"a curious mixture of sophistication, schoolboy humour and double entendre." An example is his Mexican Minnie: Come where the heat from the sun's burning raysGets you so gaga you tear off your stays!I'm Mexican Minnie, all jolly and ginnyI loll in the mountains all day.Though I'm well off the map, I'm just covered in slap,Luring brigands to come and play ha'penny nap.But they get very reckless, and will stay to breakfastThen go off refusing to pay.I say, "Well you can go,"I'm sick of the gang, so"You shan't see my tango today!" Byng's skill in performance was said to vanquish prudery, but in reality his material was never crude. His famous numbers included: "Sex Appeal Sarah", "Milly the Messy Old Mermaid" and "The Lass who Leaned against the Tower of Pisa". His "Doris, the Goddess of Wind" was revived in Alan Bennett's 2010 play The Habit of Art. He continually tested the patience of the BBC in debating which of his double entendres he would be allowed to speak or sing. He claimed that the rudest joke that he was allowed - because it was not understood - was one in which Nell Gwynne said to King Charles, who enjoyed dancing: "If you must dance, stick the maypole up yourself and dance around it." In 1931 Byng appeared in cabaret at the Club Lido, in New York, and had a great success. He pursued his career of revue, cabaret and pantomime in London throughout the 1930s, and was the first cabaret artiste to have his name in neon lights in the West End. By the 1930s, Byng's recordings of songs like "I'm Millie, a Messy Old Mermaid", sold well. In the Cole Porter revue Hi Diddle Diddle (1934), he was also the first to sing the celebrated song "Miss Otis Regrets". In 1938 he played his favourite role in a musical, Prince Zorpan, in an adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán's Maritza. Byng wrote all his own words for the piece and also some extra music. In one scene he impersonated a lady violinist, singing "I'm the pest of Budapest that turned the Danube so blue" in which The Times said he shone intensely. During the Second World War, Byng was busy in musicals and variety, as well as cabaret and entertaining the troops. Afterwards he appeared in more comedies and farces, the best remembered being Georges Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso in 1956 with