OTD in early British television: 8 August 1939
John Wyver writes: Intimate Interlude on the evening of Tuesday 8 August 1939 offered a bill featuring Mexican magician Kantu and Polish dancers Halima and Konarski, along with the mime artist Sherkot. As a vaudevillian whose act was almost entirely visual, although heavily reliant on a synchronous score featuing drum beats and symbol crashes, Sherkot was one of television’s artists who not had the chance to shine previously on radio
A bemused Keaton-esque clown, Sherkot performed the actions by sportsmen throwing, twirling and catching imaginary balls and the like. He appeared at least four times in live broadcasts from Alexandra Palace, but he was also featured by producer Dallas Bower in the BBC Television Demonstration Film, shot of 35mm film, which was shown every weekday morning from the summer of 1937 through to wartime shutdown.
We have no record of the live broadcasts, of course, just as we have no moving image archive of those of the hundreds of other acts who appeared in similar programmes. But thanks to Bower’s film, which was made so that in the days before the test card television showrooms could demonstrate sets, we can see Sherkot in action, shot full-length and in medium close-up against a plain background. These screengrabs give a sense of how he must have appeared on receivers across London in this final month before war was declared.
[OTD post no. 234; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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