Toni Lamond

Biography

Patricia Lamond Lawman AM, CM, professionally known as Toni Lamond, is an Australian cabaret singer, stage and television actress, dancer, and comedian. She was given the nickname of “Lolly-Legs Lamond” by fellow performer Noel Ferrier after being voted as having the second-best pair of legs in television while appearing on TV show In Melbourne Tonight.

Lamond was born in Sydney in 1932, as Patricia Lamond Lawman. She began her professional career at the age of 10 when she sang on the radio while touring with her vaudevillian parents in variety shows, which included her actress mother Stella Lamond and father Joe Lawman. Her first stage performances were at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney. Her first performances as a leading lady were with English comedian Tommy Trinder in The Tommy Trinder Show in 1952.

She has starred in Australian productions of Oliver!, Annie Get Your Gun, The Pajama Game, and Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and was a regular in a number of 1970s television shows, such as Number 96 and Graham Kennedy’s In Melbourne Tonight. She later compèred her own IMT, becoming the first woman in the world to compère a variety television show.