A marvellous man who never failed to raise people's spirits in the dark days.

We need more of this happiness in the world now. You can tell how much George loved entertaining people - he couldn't hide it if he tried, and it's impossible to feel anything but happy after watching him play and sing.

What a star. Keep his name alive.

Sing his songs many days when Im down and depressed.

At one time this man George formed me and Gracie Fields were the two most popular artists i England

What a brilliant player

If he came back today he would still be number one.

George Formby Jimi Hendrix and David Gilmour are my absolute favourites

George Formby smiles like a geek 🤓 but he's a legend and a gentleman. He knows how to entertain.👍🎶🪕

Besides everything else , he has a very lovable quality to him ! Thanks for sharing this !

Love this guy!

Fun, funny and genial guy, sure. But a real uke shredder too. Not forgotten as a performer by fans, not forgotten as a technician by players.

Simply brilliant, OOR, George a guy who was around at the time when Britain was great,and 40 year's his movies still make me smile.

Why this gentle man never got a knighthood I will never know.

Had a summer job at the top of Blackpool tower early 1980's. Surprising the things that go on up there lol.

There's a British-ness to this fellow that is just gone... alas.

Just think I was born may 22nd of may 1959 I love George formby.

Absolutely Wonderful Entertaining Music and song ya don't get much of that today

My 3 year old loves this song

Love this guy 👍❤️

I just have to say I love the bangelele. As a result Goerge Formby comprises A considerable amount of my drinking playlylist lol

Magical Honestly A National Treasure

A true virtuoso.

This is fab!

I saw George perform this number, 60 years ago, in the BBC TV Show *Stepping Out With Formby*, in April 1959; This being one month before - as a 20-year-old RAF Senior Aircraftsman - I left the UK for *Ex Task Force Grapple*, on a one-year remit, posted to work on the H-Bomb Testing Ground RAF Christmas Island; a sparse coral-atoll, situated plonk in the middle of the Mid-Pacific Ocean. At that time, as a journalist and researcher, I was closely involved with talks with Beryl Formby - while working at the behest of BBC Senior Researcher, Shirley McNab - to research and compile a long-awaited, and much-yearned-for, celebrity-appearance featuring George Formby on *This Is Your LIfe *; which in the end, was ruled-out for a litany of personal difficulties. Don't let George's contrived, happy-go-lucky *Vim* here, fool you; those who remember this heroic man-and-performer, at the time (as I did), will know that he was a very sick man, even then, and was struggling to overcome chronic breathlessness and severe pain in his chest, for which he was on permanent pain-killers, steroids and what today would be called *Beta-Blockers. All this was resultant of his near-lethal heart-attack, at Whitsuntide 1952, when he was struck down as he and Beryl (seeking a break from his part in *Zip Goes A Million* at London's Palace Theatre, in Cambridge Circus), motored towards the Norfolk Broads, intending to spend a few days on their luxury cabin-cruiser *Lady Beryl II*. It was only Beryl''s crash-action reaction - of pushing George aside, and taking his place at the driving wheel - that she was able to reverse the car and race back to London, and *The London Clinic*, in Harley Street, where prompt medication and procedural intervention saved his life. What emerged, however, was what you see in this video; ergo a steroid-bloated, overweight and secretly-insecure George Formby; gasping for breath between numbers, while brazenly fighting-off his permanently-threatening symptoms, while he does his best to recreate the happy-do-lucky George Formby *gump* of old. In April 1958, exactly one year before that television show - in which he danced and sang, amid a bevy of Chorus girls, in a lavish production number called *Piccolo Pete* - I talked to George outside the stage-door of Manchester Opera House; that gilded Rococo multi-balcony Howard and Wyndham architectural grandiloquent masterpiece, situated on Quay Street, near to Manchester's Granada TV Studios. It was here that for a seven days, plus a matinee, *Our George* was packing-em'-out, while playing George Pearson, a weary put-upon-Dad, in Leslie Sand's cheeky seaside *Pot-Boiler*. However, behind his contrived *Turned Out Nice Again* mask, he was impatient, hot-and-bothered, irritable and visible suffering, as - with both cheeks twitching on a purple-and-puce near-agitated face - he gasped for every breath he was able to draw. I was taken aback and distressed to see that, by then, my hero of those 1930s and 40 blockbuster talkies had more lines on the face than did the map of Europe , and his smoothed-back *Brylcreem* hair was completely-silver, tinged with streaks of coppering-green, at the roots ! I was dismayed as I realised that I was talking to a very-very sick man. Despite this, he chatted to me freely, for nearly 15 minutes; this before the looming castigatory-presence of Beryl sprung-up, as if out of nowhere, from behind him, while booming-out, like some irate sergeant-major: *You can't stand there talking forever; you've got a show to do. Cut that out and start getting ready !* Beryl's appearance coincided with the arrival of George's stage-wife, Barbara Mitchell in this Lancashire-based forgettable-romp; at which time he automatically reprised his familiar screen-image of old, with *Hello Barbara, love; Turned Out Nice Again, hasn't it ?*; this as noticeably apprehensive, she swept-by and disappeared-swiftly into the shadows in the direction of her dressing room ! Less than three years after that unforgettable meeting - one of many I had with George Formby, before his untimely passing - both he and his Sentinel and the Stage Door, and Svengali-mentor, Beryl, were no more !

Fantastic player on the . Yewcalalley. Brilliant

What a brilliant player and a fellow wiganer like myself regards kevin

Simply ,wonderful chirpy happy sound.!

Thanks Lewis ... hope to see you at Blackpool again soon! Tomorrow (March 6) is George's death anniversary .... Keep up the great playing!

Thanks Lewis! Great performances this last weekend at GFS!

I was 6 years old when this was made! Brilliant performance by George, as usual! Thank you for posting it, Lewis.

Formby Wigan, Fields Rochdale, when Lancashire was the centre of England 1959 this TV special, everyone who had a TV would be watching this in the sitting room, dad in his suit and tie smoking his pipe, Mam in her evening dress and curlers out and the kids in their jim-jams drinking horlicks and grandma knitting jumpers, now Saturday nights are different, dads out delivering pizzas, mams smoking crack, grandma is selling weed and the kids are in their darkened bedrooms playing on the x-box 24-7. .

Thanks Lewis very nice video wish I could play like that well done

He didn’t live long after this 😢

hahhahahah amazing !

Brilliant 😊

Brilliant song.

Fantastic performance from the king of uke's

What a correction by George there. Band tempo raises for some reason and then George has to correct around that.

❤❤❤❤❤

While living in England as a child my family loved him. We often spent the day in Blackpool. I was shocked to recently find that the town of Blackpool is now in complete decay and as a consequence has suffered a major drop in tourism. What in the world is going on in the England of to-day?

Salute, Comrade!!!

Reminds of the first time i sipped on lemonade ...

incredible tight playing...

In *Steppin' Out With Formby* George headed a production number, in which he danced and sang *Piccolo Pete*; my mentioning this to Beryl the following month, when I interviewed her as a researcher for an intended *This Is Your Life* on her famous hubby, when I remarked that George was pretty good on his feet as well as on the uke. *I'm the dancer*, she retorted, *I spent hours teaching him out to do that dance, because otherwise he's like a stick of firewood.* Gerry George.

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

one of my favorites

Thanks, I've just watched one and I agree with Mr. Stewart,

The best export EVER from Wigan.

💗🎶🎶🎶

Yes - there are plenty on KZfaq. Just type in 'Spotting on The Top of Blackpool Tower'

Awesome performance from George here, and a fantastic correction after the band go out of sync. (I'm guessing it's a small stage band.)

goerge Formby is my grandmas firend

Can I find a recording of this song with the old words?

Sorry: *Teaching how to do that dance* forgive the typo. GG

Yes Micheal they were, but of course that song was written for the war - so it had refrences to subjects to do with that. When the war was over, George and his wrtters had to addapt the song so he could continue to sing and play it.

What do you get when you cross George Formby with Eddie Murphy?? " hey hey its turned out nice again ant it ya mother fuckers " . . . . .

John Lennon brought me here.

Did he struggle with weight and booze in later life?

With weight on and a little cosmetic dentistry George looks great......