In 1919, Billy joined his first concert party at the age of 20 and appeared at the Redcar Old Arcadia. Then he joined the Jovial Growlers and travelled with them for seven months all over the country. He also toured in the Babes in the Wood pantomime. His next show was with the Famous Brooklyn Comedy Four at

Middlesbrough Opera House, when the Four were working with John Lister's big cowboy show A Round-Up Revue. From this Billy went into Pantomime at the Grand Theatre, Croydon, where he was immediately booked for Dixon's Crazy Town Revue. Leaving this he toured Ireland with the Comedy Four.

While playing pantomime in Rhyll, Billy came very near to death when a gun he using in the show backfired, and contracted Tetanus.

Returning to England, he toured the principal halls throughout the country with the Four. When he parted with them, his next engagement of any note was with E.B. Seenor's Grandby Revue which he left at the Grand Theatre, Clapham.

The story of the tetanus incident is recounted by my mother, Eileen Scarrow:

"He was playing pantomime at Rhyll. He had to fire a gun which must have been faulty, as it backfired into his hand, allowing the gunpowder to enter the wound. By the time he and his fellow performers arrived back at their digs he could hardly stand and had to be supported by the other two accompanying him. Their landlady took one look at him and said "He's not coming in - he's drunk". The other two managed to convince her that he was ill, not drunk, and he ended up in hospital. His wife was summoned to his bedside and after spending many hours with him was advised by the nurses to go and get a breath of fresh air along the promenade as he was some hours from the 'crisis' which would either cause his death or his recovery.

"Back in Redcar an aunt of Billy's was attending a Spiritual Meeting, when the spiritualist announced that she had a message for someone named Jennie and did anyone in the audience know a Jennie. This aunt put her hand up and was told that the message was from a man dressed as the Devil, standing by a river, and he said "Tell Jennie the boat has gone without me". And that was at the very time he entered the crisis and safely came through it. To continue, this story was recounted to Don and I, and very moving it was. We were all sitting there with tears in our eyes, and to lighten the mood I said "Well it was obvious where you were going wasn't it Dad!" Three pairs of eyes looked at me in shock and then after a pause they all roared with slightly hysterical laughter. I couldn't see what was so funny until they told me that the reason he was dressed as the Devil was because he was playing the Demon King in the pantomime. They also told me that he was the first person to recover from tetanus: a new serum was flown over from France to treat him, and his case was written up in the British Medical Journal. This was between 1925 when Billy and Jennie were married, but before Don was born in 1929.