George Logan, one half of the Hinge and Bracket comedy and musical duo, has died at the age of 78.
The British entertainer’s death was confirmed by his family on Sunday (21 May). A cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
Logan played Dr Evadne Hinge in the popular act, alongside Patrick Fyffe’s Dame Hilda Bracket.
Performing in drag, the pair shot to fame in the Seventies and Eighties with TV shows on the BBC and a radio programmes on BBC Radio 2. They first launched their drag routine at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival.
Logan and Fyffe also performed at two Royal Variety shows, and on The Ronnie Corbett Show and The Good Old Days.
They were seen as trailblazers in bringing drag into the mainstream.
Writing about how he grew up gay in Scotland in the 1960s in his autobiography A Boy Called Audrey, published in 2015, Logan said: “A gay pub near where I lived put on drag acts. One day, the pianist didn’t turn up. The landlady said, ‘You play the piano don’t you? I’ll give you two quid to play for the act?’ So I did, and became the regular pianist.
“As I was watching all these acts I realised they were getting eight quid for doing gags I’d heard a hundred times. I thought, ‘I could do that and play the piano at the same time and keep the whole 10 quid to myself.’”
Logan and Fyffe’s characters were elderly women who lived together in a fictional Suffolk village, who waxed lyrical about their careers in classical music and sang songs.
In a 2008 interview with Bent magazine, Logan was asked if he and Fyffe felt like pioneers with their act.
“I don’t think we did,” he said. “We thought we’d come up with a fairly original idea at the time… and were just out to have a bit of fun. I think we were sort of basing our characters on the likes of Joyce Grenfell, Margaret Rutherford… a sort of typical, if strange, rural, old English village life.”
Benidorm actor Bobby Crush posted a tribute to Logan on social media.
“RIP George Logan, also known as ‘Dr Evadne Hinge’ of ‘Hinge and Bracket’.
“We appeared in panto together in this glorious production of at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in 1989… I’m saddened by news of his passing today.”
Fyffe died of cancer at the age of 60 in 2002.
After Fyffe’s death, Logan stepped back from the stage and ran a bed and breakfast in France with his partner Louie.
