Watch My Lips - Keith Harris and Orville!

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Those early years of training meant that by the time Keith first used his own dummy all the technical aspects of being a ventriloquist came instinctively. “Dad retired when I was eleven so I decided to continue as a solo act. By fourteen, I'd turned professional.” It was only very recently that Keith discovered he had a great grand uncle called John Oliver Harris, born in 1884, who he has an uncanny resemblance to. Even more surprising is that John Harris was also a ventriloquist, and the dummy he used looked identical to Keith's first dummy, Charlie Chat.

“It was quite a shock seeing the photo of John. To think that ventriloquism is so deeply embedded in my family history and genes is incredible. It is not a talent that anyone can learn. I could try and teach it to people, but there's a lot more to it than just speaking without moving your lips. You have to be two individual people and sometimes if I work with Cuddles for instance - I've been doing it for so long – sometimes he'll say something that I wasn't even thinking of saying and it is quite weird because your mind is working so fast – a bit of schizophrenia I suppose. One of the most important things about ventriloquism is the timing. You have to think what the dummy is going to say to set up the gag. The characters are so real to people that when I walk out there the last thing they say is what a clever ventriloquist.

“One of the oldest ventriloquists – Arthur Prince and Jim, topped the Palladium as one of the highest paid acts. He was known for doing a performance with a glass. He'd have a flunky with him and say: I will now drink a pint of beer and the flunky would come on stage with a tray, go up to the audience and someone would check it wasn't a trick glass and then he'd say: ‘And now Jim will sing' , so Jim (his dummy) would drink the pint of beer and sing It's a long way to Tipperary but the flunky would have the tray in front of him and it would be him singing. Then Arthur would say: ‘I'll throw my voice to the back of the theatre – hello!' And the flunky would run right round the back and call ‘hello' and Arthur would call again and you'd hear the other voice and everyone would think it was marvellous. So you see you can't throw your voice; it's all illusions. I used to do a great one with the telephone, I'd go into Woolworth's and use one of the kid's phones: I'd ask the shop assistant, ‘Can I use your phone please?' [Keith makes the sound of a phone buzzing] ‘Hello?' [Keith makes a squeaky voice that sounds like the person on the other end of the phone.] After I'd finished the conversation, I'd put the phone down and watch the assistant pick the receiver up to see who was there.”

Ventriloquism comes from the Latin word ventriloquus meaning: speaking from the belly, but according to Keith, you don't speak from your stomach at all, “You speak from up here,” he says, touching his neck, “if you get a sore throat you've had it. Thank god we've got microphones these days as well. Once in Ireland , I lost my voice completely and I didn't know until I actually picked Orville up. I was alright with the monkey but with Orville I use the back of my throat because it's a fairly high pitched voice. Cuddles was talking and I said, where's Orville? I brought him on and nothing was coming out at all. It was such a funny experience. I very quickly did a ‘Sooty' where Orville was answering by whispering in my ear. Luckily the audience didn't twig. They were just so in awe of seeing him. The only difficult part was the singing! I went to see a specialist about my throat and he said if I tried to force it I'd ruin my voice so I had to cancel the whole week – lots of heartbroken children but there you are. They said can't you just bring him out, but it's not the same.”

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