Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall; 21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995)[1] was an English singer-songwriter,[2] musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (as a radio series for John Peel, as an audio recording, as a book and as a film), and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.

He joined fellow students in forming a band (including Rodney Slater, Roger Ruskin Spear and Neil Innes, who was studying art at Goldsmiths College).

Innes said of their first meeting: "We first met in a big Irish pub in South London, the New Cross Arms ... he was quite plump in those days, and he was wearing Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, black coat tails, horrible little oval, violet-tinted pince-nez glasses, he had a euphonium under his arm, and large rubber false ears.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were named after a word game that Stanshall played with co-founder Slater, in which they cut up sentences and juxtaposed fragments to form new ones.

Much of the band's original repertoire was based on comedic re-workings of songs from the 1920s and 1930s, found on 78 records, bought for pennies from local flea markets.

In 1967, they appeared in the Beatles' television film Magical Mystery Tour, in which they played Stanshall's "Death Cab for Cutie" during the strip club scene.

During recordings for the album proper at Morgan Studios, Stanshall, wearing just a rabbit's head and underpants, interviewed members of the public in Willesden High Road.

It was during the particularly disastrously organised second tour that the Bonzos decided to break up, partly because of Stanshall's growing stage fright – combined with his increasing use of valium to help combat this – but also because of anger with their management, after Spear's wife suffered a miscarriage while he was away, and no-one informed him.

Despite this promising start, biG GRunt dissolved during their first UK tour when Stanshall became incapacitated by the onset of an anxiety disorder that caused a nervous breakdown and would continue to plague him for the rest of his life.

Later in the year, his single version of Terry Stafford's song "Suspicion", credited to Vivian Stanshall and Gargantuan Chums and featuring Keith Moon and John Entwistle of the Who, was released.

Stanshall had developed what many consider to be his seminal work, Rawlinson End, as a spoken word performance piece during the first few years of the 1970s, recording an early version as part of The Bonzo Dog Band's reunion project Let's Make Up And Be Friendly.

Beginning in 1975, he expanded upon the concept as an episodic surrealist radio serial for BBC Radio 1's John Peel slot, elaborating further upon the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriated and blimpish Sir Henry Rawlinson, his wife, the distanced and ethereal Florrie, his "unusual" brother Hubert, loyal manservant Old Scrotum 'the wrinkled retainer', the rambling and unhygienic cook Mrs E.; and many other inhabitants of the crumbling Rawlinson End and its environs.

The album was disowned by Stanshall after its release, as he said it was both unfinished and unsatisfactory, and that the record label had rush-released it without his permission in an attempt to profit from his potentially imminent demise.

'Sir Henry' was last seen in a television commercial for Ruddles Real Ale (c. 1994), where he was portrayed by a cross-dressing Dawn French, presiding over a family banquet at a long table; shortly afterwards, Stanshall himself reprised the role of Hubert, reciting a poem loosely based on Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat".

[24] During this same period, Stanshall embarked upon the recording of a proposed new Rawlinson End album, but this activity was curtailed in its early stages by its creator's untimely death in March 1995.

Stanshall made guest appearances on a number of other artists' recordings including John Entwistle's Smash Your Head Against The Wall in 1971, Mike Hart's Basher, Chalky, Pongo and Me in 1972, Pete Brown's The Not Forgotten Association in 1973, and Robert Calvert's 1974 concept album Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters.

A rather more serious work than many would have expected, its darkly comic lyrics detailed Stanshall's alcoholism and troubled emotional state, laced with surreal poetic imagery and literary reference.

Stanshall's long-standing friends and colleagues Innes, White, Traffic's Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Ric Grech and Rebop Kwaku Baah, Doris Troy and Madeline Bell also made notable guest appearances.

In 1975, Stanshall provided the narration for Peter and the Wolf, produced by Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster and featuring, among others, Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Stéphane Grappelli, Alvin Lee, Cozy Powell, Brian Eno and Jon Hiseman.

During this period, Stanshall compiled and re-recorded material from his popular BBC Radio 1 broadcasts for Peel, which was released as Sir Henry at Rawlinson End in 1978.

After The Searchlight eventually sank, the Stanshalls lived and worked on The Thekla, a Baltic Trader, which Ki sailed 732 nautical miles (1,356 km) from Sunderland to be moored in the Bristol Docks.

Stanshall celebrated Silky's birth in "The Tube", and his marriage to Ki in "Bewilderbeeste", both songs being included on his album Teddy Boys Don't Knit.

Even though their comic opera Stinkfoot was a success in late 1985, Stanshall returned alone to London after the turn of the year, while Longfellow recuperated from an illness brought on by overwork and stress.

Stanshall was found dead on the morning of 6 March 1995, after an electrical fire had broken out as he slept in his top-floor flat in Muswell Hill, north London.

A memorial plaque was unveiled in the Poets' Corner at Golders Green Crematorium on 13 December 2015, opposite that of his friend Keith Moon, by his widow Ki and his daughter Silky.

[31] On 22 December 2009, BBC Radio 4's series Great Lives featured a programme on Stanshall, who had been nominated by Neil Innes, with Ki Longfellow as expert witness, hosted by Matthew Parris.

[32] In June 2010, the 1978 album Sir Henry at Rawlinson End was re-imagined by Michael Livesley as a one-man show, in which he starred as the narrator and all the characters, backed by a six-piece band replicating the instrumentation of the original.

On 25 March 2013, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Stanshall's birth, Livesley was joined by Innes, Rick Wakeman, Danny Thompson, Rodney Slater, Sam Spoons, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell, 'Legs' Larry Smith and John Otway, to perform Sir Henry at Rawlinson End at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

In 2012, Poppydisc Records reissued both a vinyl and CD version of Stanshall's Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead, remastered with new liner notes from his widow and daughter.

In the case of Rawlinson's End, some of the narration and music was recorded by Stanshall, while the rest incorporates material from the existing BBC John Peel sessions, including some that was previously unbroadcast.