Max Boyce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maxwell Boyce, MBE (born 7 September 1945 in Glynneath) is a Welsh comedian, singer and former coal miner, who came to national fame during the mid-1970s as a result of the phenomenal success of the Welsh rugby team of that period.
Max had competed, unsuccessfully, on the television talent show, Opportunity Knocks, shortly before releasing his first album, Live at Treorchy, in 1973. It was a recording of a live performance at Treorchy Rugby Club, with plenty of audience participation. The songs on the album, especially Hymns and Arias, soon became popular with rugby crowds, and for several years the entertainer appeared regularly on stage, television and radio, recording further hit albums such as We All Had Doctors' Papers.
The early pinnacle of Boyce's career coincided with the dominance of the Welsh Rubgy team in the Five Nations Championship during the 1970s, and his songs and poems were real-time reflections on the unfolding history.
Boyce's career suffered a downturn in the 1990s, but picked up in 1999 when he performed at the opening ceremony of the 1999 Rugby World Cup in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
A testament to Boyce's ability to identify with an audience anywhere came across strongly in part of his routine during the 1980s: wherever he was playing he would greet his audience with the following lines: "It's great to be here in X tonight. In fact, not many people know this, but I was actually born here in X." He would then start laughing and add the punchline "And last week I was born in Y". If you replace X and Y by any two towns outside Wales you can think of - say Glasgow and Cambridge - one knows instantly that he is being proposterous, yet one gets an understanding of his ability to connect with an audience anywhere. The audience would be in hysterics.
