THE DONKEY THE WHIPPET AND THE GIANT LEEK

Join international concert stars Graeme Danby and Valerie Reid in a joyous musical celebration of the life and work of the North East songwriter Eric Boswell. Enjoy 20 of Boswell’s glorious hits and compositions including his worldwide number one Little Donkey along with ballads and comic songs from his popular North East Songbook.

The Donkey, The Whippet and the Giant Leek also features hits from the songwriter’s work with Matt Munro, Ricky Valance and his Catherine Cookson musical Katie Mulholland. Favourites such as The Whippet, The Ghost of St Mary’s, Maybe This is Love, The Summer of Last Year and The Great Longbenton Leek are also in the show - a labour of love for singers Graeme and Valerie who knew Boswell towards the end of his life.

The production - written, produced and devised by Tom Kelly and Graeme Thompson - charts Boswell’s life and career from his early days in Sunderland to his final years in Northumberland.

He enjoyed great commercial success in the 1950s and 60s writing for stars including Matt Munro, Ricky Valance and Gracie Fields.

Fields took Little Donkey to the top of the charts in 1959 and it was a hit for many other artists around the world as well as becoming a fixture in school nativity plays and carol concerts.

But Boswell always believed his best work was to be found in his songs about the changing face of the North East in the last quarter of the 20th Century.

Host or Publisher Seventeen Nineteen