THE blushing amateur Houdini, whose escapology act flopped in front of a laughing crowd, is brought back into the spotlight by reader Frank Leyland.

He takes us back a few decades to halcyon times when an assortment of copper-cadging novelty acts entertained Cinema queues. And Frank, from Laurel Road, remembers one in particular.

This was a kind of escape trick. And on one memorable summer's night the two-man act set up in front of a Savoy Cinema queue.

The Houdini copycat was wrapped in a long chain and this was then firmly padlocked. But toss, turn and squirm as he could, the trussed-up performer could not escape.

Finally, his elderly assistant had to free him - to the accompaniment of gales of laughter. "So there was no collection that night," recalls Frank.

But the same duo often picked up a capful of loose change with their other act, which involved one of them having paving stones smashed over his chest by his sledgehammer-swinging assistant.

The one enduring this hairy ordeal is remembered by Frank as looking like a scruffy version of Hollywood hero Robert Mitchum.

Performances took place on summer weekends near Carr Mill Dam and its Happy Valley picnic area which drew people in their hundreds in immediate post-war years.

Frank can't recall the strongman's name, but he was probably a miner. "I once saw him with his foot in bandages, and he told me he'd injured it down the pit."

BUT, true to the theatrical code, he was determined that the show must go on!

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