Chris started his career in entertainment as a teenager by hosting a daily children’s show on local television.
He moved to Sydney, where he later built a solid reputation on stage and in television throughout the nation. He was given the opportunity to appear on the renowned Ed Sullivan Show in New York City in the late 1960s.
After that, he moved to England where he performed on Tommy Cooper’s A Blackpool Summer Season, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, and a Ken Dodd tour. He increased his following in Australia at the beginning of the 1970s by touring as the opening act for well-known performers like Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, and Johnny Mathis.
He received various honors over these travels. He moved his family back to Australia in the 1980s, where he carried on with his acting and writing careers.
Chris Kirby Ventriloquist
Wikipedia – Chris Kirby, the ventriloquist
Peter and Eileen Covington welcomed Chris into the world in Croydon, England, in 1942.
Chris’s family moved to Australia when he was seven years old, first staying in Adelaide before briefly moving to Woomera so that Chris could complete his education there. Because of their parents’ participation in local amateur productions everywhere they lived, Chris and his younger brother Andrew were exposed to theater throughout their early years. Their father was a musician, and Chris’s mother was an actress.
He just needed a few months of employment at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Adelaide to convince him of the merits of pursuing a career in show business.
Chris Covington would have a lower fan base if he went by his own name. He made the decision to change his name somewhere in the first half of the 1960s. He had just started playing Sydney nightclubs at the time. Chris spent his formative years developing a passionate interest in ventriloquism. Chris’s father, who preferred ventriloquism to music and seemed to be content with it, was the reason Chris was able to have his first doll.
Youngsters who experiment with ventriloquism may have opportunities to perform on live television, which is a constantly changing medium. On a global scale, it is credited with marking the start of Chris Kirby’s professional career. He built a lasting fan base in Australia while hosting a children’s television show in Adelaide.
Ventriloquist Chris Kirby’s obituary
Early onset dementia was the cause of Chris Kirby’s death.
He moved to Sydney at the age of 23, got married, and kept on playing live while working in television. When he was the first Australian to be asked to perform live on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York, his career as a performer took off.
His performances and tours in the UK and Europe, as well as Sunday Night at the London Palladium, a summer season in Blackpool with Tommy Cooper, and traveling with Ken Dodd, all aided in developing his international profile.
In the 1970s, he relocated to the United States and spent twelve years living there. He nevertheless kept making frequent travels back to Australia to do television performances for his supporters. Chris shared the stage with performers like Charles Aznavour, Johnny Mathis, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, and Tony Bennett.
Kirby, like many other musicians of his time, benefited from the thriving live entertainment scene in NSW bars at the time. He traveled back to Australia in the 1980s to take part in the Queen’s Royal Variety Concert at the Opera House. After the death of Peter, his youngest son, in 1987, he moved to a farm in Bucketty, a town north of Sydney. Following this move, he launched his writing and acting careers with the movies “The Total Eclipse of Toby Moon” and “Lips.”
Following his death, his former spouses Judy, Debbie, and Christine, as well as his children Michael, Shahn, and Peter, are continuing his legacy.
On March 22, 2016, Chris passed away. His funeral was held at St James Anglican Church in Turramurra, New South Wales. The service took place on March 31, 2016, a Thursday.
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