The family became regular music hall performers, until 1868 when George Chirgwin first appeared as a solo act, singing "Come Home, Father" in a summer engagement at Margate.

[1] Rather than using a fully blacked-up face as other blackface minstrels did, Chirgwin chose to adapt this by making one large white diamond over one eye.

The pain was so great that I naturally set to work rubbing my eye and when I faced the audience again there was a shriek of laughter.

When I get an audience that I like I go off at score, giving them a melange of songs, dances and instrumental music, and reeling off the dialogue just as it comes into my head.... To show how I vary my entertainment, no one in England has ever been able to mimic me.

[4]In 1895 he bought Burgh Island, off the coast of south Devon, where he built a wooden house used for weekend parties.

[6] He retired in 1919 due to ill health, and became the landlord of a pub, the Anchor Hotel in Shepperton, Middlesex, until his death in 1922 aged 67.