Robb Wilton (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles Robb Wilton, born Robert Wilton Smith (28 August 1881 - 1 May 1957) was an English comedian and comic actor who was famous for his filmed monologues in the 1930s and 1940s in which he played incompetent authority figures. Wilton was born in Everton, Liverpool, and had a dry Lancashire accent which suited his comic persona as a procrastinating and work-shy impediment to the general public. Wilton's comedy emerged from the tradition of English Music Hall, especially popular in the North of England, and he was a contemporary of Frank Randle and George Formby, Jr.. He portrayed the human face of bureaucracy; for example, playing a policeman who shilly-shallies his way out of acting upon a reported murder by pursuing a contrarian line of questioning. Wilton, rubbing his face in a world-weary way, would fiddle with his props while his characters blithely and incompetently 'went about their work', his humour embodying the everyday and the absurd - and the inherent absurdity of the everyday.