Press to hear 'The Post Horn' featuring Tony
Antonio Traversi Professor Nuts 'The Grand Old Man of British Comedy'. Everyone who knew him was captivated by the charisma of this soft spoken Welshman. He was born into music. His father was the local bandmaster and although Tony was very good at a lot of things, music was his passion.He had his own very popular orchestra known as The Tony Traversi Orchestra in Llandudno until he joined the famous Sid Millward & His Nitwits The Nitwits were a big name in the forties and fifties and Tony appeared with them in Las Vegas, headlining at The Stardust for over ten years, alternating between there and the Lido in Paris. With Nuts & Bolts he became the daddy of the act and even at the age of eighty seven he was still blowing up a storm, doing three shows a day in New York with Barnums Kaleidascape, as well as three forty minute sets with me in the pre show ! He was the Mr Fixit in the show and could fix anything with a wire coathanger and an elastic band! For many years Tony had a room in one of Rons houses and that, along with every hotel room he stayed in for more than day became a workshop filled with bits of instruments, props, tools, gases, burners, you name it!!! He ate very frugally but very healthily and was always advocating the use of Cod Liver Oil to anyone who would listen. Maybe we should have listened more, it seemed to work for him. When we were in Circus runs Tony was everyones friend because he was always there to fix an instrument or a prop and sometimes a broken heart from the younger members of the cast. He fancied himself as a bit of a fortune teller but it was really just an abundance of intuition and common sense. That and the fact that he was an old pro who loved a spellbound audience. In the sixties whilst appearing in Vegas Tony bought a plot of land way out in the desert. Here he would pitch his old tent and go prospecting for gold. For years he kept a scrappy old map in his jacket pocket with the details of where he had buried his gold. One day he left the jacket in a club and although Ron tried hard to retreive it for him, it was gone. We never did find his gold again. Every year Ron and I would take Tony to Las Vegas so that he could pay his land taxes and visit his plot in the desert. Typically Tony marked the boundaries of the plot with an old fridge in one corner and a rusty old washer in another and so on. We had great fun every year out in the desert searching for the old household goods! One year when we went there we found that Las Vegas the fastest growing city in the world had now reached his land and beautiful houses were being built all around. Tony had some rarely seen 'family' in Australia who persuaded him to sell it at an enormous profit just before he died. I asked him if he really wanted to see it go and he told me in a very melancholy way that he felt, 'obliged' to help them out. He never saw any benefit from the sale and although he was a frugal man to the point of being miserly who always worked, he died basically penniless. His 'family' saw to that. Luckily for him he had Ron Regan as a friend and he never wanted for anything. Ron looked after him to the very end. Tony Traversi lived his long life doing what he wanted to do. He was weird and wonderful, just like his character Professor Nuts. Close Tabs
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