Johnny Sorrow was born in dingy circumstances in a run down two up and one down terrace house teetering on the edge of the last bombsite in Wolverhampton. The site had once been the home to the ‘Albert and Evangaline Sorrow Home for Retired Music Hall Artists and Artistes’. Sadly, during one of Hitler’s last bombing raids, the Home was destroyed and every last one of the residents was disintegrated. All that was left was the little house on the corner that had been the home of the late Albert and Evangaline Sorrow.

On his return from WW2, Johnny’s father, the renowned contortionist Carlton ‘One man in a hundred’ Sorrow,[1] moved into the house and kept the bombsite as it was for many years to “remind everyone what those dirty Nazi German bastards did to our mum and dad”. Every year on the Monday nearest to Armistice Day, Carlton would put on a performance on the site as a tribute to his parents. Sadly, he had to cease these in 1963 when a particularly awkward manoeuvre caused him a perforated eardrum.[2] The bombsite was sold to developers and is now home to the most haunted Co-op in the Midlands.