Harry Tate was an English comedian who performed in music halls, variety shows and films. Originally called Ronald Macdonald Hutchison, he took his stage name from the company he worked for, Henry Tate & Sons, where he was fired for writing song lyrics on any scrap of paper.
Harry Tate Poster promoting his comedy sketch, with his with his chauffeur and idiotic son
Tate had great success with his comedy sketch, “Motoring”. In it, he played a flustered, over-enthusiastic motorist, dressed in loud checks, a gaudy waistcoat, and a large false moustache, who tries (and hilariously fails) to get his early vintage car started, along with his chauffeur and idiotic son (played by Thomas Tweedy), so they can drive to college.
The routine relied on his desperate attempts to remain “master of the situation” while battling cursed early-20th-century technology, mechanical failures, and his son’s inane comments from the back seat, such as “It’s amazing, Pa-pa” and “Goodbye-eee”.
The act was a massive sensation on the British music hall stage, was adapted into short films (including a 1936 film version), and earned Tate a performance before King George V and Queen Mary, cementing his nickname as “The King’s Jester”.
The catchphrase “Goodbye-eee” inspired the WWI song “Good-bye-ee!”. Robert Weston and Bert Lee wrote and composed the song, and music hall stars Florrie Forde, Daisy Wood, and Charles Whittle performed it, becoming a hit in 1917.
The idea came when Weston and Lee saw a group of factory girls calling out goodbye to soldiers marching to Victoria Station, saying the word in the exaggerated way Harry Tate had popularised.
The song then lent its name to “Goodbyeee”, the final episode of the sitcom Blackadder Goes Forth.
Tate was a keen motorist, and fittingly for his bingo lingo monica, he had one of the earliest known celebrity personalised number plates: T 8.
Shortly before he died, while in hospital after having a stroke, Tate joked with reporters that he had been injured in an air raid, and this is often given as his cause of death.
Harry Tate has been Cockney rhyming slang for late, plate, R.E.8. (a WWI reconnaissance plane) and State1. The earliest recorded use in Bingo: 1st August 19362
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