The drag artist Patrick Fyffe, who died on May 11th aged 60, was Dame Hilda Bracket to George Logan's Dr Evadne Hinge.
This extraordinary double act - two eccentric, elderly, music-loving, upper-class Englishwomen - achieved huge success, mainly in cabaret and on radio, but also on television, after a much-lauded début at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival.
Hinge was the racier and more impetuous of the two, with Dame Hilda acting as the voice of reason, providing the dry put-down and the acerbic aside. Patrick Fyffe and Logan, who were almost always interviewed in character, created plausible back stories for their alter egos: Dame Hilda was the daughter of Sir Osbert Bracket, who had left her the family estate at Stackton Tressel, Suffolk. The women supposedly became firm friends while appearing in the Rosa Charles Opera Company, and Hinge lived in the east wing of Dame Hilda's mansion.
Dressed to the nines in cocktail dresses and pearl necklaces, they presided over musical evenings, the songs of dear Mr (Ivor) Novello and Sir Noel (Coward) being particular favourites, although their main passion was reserved for Gilbert and Sullivan. The humour came from the between-songs banter, as they looked back on 30 years of musical collaboration.
Hinge and Bracket inhabited a quaint, Margaret Rutherfordish world of genteel between-the-wars stoicism; part of their appeal lay in the cleverness of the characterisations, but the evocation of an era that was essentially more spacious and innocent was equally irresistible. As they sipped sherry with the vicar, or reminisced over cucumber sandwiches on the lawn, these two tough old ladies represented something else, too - values involving literacy, decency and high academic standards. Their comic edge came from the hints of Hinge's wild youth, and such was the fidelity of the characterisations that some fans believed the pair really were elderly spinsters, rather than young men.
Patrick Fyffe was born on January 23rd, 1942, into a showbusiness family in Stafford. His mother and aunt were a singing act, the Terry Sisters, and his father performed in variety. He began his working life as a hairdresser, but caught the acting bug when he joined a local amateur dramatic society.
He devised a drag act, and was successfully touring it around the clubs when the baritone who partnered him failed to show up one night in Pimlico, and Logan was drafted in to help out as a pianist. They hit it off right away, and together invented the two peculiar old ladies, soon discovering that the act, originally written for a gay audience, had a more general appeal.
An Evening With Hinge And Bracket was the hit of the 1974 Edinburgh Festival, and they transferred to London's Royal Court Theatre and then to the Mayfair for a three-month season. Their next show, Sixty Glorious Years, was equally successful.
Hinge and Bracket were radio naturals, and for 10 years they broadcast regularly on Radio 4 with The Enchanting World Of Dr Evadne Hinge And Dame Hilda Bracket and other shows. In the early 1980s, they had their own television series, Dear Ladies.
Patrick Fyffe credited his father with a great deal of support in the creation of Dame Hilda. "He talked to me for hours about the 1930s in terrific detail," he said. "That's why Hilda is so authentic. She is not into tights or rinses. She wears lisle stockings on suspenders, and brushes a bit of henna through the grey, and always calls her albums gramophone records." Hinge and Bracket appeared in two royal variety performances and made many records. They also appeared in a televised Royal Opera House production of Die Fledermaus in 1983, conducted by Placido Domingo and starring Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde.
The act faltered a little over the years - the couple split up for a while after lurid tabloid stories about Logan's "sordid secret life of gay sex and drugs", but were reunited in the early 1990s. Patrick Fyffe also took three years off to care for his sick mother. Through the 1990s, they toured with their own show, appeared in pantomime and acted in the Peter Shaffer play Lettuce And Lovage.
Although best known as one part of the duo, Patrick Fyffe also made several solo appearances, once as Dame Hilda playing the venomous Katisha in The Mikado, and on another as Ruth in The Pirates Of Penzance. He had been due to perform in the pantomime Sleeping Beauty last Christmas, but had to pull out when he was diagnosed with cancer.
He was unmarried and is survived by his sister, actor Jane Fyffe.
Stephen Dixon Patrick Fyffe: born 1942; died, May 2002