Domingo, and starring Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde.

They toured the UK in recent years in the Peter Shaffer play Lettice And Lovage.

 

Date of Birth
23 January 1942, Stafford, Staffordshire, England, UK
Date of Death

11 May 2002, Wellington, Somerset, England, UK. (spinal cancer)

One of the most original female impersonators of his generation Patrick Fyffe was better known as Dame Hilda Bracket, the acid tongued singing half of the comedy double act Hinge and Bracket. Accompanied on the piano by her friend Dr. Evadne Hinge (George Logan) the elderly Dame Dame Hilda treated audiences to old fashioned musical evenings from her home in Stackton Tressell where she sang selections from light operetta, musical comedies and the works of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. The two 'Dear Ladies', as they were billed, bitched and gossiped between numbers, sipping sherry and thoroughly enjoying what they termed "bringing culture to the masses."

It was one of the most successful drag acts ever and like their predecessors in the world of British variety, Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) and Mrs Shufflewick (Rex Jameson) many people watching Hinge and Bracket had no idea that they were men.

Fyffe was born in Stafford and after leaving school worked as a hairdresser and then an actor in repertory theatre. In his early 20s he worked as a female impersonator under the name of Perri St Clair. In 1972 he met and teamed up with George Logan and soon afterwards Hinge and Bracket were born.

A hit at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival the duo soon appeared in London's West End and in tours of Australia. The duo had several successful BBC radio series as well as appearances on television in the UK and America.

In December 2001 Fyffe pulled out of a theatre show and was later diagnosed with suffering from cancer. Producer Duggie Chapman who often toured with the duo in his car said "As they got older the pair began to resemble Hinge and Bracket offstage in their mannerisms. They would sit in the back of my car gossiping and bitching and upstaging each other. It was hilarious."

Trivia

Famous for his alter ego, Dame Hilda Bracket, who plays serious female roles in theatre and on radio, most notably Auntie Mame and various female roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Brother of soprano Jane Fyffe who was born in Stafford on 6th February 1937.

 

 

HINGE AND BRACKET - 'Dear Ladies'

The recent death of Patrick Fyffe, aged sixty has robbed the world of theatre and pantomime of one half of a brilliant, sparkling double act. Patrick Fyffe (Dame Hilda Bracket) and George Logan (Dr. Evadne Hinge) were frequent visitors to the world of Pantomime. Patrick played Fairy Godmother in “Cinderella” at Southampton , Cardiff and Leeds , and together with “The Doctor” appeared in many productions of “Sleeping Beauty” as the good and bad fairies, and in Dick Whittington as Fairy and evil Queen Rat.

Patrick was born into a theatrical family in Stafford in 1946. His mother and Aunt were known as “The Terry Sisters”, and his father was also involved with the variety halls. Known as Perri Sinclair”, Patrick worked the circuit solo, until introduced to George Logan, a former computer programmer, as his accompanist. The seeds for the “act” were sown, and in 1974 they were launched at the Edinburgh Festival in “An Evening with Hinge and Bracket”.

Following their huge success, the show transferred to the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court , London , and then to the Mayfair and later the Ambassadors Theatre, in the West End . This was soon followed by a tour of Australia .

The BBC signed them up to appear in a regular radio series, “The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket” on Radio 4 in 1978-’79. In 1983 between touring they returned to radio in “The Random Jottings of Hinge and Bracket”, continuing while they made the first of two series for BBC2 “Dear Ladies”. Set in the fictional village of Stackton Tressel ”, the series was written by them, along with Giles Brandreth. They became famous as the faces of “Croft Original Sherry” on commercial television, starring in a series of adverts.

Hinge & Bracket appeared in two Royal Command performances- notably in1979, along with Yul Brynner, Carol Channing and Red Buttons, and in fifteen Royal occasions. The “Dear Ladies” were invited to appear at the Royal Opera House, appearing under the direction of Placido Domingo in “Die Fledermaus” with Dame Kiri te Kanawa, and Patrick was to appear as Ruth in “Pirates of Penzance” and as the spiteful Katisha in “The Mikado” in various productions, including Richmond and Wimbledon ’s Canizzaro Festival.

In the theatre they toured as Miss Prism (Evadne) and, naturally, Lady Bracknell (Dame Hilda) as well as touring in “Lettice and Lovage”. George Logan played Miss Marple in a tour of “Murder at the Vicarage”. Between their concert tours- magical events when Dame Hilda would burst into her version of “Gangway” believing herself to be Jessie Mathews, under the stern watchful gaze of the Doctor, they appeared in several pantomimes for E&B productions. Patrick was unable to complete rehearsals last season (2001/02) for his role in “The Sleeping Beauty” at Barnstaple , and passed away on May 11th, 2002 .

George Logan will doubtless be receiving the loud boos and delighted yells of children when he takes to the pantomime boards again as evil fairy, or Queen Rat, or his sinister but hysterically funny villainess in “Sleeping Beauty”.

Link to further information on Patrick including information on his Service of Celebration.

 

Patrick Fyffe

As the eccentric Dame Hilda Bracket, he recalled a gentler England

Stephen Dixon
Guardian

Wednesday May 15, 2002

The drag artist Patrick Fyffe, who has died of cancer aged 60, was Dame Hilda Bracket to George Logan's Dr Evadne Hinge. This extraordinary double act - two eccentric, elderly, music-loving, upper-class English women - achieved huge success, mainly in cabaret and on radio, but also on television, after a much-lauded debut at the 1974 Edinburgh festival.

Hinge was the racier and more impetuous of the two, with Dame Hilda acting as the voice of reason, providing the dry put-down and the acerbic aside. Fyffe and Logan, who were almost always interviewed in character, created plausible back stories for their alter egos: Dame Hilda was the daughter of Sir Osbert Bracket, who had left her the family estate at Stackton Tressel, Suffolk. The women supposedly became firm friends while appearing in the Rosa Charles Opera Company, and Hinge lived in the east wing of Dame Hilda's mansion.

Dressed to the nines in cocktail dresses and pearl necklaces, they presided over musical evenings, the songs of dear Mr (Ivor) Novello and Sir Noel (Coward) being particular favourites, although their main passion was reserved for Gilbert and Sullivan. The humour came from the between songs banter, as they looked back on 30 years of musical collaboration.

Hinge and Bracket inhabited a quaint, Margaret Rutherfordish world of genteel between-the-wars stoicism; part of their appeal lay in the cleverness of the characterisations, but the evocation of an era that was essentially more spacious and innocent was equally irresistible. As they sipped sherry with the vicar, or reminisced over cucumber sandwiches on the lawn, these two tough old ladies represented something else, too - values involving literacy, decency and high academic standards.

Their comic edge came from the hints of Evadne's wild youth, and such was the fidelity of the characterisations that some fans believed the pair really were elderly spinsters, rather than young men. But, essentially, theirs was a very English sort of act, harking back to the music hall dowagers of George Robey and Douglas Byng's regal revue impersonations.

Fyffe himself was born into a showbusiness family in Stafford. His mother and aunt were a singing act, the Terry Sisters, and his father performed in variety. Fyffe began his working life as a hairdresser, but caught the acting bug when he joined a local amateur dramatic society.

He devised a drag act, and was successfully touring it around the clubs when the baritone who partnered him failed to show up one night in Pimlico, and Logan was drafted in to help out as a pianist. They hit it off right away, and together invented the two peculiar old ladies, soon discovering that the act, originally written for a gay audience, had a more general appeal.

An Evening With Hinge And Bracket was the hit of the 1974 Edinburgh festival, and they transferred to London's Royal Court Theatre, then to the Mayfair for a three-month season. Their next show, Sixty Glorious Years, was equally successful.

Hinge and Bracket were radio naturals, and for 10 years they broadcast regularly on Radio 4 with The Enchanting World Of Dr Evadne Hinge And Dame Hilda Bracket and other shows. In the early 1980s, they had their own television series, Dear Ladies.

Fyffe credited his father with a great deal of support in the creation of Dame Hilda. "He talked to me for hours about the 1930s in terrific detail," he said. "That's why Hilda is so authentic. She is not into tights or rinses. She wears lisle stockings on suspenders, and brushes a bit of henna through the grey, and always calls her albums gramophone records."

Hinge and Bracket appeared in two royal variety performances and made many records. They also appeared in a televised Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus in 1983, conducted by Placido Domingo and starring Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde.

The act faltered a little over the years - the couple split up for a while after lurid tabloid stories about Logan's "sordid secret life of gay sex and drugs", but were reunited in the early 1990s. Fyffe also took three years off to care for his sick mother. Through the 1990s, they toured with their own show, appeared in pantomime and acted in the Peter Shaffer play Lettuce And Lovage.

Although best known as one part of the duo, Fyffe also made several solo appearances, once as Dame Hilda playing the venomous Katisha in The Mikado, and on another as Ruth in The Pirates Of Penzance. He had been due to perform in the pantomime Sleeping Beauty last Christmas, but had to pull out when he was diagnosed with cancer.

He was unmarried and is survived by his sister, the actor Jane Fyffe.

· Patrick Fyffe, actor, born January 23 1942; died May 11 2002

 

 

 

Patrick Fyffe

PATRICK FYFFE, who has died aged 60, was half of the cross-dressing act Hinge and Bracket, which enchanted audiences with its affectionate, slightly catty dialogues and renditions of such musical favourites as Noel Coward's Play to Me, Gipsy, Ivor Novello's We'll Gather Lilacs, and Keep the Home Fires Burning.

Sipping sherry in a chintzy sitting room, Fyffe's "Dame Hilda Bracket" and George Logan's "Dr Evadne Hinge" looked back on more than 30 years' musical collaboration in concert and light opera.

The two "dear ladies" relished the opportunity to reminisce and cut each other down to size while periodically rising to sing, play the piano and even dance. The soprano Dame Hilda used to give a hilarious rendition of Gangway, employing the appropriate steps as if she were Jessie Matthews herself.

Such a concoction was not to everyone's taste. Apart from those who disliked "drag" acts performed outside of pantomime, many in their audiences were uncertain as to what they were supposed to make of the performance.

There was certainly a strong camp element, involving double entendres. But those who relished this aspect were slightly suspicious that it might be a hoax at their expense; the two ladies seemed to be preserving the middle-aged, middle-class mores and musical standards which were supposed to have been swept aside in the post-Beatles Britain.

Not the least reason for such suspicions was that many later fans did not seem to want to know Hinge and Bracket were male. Dame Eva Turner, the first English soprano to sing at La Scala, was only one of their ancient but indubitably respectable fans.

Patrick Fyffe was born into a "showbiz" family at Stafford in January 1942. His mother and aunt were known as the Terry Sisters, and his father worked the variety halls.

After running his own hairdressing salon, he went into the theatre, moving round the reps and beginning his own female impersonating act.

It was while working in cabaret at Pimlico that the overweight baritone who was his partner failed to appear, and he met Logan, the pianist: "I hit on this idea which I'd seen my mother and father do once - a sort of Edwardian musical evening - and thought, 'how about if we do it as two slightly dotty old ladies?' "

At first, they found their audiences in crowing homosexuals, who often preferred their own performances in the stalls to those on stage. Then their show An Evening with Hinge and Bracket became a hit of the 1974 Edinburgh Festival. They transferred to the Theatre Upstairs at London's Royal Court, then went to the Mayfair for a three-month season.

A new show, Sixty Glorious Years, at the Ambassadors was followed by an Australian tour.

Radio Four's The Enchanting World of Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket led to regular radio work for more than a decade, and, in the early 1980s, they had their own television show, Dear Ladies.

The latter placed them in the village of Stacton Tressel, where they were involved in the same experiences as on radio. For three years they gave up because the bachelor Fyffe found it hard to work and look after his sick mother. After her death, they went back into full partnership.

If they did not appear so much on the airwaves, Hinge and Bracket remained firm favourites as celebrity guests. They appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest, Bracket playing Lady Bracknell and Hinge Miss Prism. They were in Peter Shaffer's play Lettice and Lovage. Placido Domingo was pleased to invite them onto the stage of Die Fledermaus, and they also sang with numerous symphony orchestras.

Occasionally, they worked separately. Fyffe was a venomous Katishan in The Mikado and a winsomely coy Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance; he also appeared in radio adaptations of Travels with My Aunt and Auntie Mame.

But they continued to make extensive tours, and remained in constant demand for pantomime, their true home. Fyffe was rehearsing in Barnstaple when he fell ill while rehearsing Sleeping Beauty before Christmas

 

 

OBITUARY: Patrick Fyffe

Independent, The (London),  May 14, 2002  by Anthony Hayward

THE GENTEEL manners and sometimes acerbic wit of Hinge and Bracket, a pair of eccentric, ageing Englishwomen living an olde worlde existence in a Suffolk manse and indulging in reminiscences and songs, brought a unique brand of whimsical humour to British comedy. Tea with cucumber sandwiches, musical soirees, glasses of sherry and cricket on the green were part of their everyday experience as spinsters who enjoyed cultural delights of the highest order, in the manner of middle-class ladies between the wars.

With Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket, resplendent in pearl necklaces and cocktail dresses, the dividing line between make- believe and reality was blurred almost to non-existence. On stage, television and radio, the male performers credited as the pair's creators never slipped out of character.

Patrick Fyffe was the blonde-haired Bracket, with the lop-sided, vicious grin, alongside George Logan's tall, thin Hinge. Together, they styled themselves as "female impersonators", rather than drag artists.

Born in Stafford in 1942, Fyffe initially worked as a hairdresser and performed with amateur theatre companies. He found success at the age of 30, when the piano- playing Logan was brought in as his accompanist at a concert.

The comedy partnership was developed as Hinge and Bracket, with Fyffe the more forceful, acid-tongued one. Listing his hobbies as gardening, cooking, antiques, music and old houses, he appeared in some ways to be closer to his alter ego than Logan, a former computer programmer, although both had a love of music.

The duo unleashed their fringe show, An Evening with Hinge and Bracket, at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival. As a result, they were engaged to perform at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, in London, and followed a two-week sellout run with 17 weeks at the Mayfair Theatre. The sequel, Sixty Glorious Minutes, ran for a similar period at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Stage shows in Britain, Australia and the Far East were followed by a BBC radio series, The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket (1978-79). Set in the Old Manse in the imaginary Suffolk village of Stackton Tressel, just beyond the village green, towards Stackton Parva, the duo shared with listeners their encounters with the Squire, the church organist, village policemen and others. John Savident (now Fred Elliott in Coronation Street) took many of these parts, and Daphne Heard played the ladies' daily help, Maud Print.

Their quaint world and ramblings continued in the long-running radio series The Random Jottings of Hinge and Bracket (1982-9). The jottings, over 67 programmes, were done by Dame Hilda in the belief that they would one day carry literary importance. New characters included the Major (Anthony Sharp) and Peter and Mandy Moore (Chris Emmett and Frances Jeater), and the role of Maud was eventually taken over by Jean Heywood.

During this time, Fyffe and his professional partner followed television specials and guest appearances by making three series of Dear Ladies (1983- 84). Gyles Brandreth wrote the 18 episodes, with Hinge and Bracket's Suffolk village actually filmed in Great Budworth, Cheshire.

The pair appeared in two Royal Variety Performances and in character in a televised Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus (1983), conducted by Placido Domingo and starring Kiri Te Kanwa as Rosalinde. They also recorded a string of albums, and a book, One Little Maid: the memories of Dame Hilda Bracket (1980), was published.

Although they split up for a while following newspaper revelations that Logan had led a "sordid secret life of gay sex and drugs", the pair were reunited in the 1990s, appearing in pantomime and touring Britain in both their own stage show and the Peter Shaffer play Lettice and Lovage.

In 1999, BBC radio's Friday Night is Music Night marked the silver jubilee of Hinge and Bracket's breakthrough Edinburgh Festival show by featuring the duo with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the tenor Adrian Martin. For many years, Hinge and Bracket's performances included the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan, Fyffe's favourite composers.

Off stage, the duo gave interviews only in character. As Dame Hilda, Fyffe was once asked why they had just toured Bahrain. "We were invited out there because the British were starved of entertainment and culture," he explained. "They wanted something typically English to remind them of home. We seem to personify that feeling."

With a deadpan expression, Hinge and Bracket also insisted that even jokes such as the one about the officer who was dismissed for playing with his privates were not near the knuckle. The way the pair remained locked in character became part of their mystique.

On television in character roles, Fyffe was seen taking bit-parts in Doctor in the House (1969) and Grace & Favour (1993).

Patrick Fyffe, actor and singer: born Stafford 23 January 1942; died Wellington, Somerset 11 May 2002

 

 

Farewell to a Herefordshire favourite

From the archive, first published Thursday 30th May 2002.

THE unexpected death of Patrick Fyffe - Dame Hilda Bracket of Hinge and Bracket fame - came as a shock to his many fans and friends in Herefordshire Marches where the duo had an unusually big following.

Following a major success at the Edinburgh Festival in the early seventies, Dame Hilda and `her' stage partner Dr Evadne Hinge took the entertainment industry by storm with their quirky drag act and camp humour, capturing a worldwide audience on radio, television as well as the stage.

A first appearance at Hereford's Nell Gwynne Theatre, now the site of The Courtyard, followed and from then on fans were hooked; they came back, again and again.

One in particular, Nicholas Jones-Evans from Presteigne became a close friend of the popular pair and he is deeply shocked at the news:

" I knew he was ill but didn't expect this, I simply can't believe it. He was always full of fun off stage and on. George Logan (Dr Evadne) must be devastated."

Hinge & Bracket made one of their final public appearances together last year at the Leominster Festival; it was sell out at the Minster College and a night to remember. They were on particularly good form, their humour and witty repartee bringing the Festival audience to its knees with laughter.

Behind the façade of his stage alter ego, Patrick Fyffe was a very private man, a witty and amusing conversationalist and antique collector of some standing. Wherever he performed he could always be found browsing the antique shops and markets.

For ten years I shared the same south-west London patch, Barnes, and regularly on Friday mornings we would meet up at Sheen Antique Market to chat, among other things, about his fondness for Herefordshire.

Later when I told him I was return to Leominster he promised to `come and do the festival for me one day'. He kept his word.

Jen Green

 

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Last modified: 10-Jun-2008 11:00