Dressed in top hat and tails, he would pretend to be drunk and parody the "leisured classes", hiccuping as he sang.
[3][4] His most successful routine, "Ask a P'liceman", sometimes given as "If You Want to Know the Time Ask A Policeman", was first performed in 1888 and was written by E. W. Rogers and A. E. Durandeau.
The song was "filled with references that reflected the Victorian working-class mistrust of the officers of the law",[5] and made fun of the frequent claim that, if arrested for drunkenness, one's pocket watch was likely to go missing at the police station,[3] with the line "Every member of the force / Has a watch and chain, of course."
The sheet music of the song reportedly sold some half a million copies within three years of its publication.
Fawn performed at Gatti's Charing Cross Music Hall in 1890, and it has been suggested that that is the occasion on which Rudyard Kipling based his story My Great and Only, in which the narrator (based on Kipling himself) presents a song he has written to a leading performer looking for new material.