Billy Crockett (usually billed as the 'Mad Musician') worked with Alex in Llandudno for several years and features in the YouTube video found earlier in the thread. He died in 2001, this is his Obituary from The Herald newspaper:
William Davidson (Billy) Crockett, musical entertainer; born November 8, 1920, died February 2, 2001
BILLY CROCKETT, sometimes billed in variety as Crotchet the Mad Musician, has died in hospital at Edinburgh, aged 80.
"He began as a lime boy, lighting the stage for music-hall performers, at the former Palladium Theatre in Edinburgh and went on to tour the world as a comedy musical artiste in cabaret, variety, ice shows, and television. He travelled with a collection of small novelty instruments, including what he claimed to be the world's smallest concertina, and a set of bagpipes which he first learned to play while in the Boys' Brigade at his church in Canonmills, Edinburgh.
His world travels ranged from touring with Robert Wilson and the White Heather Club to ice-shows, roadshows in West Germany, cabaret in London clubs, and summer seasons in holiday resorts from Llandudno to Gorleston-by-the-Sea near Great Yarmouth. He never made the showbiz heights but he kept busy in work he loved.
His grandfather was the Montrose-born ''Professor'' Leon Crockett, an animal trainer who went from circus in Scotland to wrestle in the US with a full-grown lion; until then only coloured performers had tackled that awesome turn. Always on the move, Billy Crockett bought a transit van to live and sleep in during moves between clubs. One midnight, tired after a club gig, he pulled in to the side of a city suburban street and went to sleep. Drawing aside the window curtains next morning, he was confronted by a queue of city business gents in suits, falling apart with broad smiles at the sight of this ''mad musician'' whose Bohemian life-style they must have secretly envied. He had parked at a major bus stop.
An animal trainer cousin Gene Detroy, who presented a top act with Marquis the Chimp on American television, once gave Billy the job of ferrying five of his cleverest chimpanzees across America from Los Angeles to Atlantic City by truck. For five nights and four days the ''Mad Musician'' from Edinburgh had only the chimps for company, and almost succeeded in speaking their ''language''. By the time he reached Atlantic City he said he felt ''like a chimp myself.''
Earlier in his career Crockett tried himself out as a wire-walking act, tackled knockabout comedy with the Elstree Three Stooges, and then moved into instrumental fun-making as an associate of The Musical Elliots. He had a fund of absurd but always true and amusing stories. Once booked for a ''Would You Believe It?'' show, a collection of freak turns, he was billed as ''The Man with the Xylophone Skull''. He was expected, with the aid of xylophone mallets, to extract tunes from his skull. Fortunately, he persuaded the producer to substitute tennis balls attached to knitting-needles to create the ''musical effects''. "