Here’s a Sheffield worthy that I bet you’ve never heard of.
Arthur Clifford Baynes (1892-1971) was a comedian from Sheffield, who performed under the stage name of Stainless Stephen, making his debut at the Palace, Luton, in 1921.
His London debut was at the Victoria Palace in 1930.
You would be forgiven for not knowing his name, for Stainless Stephen never quite made it as a top music hall comedian. He appeared on stage dressed in a smart tuxedo, a bowler hat with a steel band around it, a rotating bow tie, and a stainless steel vest, made in his home city.
He never gave up his day job, as an English teacher at Crookes Endowed School which he joined in 1922 after demobilisation from the Sheffield City Battalion, which he served during World War One, and wounded twice. His job meant he could only appear on stage at weekends and during school holidays.
Legend has it that Stainless’ lessons on Friday were always a bit light on the ground, as he spent most of the time leaving his classes to it whilst he wrote his radio material for the weekend! It was said that he based his routine on a radio course he took while on military service.
His speciality was that during his deadpan monologue, he would interrupt the flow by supplying punctuation, thus:
“Somebody once said, inverted commas, comedians are born not made, full stop. Well, slight pause to heighten dramatic effect, let me tell my dense public innuendo that I was born of honest but disappointed parents in anno domini eighteen ninety something, full stop. Owing to my female fan following, the final two digits must be left to the imagination, end of paragraph and fresh line.”
And.
“What a wonderful year 1930 was, semi-colon, said Stainless Stephen, semi-conscious. Thousands of new motorists took to the road, comma, and as a result thousands of pedestrians took to the pavements.”
As well as.
“This is Stainless aimless brainless Stephen, semi-colon, broadcasting semi-conscious at the microphone semi-frantic.”
Closing a broadcast in March 1941, he said:
“And so, countrymen, semi-colon, all shoulders to the wheel, semi-quaver, we’ll carry on till we get the Axis semi-circle, and Hitler asks us for a full stop!”
In 1932, he was voted the most popular radio artist in a newspaper poll, appeared in the all-star extravaganza, Radio Parade (1933), a film of music hall acts, and supported Will Hay at the Victoria Palace in 1944. Throughout World War Two he toured Europe and the Far East and appeared at the London Palladium’s Royal Command Performance in 1945.
Stainless Stephen also appeared as a guest on This Is Your Life, celebrating the life of broadcaster Stuart Hibberd, in 1957, and in Frost on Saturday in 1969, an edition dedicated to the history of British broadcasting to mark the first evening of colour transmissions on ITV.
Stainless Stephen retired in 1952 describing himself as “stainless, painless, brainless, shameless, aimless, semi-conscious and approaching semi dotage.” He ran a 125-acre farm with his son, Ian, at Chiddingstone Causeway, Kent, where he died in 1971.
sheffielder.net 