After his father died he started running the family business while continuing to take opportunities to entertain at local dinners and in clubs.
In the Second World War his company won a lucrative contract with the NAAFI to supply sausages, enabling him to spend more time in the evenings as an after-dinner speaker.
After moving to Lytham St Annes he spent time playing golf, where he met many of the show business figures who performed in nearby Blackpool, and started active attempts to develop a second career as a comedian.
According to writer Graham McCann: "Most professional comedians, before Al Read, concentrated on telling gags and/or short but obviously contrived tall tales.
Here, in stark contrast, was someone talking about the kind of experience that most people in the audience had endured, except he was exaggerating it just enough to make the listeners laugh not only at the protagonists but also at themselves."
[2] Read quickly became popular on regional and then national radio broadcasts, such as Variety Bandbox and Workers' Playtime.
Unusually for the time, his humour reflected everyday life, situations and characters, widely recognisable and only slightly exaggerated for comic effect.
[3] According to McCann: "His ability to flit back and forth between speakers and personalities was impressive in itself, but the seemingly effortless yet unfailingly precise rhythms of his speech, and the deftness of his key turns of phrase, were even more remarkable."
[6] The first edition shown by ABC had monologues by Al entitled 'The Railway Station,' 'A Mayfair Cocktail Party,' 'The Wife in her Kitchen.'