THERE cannot be many people who have never heard the uplifting tune "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside."

But it did not bring riches to the talented musician who composed it - Bury-born Andrew Norrie Allen.

Mr Allen, who lived in St Georges Road, Bolton from about 1920 to 1932, wrote the Reginald Dixon favourite and several other popular music hall songs between 1918 and 1923.

For a time he and his wife Mollie lived the high life with glamorous London friends.

His songs - such as "Sally, You Took The Sunshine From Our Alley" and "If You're Going Back To Dixie" - were sung on stage by major stars of the day including Florrie Forde, Vesta Tilley, G. H. Elliott and George Bass (father of Alfie).

But it all went sour and he became a broken man.

Andrew's nephew John Higson, who lives in Torridon Road, Bolton, has been in touch with details of this sad story.

His Auntie Mollie, who died in 1969, told him that one night, at the end of 1923, a drunken Andrew signed away all his royalty rights to a publishing house.

"By the beginning of 1924 he realised what he had done and it sent him off his trolley," John says.

From then until he died of cancer in 1949, aged 63, Andrew withdrew into himself and never wrote another note.

The rest of his life was mostly spent smoking Woodbines in a room which he rarely left.

Mr Higson, who is 82, remembers: "In his later years you could not converse with him because his mind was just not there."

In 1934, the Daily Sketch carried a story about the day Florrie Forde sat Andrew down at a piano in Blackpool in the hope that it would help to revive him.

But he "sat there, sunk into himself, sweeping a hand over the keys meaninglessly."

Florrie Forde was quoted as saying: "It is a real tragedy and it makes one's heart ache."

Mr Higson says his uncle, who was originally a master painter and decorator, was also a wonderful pianist and violinist.

His flair for music led to him becoming an entertainments officer in France during the 1914-18 war.

He became a great success when he returned - but it was not to last.

Mr Higson, who featured in a BBC TV regional news item about his uncle in 1970, is still honouring the promise he made to his aunt and is keen to keep Andrew's memory alive.

So what does he feel every time he hears "I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside"?

"I am proud of the fact that I am the nephew of the fellow who wrote it," he says.