Bobbie Kimber: An Amiable Misfit

The Bobbie Kimber story is a fascinating one, involving the art of ventriloquism, female impersonation, and gender variance. It is the story of a man who became a prominent British Music Hall performer from the late 1930s onwards, displaying his skill as a ventriloquist with various dummies, most notably Augustus Peabody or "Gussie," while all the time dressed as a woman. He never made a secret of his masculinity, but he never emphasized it, and, as a result, there were many in the audience and in the press who assumed he really was female. Gradually, he assumed the identify of a woman, dressing in female attire both on and off stage, and even claimed to have had a sex change operation, which was a complete lie. In the later years of his life, Bobbie Kimber always appeared as a woman, with long hair, make-up and high heels. His stage persona had become his real persona. Bobbie Kimber surely represents the strangest example of gender variance.