Swansea Sound
By Geoffrey Clarke
This novel is a work of ‘faction’, that means it is a combination of fact and fiction. Any similarity to incidents, events, famous personalities, or places in this book is either intentional, or otherwise haphazardly the product of the author’s imagination, so to speak. Resemblances to actual persons either dead or alive are purely intentional, but the protagonist Watkin Davies, Mervyn Jenkins, Watkin’s wife Diane, Cliff and others are imaginary, but probably induced autobiographically in the author’s mind by a process of the assimilation of ideas.
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The writer asserts his right as the author of this work.
The author recognises his sources as Ryan Davies and Ronnie Williams, Max Boyce, Frankie Howard, Tony Hancock, Syd James, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, Harry Secombe, TT (Terry) Thomas, Jimmy Edwards, Tommy Cooper, the fastest milkman in the West, Benny Hill, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, and that inimitable joke collector of all time – Bob Monkhouse. Although too risqué for the period, I have included some material from Les Dawson, particularly about Watkin Davies’s mother in law. Quite out of time, I have been influenced, too, by Rhod Gilbert, the contemporary Welsh comedian and broadcaster.
Congratulations are due to Sir Tom Jones, Dame Shirley Bassey and now to Sir Gareth Edwards on his knighthood, June 2015.