Dukes and Lee
English comedy double act
Dukes and Lee were a cabaret duo of Ronnie Duke who was an English musician, dancer and comedian and Ricki Lee (born Audrey Tomlinson) who was an English singer. They originated from Yorkshire and were popular on the cabaret circuit in the 1960s and 1970s.
Career
Ronnie Duke was born in Rotherham, West Riding of Yorkshire in late 1931. He trained as a dancer in his youth at the Parkgate school in Rotherham, and took part in dance competitions across the north of England as a teenager. After leaving school at 14, he became a professional entertainer with a touring act called Britains Dead End Kids which included the Patton Brothers.
After two years of national service he returned to show business but suffered a severe leg injury which prevented him from dancing for 13 months. During this time he added more comedy to his act and developed his cabaret show in the working men's clubs of the South Yorkshire area.
In 1953, he met Audrey Tomlinson, aka Ricky Lee, who was singing opera songs at the time, he persuaded her to move to more modern songs and they formed an act together and two years later they were married. As the act evolved his piano playing mother-in-law Violet Tomlinson also joined the stage show and became the butt of many of his jokes.
Their appearances on the ITV variety show The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, led to a headlining making spot for Dukes and Lee at the Royal Variety Performance on 10 November 1975 hosted by Bruce Forsyth at the London Palladium.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dukes and Lee” 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.