This 16mm home movie was unknown for more than 60 years until it was donated to the British Film Institute by Petra Laidlaw and Gudrun Fickling, whose grandmother, Astrid Stirling Brown, appears in it alongside Laurel & Hardy. It was screened at BFI Southbank in 2013 on a programme with the rediscovered extended cut of their final feature, Atoll K (Léo Joannon, 1951), and subsequently included as one of the bonus features in the BFI’s Blu-ray/DVD release. It dates from the team’s 1947 tour, which, although they had made personal appearances around Britain in a 1932 visit, marked Stan Laurel’s true return to the music-hall world of his youth. For Oliver Hardy it was his first proper introduction to that milieu, which more recently formed the backdrop of John S. Baird’s Laurel and Hardy biopic  Stan & Ollie (2018). Accompanied by their wives Ida and Lucille, the two comedians are seen wearing tam-o’-shanters, and while on this occasion clad in their normal suits, they would often wear kilts when appearing in Scottish theatres, as for their engagement at the Glasgow Empire that same month. Although the footage is silent, one can recognize a gag they would often use in personal appearances: Stan Laurel would periodically interrupt Oliver Hardy’s speech to ask, “Can I say something?” Eventually Hardy would allow him to do so, only to be told, “You’re standing on my foot!”

Glenn Mitchell