ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

THE clatter of clog toes have been sent dancing across this page by Nora Batiste who now lives over on the Wirral but likes to tune into this column.

Picking up on an earlier clog-dancing theme, Nora tells us: "My grandfather was Richard Sharrocks (my mother's dad) who taught clog dancing and was very well known locally.

"He taught my auntie Florrie - but refused to teach Dorothy, my mum who still lives in St Helen, saying that she was too thin for dancing." (Which sounds an odd reason. I'd have imagined that a few sessions of toe-tapping might have helped build her up.)

Nora, from New Ferry, Bebington, is related to Will Sharrocks of Clock Face, who introduced the theme and she says: "The Dancing Lannons of whom he spoke were performing at the St Helens Theatre Royal when their daughter, Dorina, and her husband were practising their trapeze act."

They were working without a safety net when the husband fell and later died of his injuries in Providence Hospital.

Then there was Daisy Lannon (sister of Nora's grandad) who had a vaudeville act - and Daisy's brother, Bob, who was the first man to swim the icy waters of America's Silver Lake.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.