As his father lay dying, former British prime minister John Major listened to him recount stories from his days as a music hall performer.

It became the seed for My Old Man, Major’s new book about the working class entertainment of the Victorian era and Britain's answer to vaudeville.

“My father, in his last hours, rambled a little. Neither my mother or I who sat with him had any doubt where he was in his mind: he was back on the stage where he was so many years before,” Major said in an interview from London with CBC’s Sunday Edition.

Major recalled the old friends who came to see his father in his final days — friends who sang the old songs and told the old jokes.

“I sat there as a boy relatively awestruck. There they were — these shabby old figures — they talked of the past and suddenly they changed. They were performing,” he recalled.

Major was just 19 when his father died, too young to have asked more about his father's years as a trapeze artist, acrobat, singer and storyteller.

Rough music hall life

Born Tom Ball, Major's father adopted the surname when he formed a double act titled Drum and Major with his first partner, Kitty. She died after a safety curtain fell on her. Tom Major then married dancer Gwen Coates, who was John Major's mother.

Music hall performers had a rough life with low pay, no microphones and catering to working class audiences. Most had to give several performances a night to make ends meet.

In My Old Man, Major tells his family’s story, but also explores the stories of other greats of the music hall stage, including Marie Lloyd, one of music hall's most beloved stars, Florrie Forde, Little Titch, The Great Farini, Gertie Gitana and Lottie Collins, who danced herself to death with a fast-paced version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.

Some commentators even made fun of Major's rough-and-ready past when he first entered politics.

"They thought it very odd that a Conservative member of parliament, a Conservative cabinet minister, a Conservative prime minister should have come from that sort of background," he said.

"I think that tells us more about them than it does about my background. If politics ever gives up the capacity to accept people from each and every background, then it will cease to be representative democracy."