This earthenware Toby Jug with bowler hat lid, possibly manufactured in the 1930s, is modelled on George Robey (1869–1954), one of Britain’s most successful music hall comedians, a master of comic songs, caricatures and sketches, who became known as 'the Prime Minister of Mirth'.

George Robey made his first appearance on the London stage at the Aquarium in 1891. After appearing at the Oxford Music Hall in London the same year, he was engaged for most of the leading halls in London. His ‘trademark’ stage appearance is captured in this jug - a long collarless frock coat, a semi-clerical bowler hat, a walking stick and enormous black eyebrows which he raised quizzically to great comic effect. He could make audiences cry helplessly with laughter just by coming on stage and looking at them, asking them to 'desist from this unseemly merriment'. He was one of the music hall performers to make the change from the halls and variety to revue, and in 1916 he appeared in revue for the first time as Lucius Bing in The Bing Boys Are Here at the Alhambra Theatre, followed by The Bing Boys on Broadway, also at the Alhambra Theatre, in 1918. He received a knighthood in 1954, the year of his death.