Frolics in the Fun Factory
QUESTION If things became farcical, my father used to say: ‘It’s like Fred Karno’s army.’ Who was Fred Karno?
BORN Frederick John Westcott in Exeter in 1866, Fred Karno was a circus acrobat with The Karno Trio, from which he took his stage name.
In the 1890s, he developed a flair for silent slapstick comedy routines, most famously the custard pie in the face.
Sketches such as Jail Mum, Love In A Tub and Hilarity were drawn from circus and pantomime traditions, and helped make him enough money to start his own business.
From 1901, Fred Karno’s Fun Factory, based in two houses in Camberwell, South London, supplied stars and sketches to music halls all over London. This ragtag bunch of comedians became known as Fred Karno’s Army.
The physical comedy of his sketches relied on well-orchestrated, highly skilled pandemonium and the phrase Karno’s Army became the byword for chaos.
He launched the careers of several great music hall and comedy stars including Fred Kitchen, Billy Reeves, Harry Weldon, Charlie Chaplin and his understudy, Arthur Jefferson, who later adopted the name Stan Laurel. Karno’s most famous sketch, Mumming Birds, in which drunken swells in music hall boxes heckle and eventually fight with incompetent stage performers, went to the U.S. as A Night In An English Music Hall in 1910.
It brought its stars Chaplin and Laurel to the attention of Hollywood.
In 1912, Karno spent most of his fortune building a magnificent hotel, the Karsino, which had a grand ballroom and concert pavilion, on Tagg’s Island, in the Thames near Bushey Park.
He earned immortality in a World War I trench song to the tune of the hymn The Church’s One Foundation: ‘We are Fred Karno’s army, we are the ragtime infantry. We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, what bleeding use are we?
And when we get to Berlin we’ll hear the Kaiser say: “Hoch, hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody rotten lot, are the ragtime infantry.” ’ The popularity of moving pictures spelled the end of the music halls. By 1925, the Great War and mismanagement had driven the impresario to bankruptcy. He died in 1941, aged 75.
John Avery, Harrogate, N. Yorks.
QUESTION What is the difference between strong and ordinary flour?
THE stronger the flour the higher the gluten content.
Wheat flours contain two types of protein called glutenin and gliadin. When moistened and kneaded, these combine to form tough, stringy and elastic gluten.
As gluten absorbs water, the dough becomes stretchy, trapping the carbon dioxide created by fermenting yeast.
As the gluten sets while baking, the stretched fibres give body to the bread and its spongy texture.
As a rule of thumb, weak flour with a protein content of 9 per cent is ideal for biscuits and cakes.
Medium flour, which has 12 per cent gluten, is an all-purpose flour for baking.
Strong flour has 13 per cent gluten, making it ideal for most breads. However, breads using a sourdough starter may require a very strong flour with 15 per cent gluten.
Strong flour would make tough cakes and biscuits while flour with low protein would result in dense, heavy bread.