THE late Stanley Holloway has been commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque at the East London address he grew up in. The plaque has been installed on the front of the house at 25 Albany Road in Manor Park, where the cockney variety performer and film star was born in 1890

THE late Stanley Holloway has been commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque at the East London address he grew up in.

The plaque has been installed on the front of the house at 25 Albany Road in Manor Park, where the cockney variety performer and film star was born in 1890.

It was his visits to the Stratford Empire which inspired his interest in comedy and revue. His first singing engagement was in Clacton-on-Sea, but his breakthrough came with the show The Co-Optimists in the 1920s.

He added his famous monologue to his routine in 1927, Sam, Sam Pick up Tha Musket, delivered in a flat Lancashire accent, followed four years later by the stories of Albert Ramsbottom.

Holloway made it to film stardom during the 1940s and 50s in such British cinema classics as Brief Encounter (1945), The Way to the Stars (1945), Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1952).

But Holloway is perhaps best remembered as 'Alfred Doolittle' in My Fair Lady on Broadway in 1955-57, the West End 1958-59 and in the 1964 film version with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza.