Webster Booth (21 January 1902 – 21 June 1984) was an English tenor, best remembered as the duettist partner of Anne Ziegler.

He was a chorister at Lincoln Cathedral (1911–1915) and made his professional stage debut with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, where he performed from 1923 to 1927.

When musical tastes changed in the 1950s they decided to emigrate to South Africa in 1956 where they continued their stage work as well as teaching singing in their Johannesburg studio.

[4] Booth had been advised by Bennett not to sing for three years after his voice broke, so during that time he played goalie in the school football team and was considered good enough to be offered a place with Aston Villa Colts.

In his late teens he took singing lessons with Richard Wassall, choir master at St Martin in the Bull Ring, at the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

He joined an accountancy firm and was often torn between auditing duties and singing tenor solos in local oratorio performances.

After a D'Oyly Carte tour of Canada in 1927, Booth felt that he was making little progress in the company and left to pursue his singing career.

He had married Winifred Keey in London in 1924 and their son, Keith Leslie Booth was born the following year on 12 June 1925.

On 3 November 1928, aged 26, he was tenor soloist in a performance of Messiah at Birmingham Town Hall with the Choral and Orchestral Union.

In 1930 he made his West End debut in a principal role as the Duke of Buckingham in Rudolf Friml's The Three Musketeers,[2] starring Dennis King at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Booth was engaged in Powis Pinder's[7] Sunshine concert party at the Summer Theatre,[8] Shanklin on the Isle of Wight for the 1931 and 1932 seasons.

In 1933 Booth and Paddy appeared together in the Piccadilly Revels concert party at Scarborough and the following year both were engaged with Sunshine at Shanklin.

The fee was paltry in comparison to what he had been earning, and he vowed to avoid opera in the future, although he made many operatic recordings and broadcasts.

[12] They made their first duet recordings for HMV in 1939 and in 1940 were asked to take their act on the Variety Circuit by theatrical agent, Julius Darewski.

From 1943 they sang at innumerable concerts all over the country for Harold Fielding with fellow artistes such as Peter Dawson and Rawicz and Landauer.

They established a school of singing and stagecraft in Johannesburg, made an LP recording of their popular duets translated into Afrikaans and trained many promising singers.

Booth turned the clock back in 1963 when he played Colonel Fairfax in The Yeomen of the Guard for the Johannesburg Operatic and Dramatic Society at very short notice.

He also played the non-singing part of the circus barker in Smetana's The Bartered Bride for the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal in November/December 1966 shortly before he and Anne left Johannesburg for Knysna in the Cape Province.

[15] In 1985 Jean Buckley, their lifelong fan and friend began raising funds to establish the Webster Booth Scholarship at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

When Esso withdrew its sponsorship there was not enough money left to continue the Webster Booth award in its present form.