The Sunday Class
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Taught/practised on: 2014 March 2 nd
J. B. MILNE (R8x32) Hugh Foss  Angus Fitchett Album 1- 8 1M+2L set advancing & turn RH, 1L+2M set advancing & turn RH 9-16 1s set to each other, turn 2H, cast to 2 nd  place & Petronella turn to Lady between 2s & Man between 3s 17-24 1s set & ¾ turn RH whilst 2s+3s change places RH on sides & set, repeat but with 2s & 3s crossing RH & setting 25-32 1s set, change places RH & cast round corner to 2 nd  place own sides  whilst 2s+3s change places RH on sides, set, cross RH & all set
John (McLeod) Bannerman Milne was one of three sons of Mr Charles Milne, a Dundee coal merchant, born in 1902. When he was nine he bought his first violin and by the age of 16 he was working in Dura Works from 5.30 am to 6 pm, teaching the violin from 6 pm to 8 pm, then playing in a dance hall until midnight. He was ‘a mill-boy with ambition’, and although an apprentice engineer, his future lay in the entertainment world. His first entertainment job was at the Variety Theatre (later called the Palladium, and then the Rex, until it was demolished). He was a 19s a week “musical director and cleaner”. His savings were invested in a motor hire business, which he sold for £360 to found his cinema empire, buying the Palladium, Dundee, in 1928, where he had first started playing the violin and washing floors! He had the vision to install talkies and, within 10 years, he had the largest cinema chain under private ownership in Scotland. He recognised the potential of bingo and introduced it. Some of his halls remained cinemas, some became bingo halls, some combined the two. Mr Milne’s interests ranged from Stornoway to Galashiels and when he died, on 24 September 1968 aged 66, he controlled 34 cinemas and bingo halls. It has been said that in this dance the first eight bars represent the auditions for leading man & leading lady who then star on the silver screen as marked out by the second and third couples. Angus Fitchett dedicated this tune to “the man who gave him his start in his show business career”. After working with Jimmy Shand's Band, Angus Fitchett formed his own highly successful Scottish Dance Band - but what other band leader drove his band all over Scotland and England in an old Dodge Red Cross ambulance which had cost him £50 and was run on half petrol and half paraffin? "Sometimes we couldn't see for the smoke!" There was the famous occasion when, at North Queensferry, the boat had moved off but when it was noticed that an ambulance had been left behind, the ferry turned back and Angus cheerfully drove his "band bus" on board whilst inside the members of the band were sitting playing dominoes! THE recording to use is on “Ghillies on the Golden Gate” CD by Fiddlesticks & Ivory.