Twice Brightly is a comic novel by Harry Secombe, fictionalising his experiences as a recently demobbed Welsh serviceman and army comic returning from the battlefields of North Africa and Italy and struggling to make a living in the British Variety Theatres after the Second World War. The lead character is a Welsh comic called Larry Gower, Secombe's alter ego. The title is a pun on the phrase "twice nightly". Upon release in 1974 the book was the first novel of his to be published.
Plot summary
For young servicemen who had spent six years fighting fascism, postwar Britain was a drab, oppressive place. For a young and untried army comic keen on the Marx brothers and Jimmy Cagney, a Yorkshire Variety theatre in February was a vision of Hell itself.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
It was dramatised as a 60-minute Radio 4
radio play by Harry's son David Secombe in 2006, first broadcast that year and repeated on Saturday 19 May 2007. This ended with Gower as a success, leaving for London to take part in "Crazy People", a play by his fellow ex-soldier and comic Jim Moriarty - this is a fictionalisation of the initial stages of the
Goon Show, and Moriarty (deriving his name from the Goon character Count Jim Moriarty) is a fictionalised
Spike Milligan.
Cast
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Larry Gower (Secombe's alter ego)...... Christian Patterson
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Wally ...... Dominic Frisby
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Tom ...... Philip Jackson
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Julie ...... Becky Hindley
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April ...... Katy Secombe (Harry's daughter)
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June ...... Ella Smith
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Joe ...... Gerard McDermott
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Jim ...... John Cummins
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Mrs Ma Rogers, landlady ...... Carolyn Pickles
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Hubert ...... Geoffrey Beevers
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Director Steven Canny
Reviews
The novel became the first ever known book be reviewed in print by a member of the British royal family, with the then
Charles III giving the work a positive review in the weekly comic magazine Punch in 1974.
