Jonathon X. Coudrille writes:
“My dear late father was famous, not as the painter he had trained to be but, thanks to World War Two and something called Television, a Ventriloquist and, maker of animated films.
His Characters (he disliked calling them Dummies) Hank (the Cowboy) Silver King (Hank’s goofy horse) and Mexican Pete (the Bad Bandit) were staples of tea-time television in the Britain of the nineteen forties and fifties, and letters from his legions of fans filled mail-bags and, had to be answered on paper. My mother managed to do this along with her demanding maternal, domestic and horticultural tasks; we bought stamps by the thousand.
A dispute with the British broadcaster propelled Hank into independent production, and at the age of fourteen while still undergoing rigorous art education I stepped with the confidence of a teenager into the gigantic shoes of Steve Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Race_(musician) as my father’s musical director.
My thanks to Ralph Montagu, Richard Latto and Sir Christopher Frayling for the following video and for rescuing so beautifully the Hank legacy from oblivion. My thanks also to Lee Clark for the brilliant networking that made the revival possible”
Coudrille, Cadgwith, Cornwall.