LesAndrews
- Presenter
- Performer
Les Andrews, QSM, began singing with the Kiwi Concert Party during World War II. After the war he studied at London’s Royal College of Music, and sang on BBC television. Back home he was one of the first faces on air when local television began transmitting, and later spent four years hosting quiz show Personality Squares. With his wife Sonia, he was a busy patron of the arts. Andrews died on 28 February 2014.
Screenography
Biography
Les Andrews — the man behind Auckland Harbour Bridge ditty 'Click Go the Toll Gates' — loved performing. Growing up in Timaru, neighbours generally knew when he was having a bath, because they could hear him singing.
While soldiering in the African desert during World War II, Andrews began arranging and singing in variety concerts, to relieve the boredom of latrine duty and peeling spuds. Later he was part of a brigade whose job was to find temporary headquarters as troops advanced through Italy. After capturing a country mansion and vermouth factory, Andrews was downstairs accompanying a piano-playing fellow soldier (the safest place to hide from the bombs) when a figure appeared, and asked him why he wasn’t in the Kiwi Concert Party. Andrews famously secured his own transfer, after replying “I'm buggered if I know”. It was only once Andrews saw the uniform that he realised he'd been talking to Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg.
Awards
1992 Queen’s Service Medal
For Services to Entertainment
1991 Entertainer of the Year Awards
Merit Award (shared with Sonia Andrews)
“Wherever I went people would say 'How's your dear old aunt?' So I guess the catchphrase caught on.”