Ray Alan
Ventriloquist, television personality (1930–2010)
Raymond Alan Whyberd (18 September 1930 – 24 May 2010) was an English ventriloquist, television entertainer, and writer. His career spanned over half a century, though he was most popular from the 1950s until the 1980s. He was associated primarily with the dummies Lord Charles and Ali Kat and later with the puppets Tich and Quackers.
Early life
Born Raymond Alan Whyberd in Greenwich, London, Alan was educated at Morden Terrace School, Lewisham. He was introduced to the world of entertainment at a young age, entering a talent contest at the age of five at his local Gaumont cinema.
Entertainment career
Aged 13, Alan became a call-boy at the Hippodrome Theatre in Lewisham, where he started to do magic sets on stage between acts. He then started to entertain private functions, introducing ventriloquism into his act, along with playing the ukulele. He soon left school to begin performing full-time.
Alan toured in cabaret all over the world and performed once with Laurel and Hardy in 1954. Laurel had provided inspiration for the look of Alan's most famous creation, Lord Charles, who first appeared at a charity show in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, London.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7297129. VIAF identifies the subject as 14269794. The Library of Congress control number is nb99155511. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2010 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ray Alan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.