Hey, Abbot...

There's a point to all this -- but it's not the one that it will likely appear to be.

A few days back, I had a couple of videos from the 50th anniversary tribute to the original West End opening of Oliver!  The heart of the video was a post-curtain speech from the original Fagin, Ron Moody, who also performed "Pick a Pocket or Two."  But that's not the point here, even though I later posted a video of Moody in a Broadway revival of the show.

If you remember back to that anniversary video, there was another Fagin on stage, the fellow who was playing the role in that London production, Russ Abbot.  He's had a long career, a lot on television, but he's also played Fagin numerous times on the West End stage, and even toured in other countries with the show.  But that's not the point either.

It's that when doing a bit of searching, I came across another video of Russ Abbot.  It turns out that back in 1996, he starred in a British series called, Married for Life.  But you might know it by another name -- that's because it wasn't a British series originally at all, but rather an adaptation of...Married with Children.  And Abbot played the 'Al Bundy' role, called Ted Butler.

I'll post the clip tomorrow, but first I thought it would be best to give you a sense first of who he is, to put some perspective on things.  So, here is Russ Abbot performing Fagin, in "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two," done on a special honoring producer Cameron Mackintosh, Hey, Mr. Producer.