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7 Benedict Rd, Ferndale, London SW9, UK
John Brown
"Barri" Chatt (1907 - November 10, 1971) was a dancer, comedian and drag
artiste. Terri Gardner spent most
of his working life as a female impersonator. His father had been the stage
manager of a drag revue in WWI and Terri started dragging up between wars. He
learned how to speak Polari (gay slang) from two drag queens who went busking
around London's East End with a barrel organ. After WWII, Terri teamed up with
another female impersonator, the irrepressible Barri Chatt. They formed a
double act called ‘Chatt and Gardener’ and became close friends, sharing a
professional relationship that lasted until Barri died in 1971.
Terri said that he did not know anyone who disliked Barri, who possessed
great charm. Barri had been born in 1907 in Bishop Auckland, County Durham,
and was known for his association with the Combined Services Entertainment
(CSE). In 1946 this civilian addition to the armed forces shows, backed and
funded by the Ministry of Defence, replaced the Entertainments National
Service Association (ENSA). The CSE’s function was to maintain the morale of
the many servicemen who were still stationed abroad. In Singapore the CSE
included a number of gay men who would later find fame in show business. These
included John Schlesinger, then
a ventriloquist, who went on to become an Oscar-winning film director, and the
comedy actor Kenneth Williams,
who remembered Barri Chatt for Keith Howes in a 1983 interview for Gay News.
In his diary in 1952, Williams described seeing Barri at Collins Music Hall in
a ‘5th rate variety show, which was appalling in every way. Saw Barri after in
dressing room. Shocking really. Pathos here, covered in dusty gags.’
A few years after he died, Barri was the inspiration for the flamboyant and
very out gay Captain Terri Dennis in Peter Nichols’s play with songs, Privates
on Parade. This was first staged at Stratford by the Royal Shakespeare Company
before receiving its London premiere at the Aldwych Theatre on 17 February
1977 with Denis Quilley as the Captain. The play was set around the exploits
of a mostly gay British military concert party stationed in Singapore and
Malaysia in the late 1940s during the Malayan emergency. In the 1982 film
version Quilley memorably recreated his stage role.
Barri Chatt was born in 1907 as John Brown Chatt. He died on November 10, 1971 in London, England.
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