They were called the Hello Girls although they were, of course, grown women. In the 19th century the burgeoning US telephone industry needed people to connect callers and, as the Library of Congress puts it: “[F]emale switchboard operators were widely known as having gentle and polite voices regardless of demanding and impatient callers.”

If there’s a job that requires tact, conciliation, quick wits, perseverance and a tough hide, who you gonna call?

With the job came the infantilising name and it stuck. Again, let’s turn to the Library of Congress website. “During WWI, female telephonists, known as Hello Girls, were hired for their pleasant relaying of wartime calls.” It’s an interesting way of putting it.

The Hello Girls at Hayes Theatre Co. Photo © Phil Erbacher

Peter Mills and Cara Reichel’s musical The Hello Girls delves into this small corner of early 20th-century history, showing how a group of women was co-opted into the US war effort, sent to France to serve as communications experts and had to face the usual slings and arrows of working while female.

Afterwards their service was ignored, not to be recognised until more than 50 years later, by...