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Arthur Lucan - Where Is My Sunday Potato?

Arthur Lucan - Where Is My Sunday Potato? Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Babes In The Wood
Released: 1947

Where Is My Sunday Potato? Lyrics

Where Is My Sunday Potato?

As might be suspected from the title, this is a novelty song, but one that, curiously, fell foul of the censor.

To understand why, it must be remembered that during and for some time after the Second World War, there was food rationing in Britain. The song was composed by George Gee with words by Gee and Harris Weston; it was published by Arcadia Music.

The story behind it is related by Robert V. Kenny in the Summer 2013 issue of The Call Boy, the quarterly journal of the British Music Hall Society. The song was first performed publicly by Arthur Lucan in Babes In The Wood at the Bristol Hippodrome during the 1947-8 season.

Lucan was part of a comedy duo Lucan & McShane, although with the passage of time they don't seem so funny. "Where Is My Sunday Potato?" is said to be a topical comedy hit that was a "huge success" in over fifty pantomimes, and to be "the inevitable food-chorus song".

That may well be, but in December 1947 the BBC objected to it on political grounds. In those days there was no independent radio, so the BBC's word was law. It was though cleared for broadcast the following month. It remains to be seen if it could also have been considered a protest song as suggested. It may be too that a higher power didn't think much of it because Lucan's rendition is said to have come to an abrupt end on February 16, 1948 when the Bristol Hippodrome was devastated by a "mysterious backstage fire" which kept it closed for almost a year.