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from Urban Tiger Radio Hosted by Bill Allerton
PUNCH & JUDY SHOW AXED OVER FEARS IT TRIVIALISES DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. So said the Burgers of Barry Island, South Wales in 2016. The Punch and Judy Fellowship equated the decision to 'banning wine gums because there are alcoholics in the world' This is an 'End of an Era' poem. The Punch & Judy show, once a staple of every British holiday beach, and sometimes there were more than one if it was a large resort, has now almost gone. Thankfully there are stalwarts and traditionalists who keep this form of Theatre (for that is what it is) alive. It survives still despite the death knell that Sir Freddie Laker sounded for it with his cheap airline tickets to European beaches where the sun could almost be guaranteed to shine, unlike our own Fair Isle. Very quickly, good weather became the expected norm and dear old Britain could never live up to that. So... along with the decline of the seafront entertainments into 'push-penny arcades' and the shops into tat and Charity shops, came the decline of the beach-side entertainment, and poor old Mr Punchinello, curiously of Italian lineage, Judy, the Policeman, their Dog, and a whole string of sausages and bad jokes, have been retired to a memory and the occasional historic re-enactment.
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