tTheir performances were invariably greeted with rapturous and wholly undeserved applause

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 130.  

It was a wrench to leave what had seemed to me to be a succession of island paradises and to butt our way back through increasingly angry seas to Portsmouth; but Christmas was on the way, and it had already been announced that early in the new year—1949—we should be heading for Gibraltar. Gibraltar, however, was nowhere near such fun. I felt that for the Rock—admittedly half a century ago—a couple of hours would have been about right; we were there for six remorseless weeks. During that unconscionable time we were allowed just three visits to Spain; for the rest, we would walk up and down the main (indeed almost the only) street until we were intimately acquainted with every item in every shop window, eventually finding our way to one or the other of the two pubs which catered exclusively to the Navy. Each of these featured what might optimistically be described as a cabaret, provided by two aging ladies in the regulation frilly, spotty dresses like very old lampshades, who every hour or so performed a traditional flamenco. These two—one of them, I remember, was known to all as Sweaty Betty—had each entertained generation after generation of sailors but had somehow managed to keep their castanets clicking; their performances were invariably greeted with rapturous and wholly undeserved applause.