Arthur Roberts (comedian)

Roberts was born in Kentish Town, London,[1] the son of a Savile Row tailor who attended to Edward, Prince of Wales.

[3] The following summer, Roberts moved to Great Yarmouth and regularly performed for tourists on a makeshift stage erected on the nearby pier.

[7][n 1] In the legitimate theatre, he starred as Dr. Syntax in the Drury Lane Theatre pantomime Mother Goose (1880); as Mrs. Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe (1881 and 1886); in Sindbad the Sailor (1882; a show he repeated in 1906); in H. B. Farnie's Nell Gwynne (1884); in Farnie's The Grand Mogul (1884 with Florence St. John, Fred Leslie and Frank Wyatt);[9] Joe Tarradiddle in the English adaptation of Offenbach's La Vie parisienne; Stanley the explorer in the 1891 Gaiety Theatre burlesque of Joan of Arc by Adrian Ross and J. L. Shine,[10] popularising the song "I went to find Emin"; in the early Edwardian musical comedy In Town (1892); Captain Arthur Coddington in the Gaiety burlesque of Don Juan (1893, by Meyer Lutz, A. C. Torr and Ross); Claude Du Val (1894), the title character in Gentleman Joe (1895); Black-Eyed See-Usan; and Dandy Dan the Lifeguardsman (1898), among others.

[12] In 1907, Roberts was a leader in the "Music Hall War", striking for better working conditions, which led to the founding of the Variety Artist's Federation.

In 1926, he popularised the song "Topsey-Turvey", which he also used as the basis for a short 1927 film made in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process, directed by Bertram Phillips.