Les Andrews

Les Andrews — the man behind Auckland Harbour Bridge ditty 'Click Go the Toll Gates' — loved performing. Growing up in Timaru, neighbours generally knew when he was having a bath, because they could hear him singing.

While soldiering in the African desert during World War II, Andrews began arranging and singing in variety concerts, to relieve the boredom of latrine duty and peeling spuds. Later he was part of a brigade whose job was to find temporary headquarters as troops advanced through Italy. After capturing a country mansion and vermouth factory, Andrews was downstairs accompanying a piano-playing fellow soldier (the safest place to hide from the bombs) when a figure appeared, and asked him why he wasn’t in the Kiwi Concert Party. Andrews famously secured his own transfer, after replying “I'm buggered if I know”. It was only once Andrews saw the uniform that he realised he'd been talking to Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg.

Post war, Andrews got a bursary to study singing at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, and his prizewinning tenor voice helped him win a place at the Royal College of Music in London. Andrews had begun singing on the radio in Sydney, and now the radio work stepped up. The BBC also invited him to join the house band on TV shows This is Showbusiness and Music for You; the later band performed at the 1954 Royal Command Performance.

After 12 years overseas, Andrews returned to New Zealand. In the late 50s he began announcing for Auckland's Radio 1YA; Andrews would continue to work for the state broadcaster for over a decade, hosting classical concerts that were broadcast across the nation, and doing 12 years on a weekend children's show for 1ZB.

One night in June 1959 he was announcing for 1YA at the state broadcaster's studio in Shortland Street, when a producer told him to put on an LP, so that he could go and make some announcements during a test transmission for television. He did further on-camera tests, and when television officially launched the following year, sang on one of New Zealand's first variety programmes.

Andrews submitted the idea for show Music in 3D, which featured a band he was playing in at the time, and sang on musical resquest show Play it By Ear. He also compèred short lived quiz show Tinker Tailor. More successful was the true or false themed Personality Squares, which ran for four years, two of them nationwide. Asked to come up with a memorable catchphrase, Andrews began mentioning "my dear old Aunt Freda" in many of his one-liners. The popular catchphrase soon became a song.

Long active in arts circles, Andrews was a founding member of the Variety Artists Club of NZ, and spent more than six years campaigning to save Auckland’s harbourside Customhouse building, and turn it into an arts centre. He succeeded in the former, but failed in the later.

With his second wife Sonia, he established a cultural foundation which sponsored many artists. They also organised 37 concerts for charity, most of them sell-outs. Both were awarded Queens Service Medals. Les Andrews passed away on 28 February 2014. He published autobiography What a Laugh in 1999.

Sources include

Les Andrews, What a Laugh - The Autobiography of Les Andrews QSM (Auckland: Les Andrews, 1999)

‘Les Andrews’ (Audio Interview) Radio New Zealand website. Loaded January 2008. Accessed 10 March 2014
‘Les Andrews’ Passes Away’ Variety Artists Club of New Zealand website. Loaded March 2014. Accessed 10 March 2014
Steve Deane, ’TV pioneer an unflappable star’ - The New Zealand Herald, 10 March 2014. Accessed 10 March 2014
Robert Goodman, ‘The Renovation of The Customhouse’ Art New Zealand website. Accessed 10 March 2014