A Girl to Watch Music By - Ray Columbus and Max Cryer

Television (Excerpts) – 1969

Although it was made to showcase female singers, late 60s TV series A Girl to Watch Music By is possibly best remembered for the moment host Ray Columbus became a puppet. In this episode Columbus played ventriloquist's dummy, sitting on Max Cryer's knee. Wrote Cryer later in his book Town Cryer: "it looked very funny and we knew it and set to work on the choreography immediately". The song is called 'Where Would You Be Without Me'. The ventriloquist idea was the brainchild of broadcaster and former dancer Cherry Raymond. Cryer describes his comic duet with Colombus here.

Ray has an agile face, very mobile eyes, and rather unusual, chiselled features — a legacy from his Greek ancestry. He is also, as everyone knows, very short, and sitting on my knee leaves his feet completely clear of the ground. It looked very funny and we knew it...
– Max Cryer, in his 1978 book Town Cryer