This stage-full of make-believe characters typifies the home-made but elaborate entertainment popular between the wars.

It shows the Knowle Park Congregational Mission choir in their production of Bulbul in January, 1922.

Bulbul was one of those now-forgotten comic operettas, which dramatic societies used to put on before graduating to Gilbert and Sullivan. It included such parts as Dosay and Justso, Prince Caspian and Princess Bulbul, and “the fussy little monarch Iamit”.

Unfortunately, all four performances coincided with sleet and snow, while the payment of Entertainment Tax and the hire of costumes from Leeds “made the expenses very heavy in proportion to the takings”. Nevertheless, Bulbul, in the uncritical opinion of the Keighley News, “did infinite credit to all concerned.”

That same week, Keighley’s rival attractions included the Colne Stella Concert Party at the Municipal Hall, a variety concert at the Temperance Hall and lectures on such assorted subjects as The Romance of Insect Life, The Writings of J M Barrie and Economic and Social Progress.

The Hippodrome was running a romantic musical comedy called A Little Dutch Girl, while the town in 1922 boasted no less than seven cinemas – the Picture House, The Regent, The Oxford Hall, the Cosy Corner, The Palace, The Russell Street and The Market Cinema.