Cissie and Ada
Cissie and Ada, in full Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham, are a comedy drag act featuring two fictional housewives from Northern England. The act was created and played by the comedian Les Dawson and the comic actor Roy Barraclough on television in the 1970s and 1980s.
Act
Cissie and Ada sketches featured the two women gossiping. Their comedic mannerisms included stoical pursing of lips and constantly heaved bosoms. Cissie and Ada became a hit with the British public.History
Dawson explained that this mouthing of words was a habit of Lancashire millworkers trying to communicate by lip reading over the tremendous racket of the looms. Millworkers then resorted to this practice in daily life to discuss delicate subjects.The pair created the characters in rehearsals, in homage to the music hall star Norman Evans, who appeared in drag a 1950 film, Over the Garden Wall, playing the lead character, Fanny Lawton. They were persuaded by the producer to use them in sketches in the show Sez Les. Although Dawson needed persuading to don drag, and Barraclough was nervous that he would not be able to match Dawson's talent for ad-libbing, the characters became permanent features of the show.
Barraclough recalled that his characterisation of Cissie "was drawn from an aunt of mine who always thought she was slightly above the rest of the family, Auntie Annie. You know, she would always have a sherry. And the rest of the family always took the piss out of her." Key to Dawson's portrayal of Ada was a handbag "tightly clutched to the waist in a manner suggesting infinite disapproval".
The characters were revisited by the pair in a series of commercials for fresh cream cakes in 1984. They were portrayed in animation in television advertisements for the Post Office in the early 1990s.