DAVE Willis died in the first hour of the New Year in 1973, aged 78. His obituary in these pages said he had been acknowledged by the public and by his fellow professionals as one of the funniest natural comedians Scotland had ever produced.
Willis was born in 1895. He was a journeyman in a Clydeside arms factory at the outbreak of the Great War; he joined the Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF), and it was with his unit’s concert party, that he developed his comedy gifts.
After the war he began his career as an entertainer and by the late 1930s he had established himself in the front rank of Scots comics.
He starred in many Howard and Wyndham pantos and summer shows in Glasgow, Edinburgh and elsewhere. He created a record by featuring in 32 weeks of the celebrated Half Past Eight show at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal, in 1943.
His famous phrase, “Way up a kie”, was given to him by his small son, Denny (who himself would grow up to become a comedian). Every time Denny saw a plane he would point upwards and shout, “There’s daddy - way up a kie!”
Dave retired in 1950 and bought a hotel on Rothesay but the venture did not work out. “Dave came back and did his ‘Wee Gas Mask’ number in the Stars Organisation for Spastics show at the Alhambra in the early 1960s”, recalled comedian Larry Marshall. “He stopped the show. The audience would not stop applauding. I have worked with a lot of comics, but this was the only real clown, so far as I am concerned, that Scotland has produced”.
The Scottish Theatre Archive notes of Willis that “a genial, slightly bemused style of comedy characterised his ‘little’ man style of comedy” and that “his best-loved solo was ‘In my wee Gas Mask’ as ‘the nicest-looking warden in the A.R.P.’ He convulsed wartime audiences night after night”.
Willis is pictured, right, with Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Sir John Stewart, after the premiere of his film, Save A Little Sunshine, in 1938; and, above, with former Lord Provost Sir Patrick Dollan, handing him tea and cakes at the Press Fund Dance in the city’s Ca’Doro restaurant in 1949.
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