Talk:Hughie Green

I finally got around to borrowing Christopher Green's biography of his father from the library. Looking up "catchphrase" in the index, I find one reference and he seems to think that Hughie did indeed use "And I mean that most sincerely". I'm fairly sure that if he did use the catchphrase then it was quite late in his career, and in particular it's extremely unlikely to pre-date his 1966 autobiography as it doesn't appear in that. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that Mike Yarwood did invent it and Hughie picked it up. - JT

• Well, I've at last turned up some proper evidence for it. I still haven't heard Hughie Green himself use it, mind, but clearly it was a recognisable catchphrase as early as 1962, when the line was used as a joke in the Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller album "Bridge on the River Wye" (ACTUAL PROPER EVIDENCE: mp3 download link - it occurs at 6:51). So it was genuine after all, and reasonably early too. Its non-appearance in Green's autobiography is a bit weird, though. - JT
• I'm pretty darn sure he did use this catchphrase, mainly because when the New Zealanders ripped off Op Knocks in the famous copyright case, part of the evidence presented to the court was that Hughie Green's unique catchphrases had also been copied: see http://www.musiclawupdates.com/articles/ARTICLE%2004formatfortunes.htm and http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/magazine/20000101/27663.html - DJB.
  • Though oddly, they don't mention that particular catchphrase (perhaps the NZ version didn't use that one). Still, the 1962 instance proves that it wasn't Yarwood's invention, and Christopher Green at least mentions it in passing, so I'm happy to accept that he did indeed use it. - JT