George Formby

After spending so long this afternoon contemplating the lives and words of old boys of Eton and Harrow, here's the voice of someone who actually came from Wigan, and left school at the age of seven to be apprenticed to a jockey. In between the songs (which might not be to everybody's taste) there are very English utterances, entirely without Churchillian rhetorical flourishes, at 1 min. 45 sec. and at 4 min. 24 sec.

Mass-Observation recorded that the fantasy sequence in [the film] Let George do it (1940), in which Formby landed at Nuremberg and knocked out Hitler, was one of the biggest cultural morale-boosters of the early war years, the visual encapsulation of the people's war with the English Everyman flooring the Nazi Superman. The popularity of his character is indicated by the fact that from 1937 to 1943 inclusive Formby was the top British male star at the cinema box office, and from 1938 to 1942 the highest-paid entertainer in Britain. [...] Formby maintained his popularity through the Second World War both in films and on the ENSA [Entertainments National Service Association] tours he undertook, entertaining the troops frequently in close proximity to the front line. It was estimated that he had sung to 3 million service personnel by 1946, and in that year he was appointed OBE in recognition of his morale-boosting activities.

(From Jeffrey Richards, ‘Formby, George (1904–1961)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2005)