F-B-F.org -

He again recruited announcers, quiz masters, musicians and comedians and, once that painful era of Kenya’s history had passed, he was in a good position to contribute to further improving race relations in the new Kenya.He took Kenyan citizenship and his succession of houses in Muthaiga – a prestigious Nairobi suburb soon bristling with ministerial and ambassadorial residencies – was always full of African guests, by no means all from the new up-and-coming good and famous classes. Clients of his advertising agency also included Shell, BAT, Coca-Cola, Nestl?Beechams, Bata shoes, Air France and East African Airways.When the stolid colonial government was confronted with the Mau-Mau rebellion and a world spotlight turned on African nationalist aspirations, Colmore was the obvious choice to initiate one response – to inaugurate a new more human Swahili broadcasting service. One of his prot?s, Paul Ngai, went on to become a leading politician.Composing musical jingles in Swahili to advertise products such as Vicks medicines, Aspro, various beers and other drinks proved a more lasting contribution – some of his tunes are still in use after 45 years. As a film consultant he cast Africans for such classics as King Solomon’s Mines (1950), Tarzan’s Peril (1951) and Where No Vultures Fly (1951). So did the Ugandan saxophonist Charles Senkatura and Baya Toya from Mombasa, wizard of the double-bass guitar.Encouraged by his success as a talent scout and impresario, Colmore started a recording company, attracting young African musicians to his studio from as far away as the then Belgian Congo, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. A new African His Master’s Voice Blue Label was launched.Shrugging off a forced landing in a game park on his first solo, as an amateur pilot he guided many distinguished visitors to East and Central Africa, including the Aga Khan.

For all these he will be remembered, but more so because he formed Peter Colmore’s African Band, initially employing his ex-army musicians and presenting All-African variety shows and reviews which took audiences by storm at the Travellers’ Club, Garrison Theatre, the Muthaiga Golf Club – and, in the early 1950s, Nairobi’s newly opened National Theatre.Artistes including Jean Bosco, Masengo Edouard, the Jambo Boys, the Ashantis, Paul Mwachupa, Mzee Kiroboto and the vocalist and guitarist Funde Konde all became household names. Before being demobilised in 1946, Colmore served as staff officer to the then Director of Education and Welfare, a certain Colonel Michael Blundell, later to become a leading Kenyan “settler”, writer and politician.Africa was by then firmly in Peter Colmore’s blood and he returned to Kenya in 1947 to start successful business ventures in advertising, real estate and commercial publishing. Distinctly risqu?ketches were included warning the troops of the painful consequences of contracting VD. He was entrusted with the recruitment of artists and musicians and, with three other captains, established army entertainment units for East African troops by then serving also in India, Ceylon and Burma.As well as in Kenya, Colmore’s unit presented very popular Ensa-type variety concerts in Uganda, Tanganyika and Somalia.

It was after a spell as intelligence officer with the 61st King’s African Rifles that the Army gave Colmore an opening from which he never looked back. Colmore was Platt’s ADC.By his own admission, Colmore was not cut out for a military career: he recalled once accidentally wounding his British sergeant whilst cleaning his pistol, but that professional soldier loyally co-operated in covering up the incident. The latter were halted by the stubborn defence of Keren in Eritrea but the advance from Kenya through Somalia to Addis Ababa, led by General Sir William Platt, was to prove the fastest advance in military history. Recent television films recalling the colourful era of the Empire Flying-Boat Service reveal him as a young man guiding the docking of those gracious planes on the rippling waters of Lake Victoria at Kisumu.The Ethiopian empire which foreigners then called Abyssinia had been overrun by Mussolini’s troops in 1935-36, but, once the Italians declared war in June 1940, indigenous Patriot guerrillas there were supported by infiltrated British officers – including such legendary figures as Dan Sandford, Wilfred Thesiger, Orde Wingate, Bimbashi Bagge and many others.Colmore was involved in the training of Ethiopian refugees as “irregulars” to serve with Commonwealth armies which advanced into Italian East Africa from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya and from the Sudan. He was the only son of Harry Colmore, a captain in the 7th Hussars, and Nina Gostling-Murray, a colonel’s daughter. But, ever something of a rebel, after schooling at Sherborne their talented boy opted to study aero-engineering at Hamble in Hampshire before joining Imperial Airways In 1938 he sailed to East Africa. Now that the top-up fees Bill has survived its second reading, albeit by a whisker, universities are getting down to the serious business of deciding whether to charge fees of up to £3,000.