History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

For many years Daisy Witherick was the landlady of The Volunteer pub at the end of Baker Street, near the present Sherlock Holmes museum. The pub became famous for her cockatoo parrot which held court in the lounge and swore loudly at all the customers.  The actor-producer duo of Robert Atkins and Sydney Carroll, who founded the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 1932, held their auditions at the pub. They liked to see how the actors delivered their lines when bombarded with constant abuse from the parrot. In August 1933 the famous parrot was taken to the HMV Columbia Studio (now the Abbey Road Studios), to make a record. The microphone was carefully positioned close to the parrot. For a moment Cockie surveyed the studio in general and the mike in particular, and then apparently having arrived at a conclusion about the recording process, poured out a string of ripe language. It is not a surprise that Columbia decided not to issue the record. At the end of October 1938, Cockie went f...