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GAA All Star

Josef Locke, Radio and Stage Star, arriving at Collinstown Airport for Radio Review
24/03/1955

Josef Locke was the stage name of Joseph McLaughlin (23 March 1917 – 15 October 1999), a tenor singer who was successful in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.
Born in Derry, he was the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, and one of nine children. He started singing in local churches in the Bogside at the age of seven, and as a teenager added two years to his age to enlist in the Irish Guards, later serving abroad with the Palestine Police Force, before returning in the late 1930s to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Known as The Singing Bobby, he became a local celebrity before starting to work the UK variety circuit, where he played 19 seasons in the northern English seaside resort of Blackpool. The renowned Irish tenor John McCormack (1884–1945) advised him that his voice was better suited to a lighter repertoire than the operatic one he had in mind, and urged him to find an agent—thus he found the noted impresario Jack Hylton (1892–1965) who booked him, but couldn't fit his full name on the bill, thus Joseph McLaughlin became Josef Locke.
He made his first radio broadcast in 1949, and subsequently appeared on TV programmes such as Rooftop Rendezvous, Top of the Town, All-star Bill and The Frankie Howerd Show. He was signed to the Columbia label in 1947, and his first releases were the two Italian songs "Santa Lucia" and "Come Back to Sorrento".

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Josef Locke, Radio and Stage Star, arriving at Collinstown Airport for Radio Review<br /> 24/03/1955<br /> <br /> Josef Locke was the stage name of Joseph McLaughlin (23 March 1917 – 15 October 1999), a tenor singer who was successful in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.<br /> Born in Derry, he was the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, and one of nine children. He started singing in local churches in the Bogside at the age of seven, and as a teenager added two years to his age to enlist in the Irish Guards, later serving abroad with the Palestine Police Force, before returning in the late 1930s to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Known as The Singing Bobby, he became a local celebrity before starting to work the UK variety circuit, where he played 19 seasons in the northern English seaside resort of Blackpool. The renowned Irish tenor John McCormack (1884–1945) advised him that his voice was better suited to a lighter repertoire than the operatic one he had in mind, and urged him to find an agent—thus he found the noted impresario Jack Hylton (1892–1965) who booked him, but couldn't fit his full name on the bill, thus Joseph McLaughlin became Josef Locke.<br /> He made his first radio broadcast in 1949, and subsequently appeared on TV programmes such as Rooftop Rendezvous, Top of the Town, All-star Bill and The Frankie Howerd Show. He was signed to the Columbia label in 1947, and his first releases were the two Italian songs "Santa Lucia" and "Come Back to Sorrento".