Of recent years complaints have been raised annually against the holding of the traditional basket fair at Bubbling Well, and today a correspondent writes in suggesting either that it should be abandoned for this year, or transferred to Avenue Road, or that the portion of Bubbling Well Road involved be closed to motor traffic, This journal does not endorse the suggestion that the Fair should be suspended for the year. While it is true that it has been swelled in recent years by people who are not makers of baskets, and has at times become unwieldy, it has to be borne in mind that those craftsmen who do follow the profession are of the type that have had a particularly thin time during these last few months. If indeed they have been able to get their materials and have fashioned their goods in anticipation of the Fair, this is no time to thwart them. They most probably are in bad need of the money which they hope so to obtain. The farmer class amongst whom the basket-makers are chiefly to be found must now be without much funds to provide for the next planting and it would verge on cruelty if this means of obtaining some were to be denied them. It is feared that some difficulty might be experienced if an endeavour were made to move the fair to Avenue Road, for it is closely associated with the Bubbling Well Temple. -That, however, should not prove an insuperable objection. so long as it was so arranged that the Fair itself was still apparently connected with the temple. Obviously the best solution in the interests of the basket-sellers and others would be to continue the Fair on the site it has always occupied, and, if this were decided upon, it should prove no great hardship for the drivers and owners of motor vehicles if for a few days they. were diverted to other thoroughfares in the interests of the stall holders and the purchasers frequenting them, Tivoli Turns Back Remembrance will be awakened in the minds of readers who knew their London before the Great War by the news that the Tivoli in the Strand is going to be changed into a variety theatre before long. The present building, is not the Tivoli in which Marie Lloyd sang about where she sat, or Little Rich indulged in ditties about his being the gas collector, or Chirgwin presented his act as the One-eyed Kaffir. That went the way of old buildings some time ago, and on its site the present fine cinema was erected. The existing edifice does not have a stage suitable for a variety show, but it is stated that there is space available upon which one can be built. The building which was erected in 1922 at a cost of £370,000 was one of the earliest of London's super-cinemas and is controlled by the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation of which the General Theatre Corporation, controlling the London Palladium and the Holborn Empire is a subsidiary. Now that the Palladium is given over to large-scale shows of the revue type, the Holborn Empire is the only theatre in central London offering a music-hall programme with changes of programmes each week. It has been' felt that there is ample scope for another large variety theatre in the west end of London; hence the new development. Mr. George Black, it is reported, will take over the administration of the Tivoli in its new guise and it will be run somewhat on the same lines as the Holborn Empire. But it will never be quite the same to those who knew the old Tivoli. There will not be the same names blazoned on the front of the house as there used to be. The programmes will be different, filled by names not so well known as those of the people who made variety history at the beginning of the present cèntury. But there will probably be modern successors to the inimitable Dan Leno, or Herbert Campbell. A new Albert Chevalier will hand down the traditional cockney, while amongst the lovers of variety there will be gladness that the Strand is recovering its soul again,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.