It's A Bit Of A Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About A Bit

by

Marie LLoyd

Album: Music Hall Classics      Released: 1920

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Marie Lloyd began her career as a teenager singing temperance songs in church halls with her sisters, so it is doubly ironic that her death was brought about by the demon drink and that this light-hearted number depicting a mature woman who had ignored such warnings was the last song she performed. The queen of the music halls was married three times, and after the failure of her third marriage she hit the bottle.
Like many of Marie's songs it is a double entendre, not of a sexual nature - as was her wont - but a pun on Oliver Cromwell and a public house named after him.

The words were written by Harry Bedford and Terry Sullivan; Bedford also composed the music, and it was published by B. Feldman of London, copyright 1920.

Marie performed the song both dressed for and acting the part, staggering about on stage. On October 4, 1922 during a performance at the Empire Hall, Edmonton, when she fell down the audience thought it was part of her act, but she didn't get up, and died three days later, aged just fifty-two.
Although she never recorded this number herself, the Brian Rust discography British Music Hall On Record lists recordings by her daughter, Marie Lloyd Junior, as "One Of The Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About A Bit" on the Broadcast label, at London, early February 1930, and as "I'm A Bit Of A Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About A Bit" at the Metropolitan Theatre, London, on Fontana, late 1960. (thanks, Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3)

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