I read with interest the article about Paul McCartney's appearance on Top Of The Pops (The Argus, November 21).

This stated that, at 59, it makes him one of the oldest performers to appear on the show, being beaten only by Tom Jones by a few months.

When Hylda Baker made her appearance on the show in 1978 with another veteran, Arthur Mullard, singing You're The One That I Want, she was 73 years of age, so surpassing Messrs Jones and McCartney by 14 years.

The record proved so successful an album followed shortly after, entitled Band On The Trot, coincidentally a play on McCartney and Wings' Band On The Run.

Hylda, born in Bolton in 1905, made her stage debut in Sussex at the Opera House, Tunbridge Wells, during the First World War. This theatre still stands, albeit now a Weatherspoons pub.

In the early Fifties, Hylda introduced into her act a six-foot, sad-faced dumb female character called Cynthia, always played by a man.

Because Hylda was barely five feet tall, she was always looking skywards to Cynthia and shouting at her as if she was 12 miles away instead of 12 inches.

Continuously asked question after question by Hylda, Cynthia was never allowed to utter one word or - worse still - smile.

Hilarious as the act was, one crack of the lips and the poor chap playing the part was out, never to appear with Hylda again.

In real life, Hylda was on the whole lonely, her two greatest friends being her pet monkeys. Later, her hugely popular TV series Nearest And Dearest and Not On Your Nellie made her a household name.

She became a great burden on the production teams as she developed Alzheimer's disease and would constantly forget her script, requiring cue cards all the time.

Although she died in 1985, many of her catchphrases are still in daily use today: "Big girl's blouse", "'ave you been?", "I must get a little hand for this watch" and, of course, "She knows, you know".

-Gerald Oxley, Selbourne Road, Hove