Eric Sykes
Encyclopedia
Eric Sykes, CBE
(born 4 May 1923) is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock
, Spike Milligan
, Peter Sellers
, John Antrobus
and Johnny Speight
. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his work on The Goon Show
. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he co-starred with Hattie Jacques
in several popular BBC
comedy television
series. A trademark of Sykes's work is the idea of taking a single comic idea to its extremes, as epitomised by what is probably his best remembered work, the slapstick film The Plank.
, Lancashire; his mother died during his birth. He was the second child of his parents' marriage; his older brother (by two years) was named Vernon. Sykes' father was a labourer in a cotton mill
and a former army sergeant. When he was two, his father remarried and he gained a half-brother named John.
Sykes was educated at Ward Street Central School in Oldham
. He joined the Royal Air Force
during World War II
, qualifying as a wireless operator with the rank of Leading Aircraftman
.
while serving in a Special Liaison Unit
, when he met and worked with then Flight Lieutenant
Bill Fraser
. When the war ended Sykes decided to try his luck in London, arriving in the middle of the coldest winter in living memory (1946-47). He rented lodgings, expecting to find work quickly, but by the end of the first week he was cold, hungry and penniless. The turning point in his life and career came on the Friday night of his first week in London: he had a chance meeting in the street with Bill Fraser, who was then starring in a comedy at the Playhouse Theatre
. Fraser took the impoverished Sykes to the theatre, offered him food and drink, and then asked if Sykes would like to write for him. Sykes began providing scripts for both Fraser and Frankie Howerd
and soon found himself in demand as a comedy writer, co-writing with Sid Colin
the successful BBC
radio series Educating Archie
, where he first met Hattie Jacques
, as well as Variety Bandbox
. By 1948 he had begun writing for television.
and Edwin Styles
. During 1954 Sykes also made his first screen appearance in the 1954 army film comedy Orders Are Orders
, which also featured Sid James
, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Bill Fraser and Donald Pleasence
.
Late in 1954 Sykes began collaborating with Spike Milligan on scripts for The Goon Show, easing Milligan's workload. Their first collaborative script was for a Goon Show special called Archie in Goonland, a crossover between The Goon Show and the radio ventriloquism show Educating Archie
(for which Sykes had also been writing). The special was broadcast in June 1954 and featured the regular Goon Show cast plus Peter Brough
, his dummy Archie Andrews
and Hattie Jacques. It was not a success, however, and the recordings and scripts have not survived. Sykes and Milligan are credited as the co-writers of all but the first six of the 26 episodes in Series 5 (1954–55) and three episodes of Series 6 (1955–56); Sykes also wrote a 15-minute Goon Show Christmas special, The Missing Christmas Parcel, broadcast during the Children's Hour
on 8 December 1955.
In the early 1950s, as The Goon Show rapidly gained popularity, Spike Milligan married for the first time and began a family. This reportedly distracted him from writing so much that he accepted an invitation to share Sykes's small office above a grocer's shop at 130 Uxbridge Road
, Shepherd's Bush
. Sykes, a long-time Goons fan, was then writing for the popular radio comedy series Educating Archie, in which Harry Secombe
was also appearing).
During this period Sykes originated the idea of forming a non-profit, co-operative writers' agency; Milligan then approached rising comedy writing partners Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
with the proposal. Taking vacant space above Sykes's office, they jointly formed Associated London Scripts (ALS) with Frankie Howerd
and the manager of both Sykes and Howerd, Stanley Dale. Their original secretary Beryl Vertue
, a former schoolmate of Simpson's, later became the firm's business affairs manager and in-house agent. Tony Hancock briefly joined the collective, and other notable members included Terry Nation
, Johnny Speight and John Antrobus.
The venture eventually grew to include around thirty writers, with a support staff of twelve. By 1957 it had outgrown the Shepherd's Bush offices and moved to larger premises in Kensington High Street
. Around 1960 ALS sold the Kensington offices and purchased even more prestigious premises at Orme Court in the fashionable Bayswater Road
, adjacent to Hyde Park
. In the mid-1960s Robert Stigwood
offered to buy ALS; Galton and Simpson favoured the deal (because Stigwood was moving into film production) but Sykes and Milligan did not, so they sold their controlling shares in the company to Stigwood, while Galton and Simpson (to their later regret) sold their share of Orme Court to Milligan and Sykes. Milligan later sold his half to Sykes, who reportedly retained the freehold on the valuable property into the 21st century. Wanting to move into production, Beryl Vertue opted to go with Stigwood; she subsequently became a leading independent producer and deputy chairman of the Robert Stigwood Group.
In 1955 Sykes wrote and performed in a BBC Christmas spectacular, a spoof pantomime called Pantomania, which featured many well-known BBC personalities of the era; it was directed by Ernest Maxin
, who went on to produce some of the most famous comedy routines for Morecambe & Wise. That same year Sykes signed a contract as scriptwriter and variety show presenter for the newly formed independent television company ATV
, while continuing to write and perform for the BBC.
In 1956 Sykes performed, wrote scripts, and acted as script editor for the pioneering Rediffusion
TV comedy The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d
, the first attempt to translate the humour of the Goons to television. It starred Peter Sellers, with Sykes, Kenneth Connor
and Valentine Dyall
. During this year he also made his second film appearance, playing a minor role in the Max Bygraves
film Charley Moon
, which also featured Bill Fraser, Peter Jones
, Dennis Price
and (as a child) Jane Asher
. During 1956–57, Sykes also wrote for and performed in The Tony Hancock Show
, where he again worked with Hattie Jacques.
His next venture for the BBC was a one-hour special, Sykes Directs a Dress Rehearsal, playing a harassed director in a fictional TV studio rehearsal room, just before going live to air. Later that year he wrote and appeared in another all-star spectacular called Opening Night which celebrated the opening of the 1956 National Radio Show at Earl's Court. In 1957 he created Closing Night, which closed the 1957 show.
By this time Sykes had developed hearing problems; he subsequently lost most of his hearing, but learned to lip-read and watch other performers say their lines in order to get his cues. In 1957 he wrote and appeared in an edition of Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular, the first of two shows in this series that he wrote for Peter Sellers. The first went out under the title of Eric Sykes Presents Peter Sellers, and the second, in 1958, was called The Peter Sellers Show.
In 1959 Sykes wrote and directed the one-off BBC special Gala Opening, with a cast that included Professor Stanley Unwin
and Hattie Jacques, and played a small supporting role in the Tommy Steele
film Tommy the Toreador
.
, which Sykes created in collaboration with writer Johnny Speight, who had worked with Eric in the 1950s on the Tony Hancock shows. The original concept for the series had Eric living in suburbia with his wife, with simple plots centring on everyday problems, but Sykes soon realized that by changing the house-mate from wife to sister it offered more scope for storylines and allowed either or both to become romantically entangled with other people.
In the revised concept, Sykes played a version of his established stage persona, a bumbling, work-shy, accident-prone bachelor called Eric Sykes, who lives at 24 Sebastopol Terrace, East Acton
, with his unmarried twin sister Harriet, played by Jacques. The other regular cast members were Deryck Guyler
as local constable Wilfred "Corky" Turnbull and Richard Wattis
as their snobbish, busybody neighbour Charles Brown. Wattis left the show after Series 3 and his departure was explained by having Mr Brown emigrating to Australia
. Other guests included Hugh Lloyd
, John Bluthal
, Leo McKern
and Arthur Mullard
.
The first series (five episodes, all written by Johnny Speight) premiered on 29 January 1960 and were an immediate hit, establishing "Eric and Hat" as one of Britain's most popular and enduring comedy partnerships. The second series of six episodes (written from storylines suggested by Speight) were mostly written by Sykes, although he co-wrote one episode each with John Antrobus and Spike Milligan. All subsequent episodes were written solely by Sykes.
Nine short seasons of Sykes and A... were made between 1960 and 1965, ranging between six and nine episodes each, plus a short 1962 special in the BBC's annual Christmas Night with the Stars
programme. Thirty-four of the original fifty-nine episodes have been lost (either overwritten, discarded or just missing) from the BBC archives, as is the 1962 Christmas Night with the Stars featuring the Sykes and his Sister short. It was during this series that Sykes introduced one of his best known creations, the wordless slapstick routine The Plank, which originally appeared in Episode 2, Series 7 of Sykes And A..., first broadcast on 3 March 1964 under that title.
In December 1961 Sykes co-starred with Warren Mitchell
in Clicquot et Frils, a one-off, 30-minute comedy written by ALS colleagues Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. This was the premiere episode of a new BBC series Comedy Playhouse
, which became an important proving ground for new TV comedy. Numerous episodes were subsequently developed into their own successful series, including Meet the Wife
, Steptoe and Son
, Til Death Us Do Part
, All Gas and Gaiters
, The Liver Birds
, Are You Being Served?
and Last of the Summer Wine
.
In 1962 Sykes played his first starring film role, being a travelling salesman in the comedy Village of Daughters
, set in an Italian village, but featuring a mostly British cast including John Le Mesurier
(who was at that time married to Hattie Jacques), Warren Mitchell and Roger Delgado
. This was followed by a supporting role in the MGM (UK) comedy, Kill or Cure, starring Terry-Thomas
with a cast of British comedy stalwarts including Dennis Price
, Moira Redmond
, Lionel Jeffries
, David Lodge
and it also featured one of the first film appearances by Ronnie Barker
. Both films were made by the same writer-director team behind the popular Margaret Rutherford
Miss Marple
film, Murder She Said.
During 1965, Sykes made what proved to be the final series of Sykes and A... and appearing in three major films. He had a small role in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
, joining an all-star cast of British TV and film luminaries including Terry-Thomas, Tony Hancock, Robert Morley
and Flora Robson
, as well as US stars Stuart Whitman
and Red Skelton
. The spy spoof The Liquidator
was directed by Jack Cardiff
and starred Rod Taylor with Sykes, Jill St. John
, Trevor Howard
, Akim Tamiroff
, Wilfrid Hyde-White
, David Tomlinson
, John Le Mesurier and Derek Nimmo
. His third film of that year was the Boulting brothers' Rotten to the Core starring Anton Rogers (who replaced Peter Sellers) with Sykes - this featured an early screen appearance by Charlotte Rampling
.
In 1966 Sykes had a minor film role in the spy spoof The Spy with a Cold Nose
, written by Galton and Simpson, which also featured Laurence Harvey
, Lionel Jeffries, Eric Portman
, Denholm Elliott
and June Whitfield
.
In 1967 Sykes had expanded his routine for The Plank into a 45-minute wordless colour short The Plank featuring Sykes, Tommy Cooper
, Jimmy Edwards
, Roy Castle
, Graham Stark
, Stratford Johns
, Jim Dale
, Jimmy Tarbuck
, Hattie Jacques and future Goodies
star Bill Oddie
. Also in 1967 Sykes and his old comrade Jimmy Edwards started touring with the theatrical farce Big Bad Mouse
which, while keeping more or less to a script, gave them rein to ad lib and address the audience. They would return to the production on and off until 1975, touring the UK twice and also taking the show abroad, including to Australia.
Returning to television, Sykes and Jacques appeared in the 1967 special Sykes Versus ITV with Tommy Cooper and Ronnie Brody
. In 1968 he had a supporting role in a British-American film co-production, the Edward Dmytryk
western Shalako
, starring Sean Connery
and Brigitte Bardot
.
In 1969 Sykes co-starred with Spike Milligan in what proved to be one of the few major flops of his career, the ill-fated television sit-com Curry & Chips, a satire on racial prejudice created and written by Johnny Speight and made for London Weekend Television
. Milligan, who had grown up in India, played Kevin O'Grady, a half-Pakistani half-Irish man who comes to work in a British factory and ends up boarding with his ineffectual foreman Arthur Blenkinsop (Sykes), who has to regularly defend Kevin against his racist workmates. The supporting cast included pop singer turned actor Kenny Lynch
, Geoffrey Hughes
, Norman Rossington
, Sam Kydd
, Jerrold Wells and Fanny Carby as Arthur and Kevin's landlady. The series provoked a storm of complaints about its liberal use of racist epithets and bad language (although Sykes refused to swear, as he has done throughout his career). It was cancelled on the orders of the Independent Broadcasting Authority
after six episodes.
Also in 1969, Sykes wrote, directed and performed in two comedy short films in the style of The Plank. It's Your Move
was a wordless slapstick comedy depicting the travails of young couple (Richard Briers
and Sylvia Sims) moving into a new home, who hire an accident-prone firm of house removers, headed by Sykes. It featured an all-star cast including Tommy Cooper, Bernard Cribbins
, Jimmy Edwards, Irene Handl
, Bob Todd
and Andrew Sachs
. In Rhubarb all the characters interact using only the word "rhubarb". The idea was drawn from the British showbiz tradition in which extras used the word "rhubarb" to simulate low-level background dialogue, and the expression was a running joke in The Goon Show. The cast list included Sykes, Hattie Jacques, Harry Secombe, Jimmy Edwards and Carry On regular Kenneth Connor, with a rare on-screen appearance by Johnny Speight.
Sykes also made another minor film appearance in 1969 in the comedy Monte Carlo or Bust!, which was also titled as Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies.
for the BBC and a special Sykes: With the Lid Off for Thames Television
.
In 1972, seven years after the cancellation of Sykes and A..., the BBC revived the series under the title Sykes
. Eric and Hat (who had by then moved to 28 Sebastopol Terrace) were rejoined by both Richard Wattis as the snooty Mr Brown (who had returned from Australia) and Derek Guyler as PC "Corky" Turnbull.
Forty-three of the shows in the Sykes series were re-workings of scripts from the 1960s series, which had been filmed in monochrome
. These included a remake of the 1960s episode Sykes and a Stranger, which had originally featured Leo McKern but in the new version saw Peter Sellers taking the role of a childhood sweetheart of Hattie's who arrives on the Sykes's doorstep claiming Hattie as his fiancé.
Sixty-eight episodes of Sykes were made between 1972 and 1979. Richard Wattis died suddenly in February 1975, so from Series 4 onwards his character was replaced by a new neighbour, Melanie Rumbelow, played by Joy Harrington. Carry On veteran Joan Sims
also made occasional appearances as Madge Kettlewell, the widowed local baker who fancies Eric. The series was brought to an enforced end by Hattie Jacques's death from a heart attack in October 1980.
In 1973 Sykes had a small role as a police sergeant in the Douglas Hickox
thriller Theatre of Blood
, starring Vincent Price
with an all-star supporting cast including Jack Hawkins
, Diana Rigg
, Robert Morley, Diana Dors
, Michael Hordern
, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price
and Milo O'Shea.
In 1977, Sykes wrote and starred in another television special, Eric Sykes Shows a Few of Our Favourite Things, with Hattie Jacques, Irene Handl, Jimmy Edwards and Peter Cook
. He also wrote the script for the 1977 Yorkshire Television
adaptation of Charley's Aunt
and appeared in the role of Brassett, playing alongside Jimmy Edwards and Judi Maynard.
The third version of The Plank
was made in 1979 for Thames TV
as a half-hour TV special, with a cast including Eric, Arthur Lowe (taking Tommy Cooper's role), Charlie Drake
, Charles Hawtrey and Wilfrid Hyde-White.
Sykes was the subject of Thames Television
's This Is Your Life
, broadcast on 25 December 1979 with guests including Sean Connery
, Spike Milligan, Douglas Bader
and Hattie Jacques.
specials broadcast during 1980 -- The Likes of Sykes and Rhubarb Rhubarb
. The latter special, a remake of his 1969 short film Rhubarb which Sykes also directed, featured many of his old friends including Jimmy Edwards, Bob Todd, Charlie Drake, Bill Fraser, Roy Kinnear
, Beryl Reid
and Norman Rossington. It was his last screen appearance with Hattie Jacques.
In 1981 Sykes wrote, directed and starred in the offbeat comedy If You Go Down in the Woods Today
for Thames, with a cast including Roy Kinnear, Fulton Mackay
and George Sewell
.
During 1982 Sykes played the Chief Constable in the slapstick police comedy film The Boys in Blue
, which starred the comedy duo Cannon and Ball
, with Jon Pertwee
. For Thames TV that year he also appeared in and wrote The Eric Sykes 1990 Show with Tommy Cooper and Dandy Nichols
and It's Your Move
, a remake of his 1969 short film featuring virtually all of the cast from the original.
In 1984 Sykes played the Genie in the children's film Gabrielle and the Doodleman, which also featured Windsor Davies
(who would also appear with Sykes in the BBC's Gormenghast in 2000), Bob Todd, Lynsey De Paul
and Gareth Hunt
.
In 1985 he played the Mad Hatter
in the Anglia Television
serial adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, joining an all-star cast that included Paul Eddington
, Michael Bentine
, Eleanor Bron
, Leslie Crowther
, Leonard Rossiter
and Joan Sanderson
, and he also had an uncredited role (as an arcade attendant) in the Julien Temple
film musical Absolute Beginners
, starring Patsy Kensit
with David Bowie
, Ray Davies
, James Fox
and Mandy Rice-Davies
, the former friend of Christine Keeler
with whom she was involved in the famous Profumo Scandal in the 1960s.
In 1986 Sykes played Horace Harker in the "The Six Napoleons", an episode of the Granada TV adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes
stories starring Jeremy Brett
.
Sykes toured Australia with the play Run for Your Wife (1987–88) with a cast that included Jack Smethurst
, David McCallum
and Katy Manning
.
In 1989, Sykes starred as the Secretary in the ITV situation comedy The Nineteenth Hole, written by Johnny Speight
, it was not a success and ran for only one series.
From 1997, Sykes, together with Tim Whitnall
and Toyah Willcox
, provided narration for the BBC pre-school TV series Teletubbies
. It is his voice that announces "Teletubbies!" during the title sequence and on the Teletubbies theme music
which became a number one single in December 1997.
In 2000 Sykes appeared as Mollocks, the servant of Dr Prunesquallor, in the BBC's mini-series adaptation of Mervyn Peake
's Gormenghast
, which was the last production to feature both Sykes and Milligan (although they did not appear together on screen), and Milligan's last screen appearance before his death in 2002. In 2001 he had one of his few serious screen roles, playing a servant in the blockbuster supernatural thriller film The Others
, starring Nicole Kidman
. In 2005 he played Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
.
In the British New Year's Honours List
published on 31 December 2004, Sykes was awarded a CBE
for services to drama
, following a petition by MPs
as a consequence of his having been excluded from the Birthday Honours List. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted among the top 50 acts by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Also in 2005, his autobiography If I Don't Write It, Nobody Else Will was published.
In 2007 he appeared in Last of the Summer Wine
and in New Tricks, as well as taking a small role in an episode of the sitcom My Family.
In October 2010 Sykes appeared in Hallowe'en Party
, an episode in the twelfth series of Agatha Christie's Poirot
.
hearing aid
. Disciform macular degeneration
, brought about by age and possibly smoking, has left Sykes partially-sighted, and he is registered as blind. He is a patron of the Macular Disease Society. In 2002 he suffered a stroke
and underwent heart bypass surgery.
He married Edith Eleanore Milbrandt on 14 February 1952 and they have three daughters, Catherine, Julie, Susan, and a son, David.
Sykes is an honorary president of the Goon Show Preservation Society
.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born 4 May 1923) is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock
Tony Hancock
Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...
, Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...
, Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
, John Antrobus
John Antrobus
John Antrobus is an English playwright and script writer. He has written extensively for stage, screen, TV and radio, including the epic World War II play, Crete and Sergeant Pepper at the Royal Court...
and Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight , was a British television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.He emerged in the mid 1950s. He wrote for the radio comics; Frankie Howerd, Vic Oliver, Arthur Askey, and Cyril Fletcher. For television he wrote for the Arthur Haynes Show, Morecambe & Wise, and Peter Sellers...
. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his work on The Goon Show
The Goon Show
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme...
. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he co-starred with Hattie Jacques
Hattie Jacques
Josephine Edwina Jaques was an English comedy actress, known as Hattie Jacques.Starting her career in the 1940s, Jacques first gained attention through her radio appearances with Tommy Handley on ITMA and later with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour...
in several popular BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
comedy television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series. A trademark of Sykes's work is the idea of taking a single comic idea to its extremes, as epitomised by what is probably his best remembered work, the slapstick film The Plank.
Early life
Sykes was born in OldhamOldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amid the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock, south-southeast of Rochdale, and northeast of the city of Manchester...
, Lancashire; his mother died during his birth. He was the second child of his parents' marriage; his older brother (by two years) was named Vernon. Sykes' father was a labourer in a cotton mill
Cotton mill
A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....
and a former army sergeant. When he was two, his father remarried and he gained a half-brother named John.
Sykes was educated at Ward Street Central School in Oldham
Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amid the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock, south-southeast of Rochdale, and northeast of the city of Manchester...
. He joined the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, qualifying as a wireless operator with the rank of Leading Aircraftman
Leading Aircraftman
Leading aircraftman Leading aircraftman (LAC) Leading aircraftman (LAC) (or leading aircraftwoman (LACW) is a rank in some air forces, between aircraftman and senior aircraftman and having a NATO rank code of OR-2. The rank badge is a horizontal two-bladed propeller....
.
Career
Sykes's entertainment career began during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
while serving in a Special Liaison Unit
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
, when he met and worked with then Flight Lieutenant
Flight Lieutenant
Flight lieutenant is a junior commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many Commonwealth countries. It ranks above flying officer and immediately below squadron leader. The name of the rank is the complete phrase; it is never shortened to "lieutenant"...
Bill Fraser
Bill Fraser
-External links:* *...
. When the war ended Sykes decided to try his luck in London, arriving in the middle of the coldest winter in living memory (1946-47). He rented lodgings, expecting to find work quickly, but by the end of the first week he was cold, hungry and penniless. The turning point in his life and career came on the Friday night of his first week in London: he had a chance meeting in the street with Bill Fraser, who was then starring in a comedy at the Playhouse Theatre
Playhouse Theatre
The Playhouse Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square. The Theatre was built by F. H. Fowler and Hill with a seating capacity of 1,200. It was rebuilt in 1907 and still retains its original substage machinery...
. Fraser took the impoverished Sykes to the theatre, offered him food and drink, and then asked if Sykes would like to write for him. Sykes began providing scripts for both Fraser and Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
and soon found himself in demand as a comedy writer, co-writing with Sid Colin
Sid Colin
Sid Colin was an English screenwriter, working for both television and the cinema. He is best rememberd for the television comedies The Army Game , Up Pompeii! and the film Percy's Progress...
the successful BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio series Educating Archie
Educating Archie
Educating Archie was a BBC Light Programme comedy show broadcast from June 1950 to February 1958 on Sunday lunchtimes featuring ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll Archie Andrews. The programme was successful despite a ventriloquist on radio seeming strange, though in the United States, Edgar...
, where he first met Hattie Jacques
Hattie Jacques
Josephine Edwina Jaques was an English comedy actress, known as Hattie Jacques.Starting her career in the 1940s, Jacques first gained attention through her radio appearances with Tommy Handley on ITMA and later with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour...
, as well as Variety Bandbox
Variety Bandbox
Variety Bandbox was a British radio variety show transmitted by BBC Radio on the Light Programme. Featuring a mixture of comic performances and music, the show helped to launch the careers of a number of leading British performers....
. By 1948 he had begun writing for television.
1950s
In the early 1950s Sykes made a successful transition from radio to TV, writing a number of series episodes and one-off shows for the BBC. His credits in this period include The Howerd Crowd (1952), Frankie Howerd's Korean Party, Nuts in May and The Frankie Howerd Show, as well as The Big Man (1954) starring Fred EmneyFred Emney
Frederick Arthur Round "Fred" Emney was an English character actor and comedian.Emney was born in Lancashire, the son of Blanche and Fred Emney , a music hall entertainer. His uncle was the actor Arthur Williams. Emney junior grew up in London.He made his film debut in 1935, having previously...
and Edwin Styles
Edwin Styles
-Filmography:* Hell Below * Road House * The Five Pound Man * Patricia Gets Her Man * Adam and Evelyne * The Lady with the Lamp * Top Secret * Derby Day...
. During 1954 Sykes also made his first screen appearance in the 1954 army film comedy Orders Are Orders
Orders Are Orders
Orders Are Orders is a 1954 British comedy film directed by David Paltenghi, and featuring Peter Sellers, Sid James, Tony Hancock, Raymond Huntley, Donald Pleasence and Eric Sykes. It was a remake of the 1933 film Orders Is Orders.-Synopsis:...
, which also featured Sid James
Sid James
Sid James was an English-based South African actor and comedian. He made his name as Tony Hancock's co-star in Hancock's Half Hour and also starred in the popular Carry On films. He was known for his trademark "dirty laugh" and lascivious persona...
, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Bill Fraser and Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
.
Late in 1954 Sykes began collaborating with Spike Milligan on scripts for The Goon Show, easing Milligan's workload. Their first collaborative script was for a Goon Show special called Archie in Goonland, a crossover between The Goon Show and the radio ventriloquism show Educating Archie
Educating Archie
Educating Archie was a BBC Light Programme comedy show broadcast from June 1950 to February 1958 on Sunday lunchtimes featuring ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll Archie Andrews. The programme was successful despite a ventriloquist on radio seeming strange, though in the United States, Edgar...
(for which Sykes had also been writing). The special was broadcast in June 1954 and featured the regular Goon Show cast plus Peter Brough
Peter Brough
Peter Brough was an English radio ventriloquist who became a well-known name to audiences in the 1950s. He is associated with the puppet Archie Andrews.-Radio days:...
, his dummy Archie Andrews
Archie Andrews (puppet)
Archie Andrews was a ventriloquist's dummy used by ventriloquist Peter Brough in a radio and television show in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. In its radio format it was called Educating Archie. The bizarre concept of delivering a ventriloquist act, a visual humour, by radio, an audio medium,...
and Hattie Jacques. It was not a success, however, and the recordings and scripts have not survived. Sykes and Milligan are credited as the co-writers of all but the first six of the 26 episodes in Series 5 (1954–55) and three episodes of Series 6 (1955–56); Sykes also wrote a 15-minute Goon Show Christmas special, The Missing Christmas Parcel, broadcast during the Children's Hour
Children's Hour
Children's Hour—at first: "The Children's Hour", from a verse by Longfellow—was the name of the BBC's principal recreational service for children during the period when radio dominated broadcasting....
on 8 December 1955.
In the early 1950s, as The Goon Show rapidly gained popularity, Spike Milligan married for the first time and began a family. This reportedly distracted him from writing so much that he accepted an invitation to share Sykes's small office above a grocer's shop at 130 Uxbridge Road
Uxbridge Road
Uxbridge Road is the name of the A4020 road in London. It starts at Shepherd's Bush Green and goes west towards Uxbridge. It passes through Acton, Ealing Broadway and Hanwell....
, Shepherd's Bush
Shepherd's Bush
-Commerce:Commercial activity in Shepherd's Bush is now focused on the Westfield shopping centre next to Shepherd's Bush Central line station and on the many small shops which run along the northern side of the Green....
. Sykes, a long-time Goons fan, was then writing for the popular radio comedy series Educating Archie, in which Harry Secombe
Harry Secombe
Sir Harry Donald Secombe CBE was a Welsh entertainer with a talent for comedy and a noted fine tenor singing voice. He is best known for playing Neddie Seagoon, the central character in the BBC radio comedy series The Goon Show...
was also appearing).
During this period Sykes originated the idea of forming a non-profit, co-operative writers' agency; Milligan then approached rising comedy writing partners Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
Galton and Simpson
Ray Galton OBE , and Alan Simpson OBE , are British scriptwriters who met in 1948 at a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Surrey county sanatorium near Godalming, on which the sitcom Get Well Soon was based...
with the proposal. Taking vacant space above Sykes's office, they jointly formed Associated London Scripts (ALS) with Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
and the manager of both Sykes and Howerd, Stanley Dale. Their original secretary Beryl Vertue
Beryl Vertue
Beryl Vertue is an English television producer and media executive. She is founder and chairman of the independent television production company Hartswood Films....
, a former schoolmate of Simpson's, later became the firm's business affairs manager and in-house agent. Tony Hancock briefly joined the collective, and other notable members included Terry Nation
Terry Nation
Terry Nation was a Welsh screenwriter and novelist.He is probably best known for creating the villainous Daleks in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who...
, Johnny Speight and John Antrobus.
The venture eventually grew to include around thirty writers, with a support staff of twelve. By 1957 it had outgrown the Shepherd's Bush offices and moved to larger premises in Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street is the main shopping street in Kensington, west London. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. Around 1960 ALS sold the Kensington offices and purchased even more prestigious premises at Orme Court in the fashionable Bayswater Road
Bayswater Road
Bayswater Road is the main road running across the north of Hyde Park, London. To the east Bayswater Road becomes Oxford Street . It is where the fictional upper middle class Forsyte family live in the BBC series the Forsyte Saga...
, adjacent to Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
. In the mid-1960s Robert Stigwood
Robert Stigwood
Robert Stigwood is an impresario and entertainment entrepreneur who relocated to England in 1954...
offered to buy ALS; Galton and Simpson favoured the deal (because Stigwood was moving into film production) but Sykes and Milligan did not, so they sold their controlling shares in the company to Stigwood, while Galton and Simpson (to their later regret) sold their share of Orme Court to Milligan and Sykes. Milligan later sold his half to Sykes, who reportedly retained the freehold on the valuable property into the 21st century. Wanting to move into production, Beryl Vertue opted to go with Stigwood; she subsequently became a leading independent producer and deputy chairman of the Robert Stigwood Group.
In 1955 Sykes wrote and performed in a BBC Christmas spectacular, a spoof pantomime called Pantomania, which featured many well-known BBC personalities of the era; it was directed by Ernest Maxin
Ernest Maxin
Ernest Maxin is a British television producer and director. He is best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with Kathy Kirby, Dick Emery, Dave Allen, Les Dawson, and probably most notably Morecambe and Wise.-External links:...
, who went on to produce some of the most famous comedy routines for Morecambe & Wise. That same year Sykes signed a contract as scriptwriter and variety show presenter for the newly formed independent television company ATV
Associated TeleVision
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
, while continuing to write and perform for the BBC.
In 1956 Sykes performed, wrote scripts, and acted as script editor for the pioneering Rediffusion
Associated-Rediffusion
Associated-Rediffusion, later Rediffusion, London, was the British ITV contractor for London and parts of the surrounding counties, on weekdays between 1954 and 29 July 1968. Transmissions started on 22 September 1955.-Formation:...
TV comedy The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d
The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d
The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d was the first serious attempt to translate the humour of the Goon Show to television. It was made by Associated-Rediffusion during 1956 and was broadcast only in the London area....
, the first attempt to translate the humour of the Goons to television. It starred Peter Sellers, with Sykes, Kenneth Connor
Kenneth Connor
Kenneth Connor MBE was an English comedy stage, radio, film and TV actor, best known for his appearances in the Carry On films.-Career:...
and Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall was an English character actor, the son of veteran actor Franklin Dyall. Dyall was especially popular as a voice actor, due to his very distinctive sepulchral voice, he was known for many years as "The Man in Black", narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment With Fear.In...
. During this year he also made his second film appearance, playing a minor role in the Max Bygraves
Max Bygraves
Max Bygraves OBE is an English comedian, singer, actor and variety performer. He appeared on his own television shows, sometimes performing comedy sketches between songs...
film Charley Moon
Charley Moon
Charley Moon is a 1956 British film directed by Guy Hamilton. It stars Max Bygraves, Dennis Price and Shirley Eaton.-Cast:* Max Bygraves as Charley Moon* Dennis Price as Harold Armytage* Michael Medwin as Alf Higgins* Florence Desmond as Mary Minton...
, which also featured Bill Fraser, Peter Jones
Peter Jones (actor)
Peter Jones was an English actor, screenwriter and broadcaster.-Early life and career:Jones was born in Wem, Shropshire and he was educated at the Wem Grammar School and Ellesmere College. He made his first appearance as an actor in Wolverhampton at the age of 16 and then appeared in repertory...
, Dennis Price
Dennis Price
Dennis Price was an English actor, remembered for his suave screen roles, particularly Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and for his portrayal of the omniscient valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G...
and (as a child) Jane Asher
Jane Asher
Jane Asher is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.-Early life:...
. During 1956–57, Sykes also wrote for and performed in The Tony Hancock Show
The Tony Hancock Show
The Tony Hancock Show was a black-and-white British sketch show starring Tony Hancock that was broadcast for two series from 1956 to 1957. It was written by Eric Sykes, Larry Stephens and Ray Galton and Alan Simpson...
, where he again worked with Hattie Jacques.
His next venture for the BBC was a one-hour special, Sykes Directs a Dress Rehearsal, playing a harassed director in a fictional TV studio rehearsal room, just before going live to air. Later that year he wrote and appeared in another all-star spectacular called Opening Night which celebrated the opening of the 1956 National Radio Show at Earl's Court. In 1957 he created Closing Night, which closed the 1957 show.
By this time Sykes had developed hearing problems; he subsequently lost most of his hearing, but learned to lip-read and watch other performers say their lines in order to get his cues. In 1957 he wrote and appeared in an edition of Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular, the first of two shows in this series that he wrote for Peter Sellers. The first went out under the title of Eric Sykes Presents Peter Sellers, and the second, in 1958, was called The Peter Sellers Show.
In 1959 Sykes wrote and directed the one-off BBC special Gala Opening, with a cast that included Professor Stanley Unwin
Stanley Unwin (comedian)
Stanley Unwin , sometimes billed as Professor Stanley Unwin, was a British comedian and comic writer, and the inventor of his own language, "Unwinese", referred to in the film Carry On Regardless as "gobbledegook".Unwinese was a mangled form of English in which many of the...
and Hattie Jacques, and played a small supporting role in the Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...
film Tommy the Toreador
Tommy the Toreador
Tommy the Toreador is a 1959 British musical comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs and starring Tommy Steele, Janet Munro, Sid James, Bernard Cribbins, Noell Purcell and Kenneth Williams...
.
1960s
At the turn of the decade Eric Sykes and his old friend and colleague Hattie Jacques co-starred in a new 30-minute BBC TV sitcom, Sykes and A...Sykes and A...
Sykes and a... is a black-and-white British sitcom starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques that aired on BBC1 from 1960 to 1965. It was written by Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, John Antrobus and Spike Milligan...
, which Sykes created in collaboration with writer Johnny Speight, who had worked with Eric in the 1950s on the Tony Hancock shows. The original concept for the series had Eric living in suburbia with his wife, with simple plots centring on everyday problems, but Sykes soon realized that by changing the house-mate from wife to sister it offered more scope for storylines and allowed either or both to become romantically entangled with other people.
In the revised concept, Sykes played a version of his established stage persona, a bumbling, work-shy, accident-prone bachelor called Eric Sykes, who lives at 24 Sebastopol Terrace, East Acton
East Acton
East Acton is a place in west London, England. It is partly in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and partly in the London Borough of Ealing...
, with his unmarried twin sister Harriet, played by Jacques. The other regular cast members were Deryck Guyler
Deryck Guyler
Deryck Guyler was an English actor, best known for his portrayal of officious, short-tempered middle-aged men in sitcoms such as Please Sir! and Sykes.-Early life:...
as local constable Wilfred "Corky" Turnbull and Richard Wattis
Richard Wattis
Richard Cameron Wattis , was an English character actor.He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the family electrical engineering firm before becoming a professional actor. After his debut with Croydon Repertory Theatre he made many stage...
as their snobbish, busybody neighbour Charles Brown. Wattis left the show after Series 3 and his departure was explained by having Mr Brown emigrating to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. Other guests included Hugh Lloyd
Hugh Lloyd
Hugh Lewis Lloyd, MBE was an English actor who made his name in television and film comedy from the 1960s to the 1980s. He was best known for appearances in Hugh and I and other sitcoms of the 1960s.-Life:...
, John Bluthal
John Bluthal
John Bluthal is a Polish-born British film and television actor, mostly in comedy. He is best known for his work with Spike Milligan and for his roles in the television series Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width and The Vicar of Dibley.-Early life:Bluthal was born in Galicia, Poland, of Jewish...
, Leo McKern
Leo McKern
Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian-born British actor who appeared in numerous British and Australian television programmes and movies, and more than 200 stage roles.-Early life:...
and Arthur Mullard
Arthur Mullard
Arthur Ernest Mullard, original surname Mullord was an English comedy actor.- Early life :...
.
The first series (five episodes, all written by Johnny Speight) premiered on 29 January 1960 and were an immediate hit, establishing "Eric and Hat" as one of Britain's most popular and enduring comedy partnerships. The second series of six episodes (written from storylines suggested by Speight) were mostly written by Sykes, although he co-wrote one episode each with John Antrobus and Spike Milligan. All subsequent episodes were written solely by Sykes.
Nine short seasons of Sykes and A... were made between 1960 and 1965, ranging between six and nine episodes each, plus a short 1962 special in the BBC's annual Christmas Night with the Stars
Christmas Night with the Stars
Christmas Night with the Stars was a variety television show broadcast each Christmas night by the BBC from 1958 to 1972 and also in 1994. The show featured the top stars of the BBC as they appeared in short versions of their programmes, typically five to ten minutes long. The show was voted 24th...
programme. Thirty-four of the original fifty-nine episodes have been lost (either overwritten, discarded or just missing) from the BBC archives, as is the 1962 Christmas Night with the Stars featuring the Sykes and his Sister short. It was during this series that Sykes introduced one of his best known creations, the wordless slapstick routine The Plank, which originally appeared in Episode 2, Series 7 of Sykes And A..., first broadcast on 3 March 1964 under that title.
In December 1961 Sykes co-starred with Warren Mitchell
Warren Mitchell
Warren Mitchell is an English actor who rose to initial prominence in the role of bigoted cockney Alf Garnett in the BBC television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part , and its sequels Till Death... and In Sickness and in Health , all of which were written by Johnny Speight...
in Clicquot et Frils, a one-off, 30-minute comedy written by ALS colleagues Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. This was the premiere episode of a new BBC series Comedy Playhouse
Comedy Playhouse
Comedy Playhouse was a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 120 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served?...
, which became an important proving ground for new TV comedy. Numerous episodes were subsequently developed into their own successful series, including Meet the Wife
Meet the Wife
Meet the Wife is a 1960s BBC situation comedy written by Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe, which featured Freddie Frinton as Freddie Blacklock with Thora Hird as his tyrannical wife, Thora. It ran to five series....
, Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about two rag and bone men living in Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old...
, Til Death Us Do Part
Til Death Us Do Part
Till Death Us Do Part is a British television sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1965 to 1968, 1970, and from 1972 to 1975. First airing as a Comedy Playhouse pilot, the show aired in seven series until 1975. Six years later, ITV continued the sitcom, calling it Till Death......
, All Gas and Gaiters
All Gas and Gaiters
All Gas and Gaiters was a British television ecclesiastical sitcom which aired on BBC1 from 1966 to 1971. It was written by Pauline Devaney and Edwin Apps, a husband-and-wife team who used the pseudonym of "John Wraith" when writing the pilot...
, The Liver Birds
The Liver Birds
The Liver Birds is a British situation comedy, set in Liverpool, Merseyside, North-West of England, which aired on BBC1 from 1969 to 1978, and again in 1996. It was created by Carla Lane and Myra Taylor. The two Liverpool housewives had met at a local writers club and decided to pool their talents...
, Are You Being Served?
Are You Being Served?
Are You Being Served? is a British sitcom broadcast from 1972 to 1985. It was set in the ladies' and gentlemen's clothing departments of Grace Brothers, a large, fictional London department store. It was written mainly by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, with contributions by Michael Knowles and John...
and Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast on BBC One. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and...
.
In 1962 Sykes played his first starring film role, being a travelling salesman in the comedy Village of Daughters
Village of Daughters
Village of Daughters is a 1962 British comedy film directed by George Pollock.-Plot:Herbert Harris is a traveling salesman who makes his way into a remote Italian village to sell his wares. There, he finds many single and attractive women who all pursue him madly. He quickly learns that the village...
, set in an Italian village, but featuring a mostly British cast including John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is most famous for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the popular 1970s BBC comedy Dad's Army.-Career:...
(who was at that time married to Hattie Jacques), Warren Mitchell and Roger Delgado
Roger Delgado
Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto was an English actor, best known for his role as the first Master in Doctor Who....
. This was followed by a supporting role in the MGM (UK) comedy, Kill or Cure, starring Terry-Thomas
Terry-Thomas
Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...
with a cast of British comedy stalwarts including Dennis Price
Dennis Price
Dennis Price was an English actor, remembered for his suave screen roles, particularly Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and for his portrayal of the omniscient valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G...
, Moira Redmond
Moira Redmond
Moira Redmond was a British actress.She was born in Bognor Regis, England, the daughter of the actress Molly Redmond and her husband who was a stage manager...
, Lionel Jeffries
Lionel Jeffries
Lionel Charles Jeffries was an English actor, screenwriter and film director.-Early life and career:Jeffries attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. In 1945, he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry...
, David Lodge
David Lodge (actor)
David William Frederick Lodge was a British character actor.Before turning to acting he worked as a circus clown...
and it also featured one of the first film appearances by Ronnie Barker
Ronnie Barker
Ronald William George "Ronnie" Barker, OBE was a British actor, comedian, writer, critic, broadcaster and businessman...
. Both films were made by the same writer-director team behind the popular Margaret Rutherford
Margaret Rutherford
Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford DBE was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest...
Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...
film, Murder She Said.
During 1965, Sykes made what proved to be the final series of Sykes and A... and appearing in three major films. He had a small role in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes is a 1965 British comedy film starring Stuart Whitman and directed and co-written by Ken Annakin...
, joining an all-star cast of British TV and film luminaries including Terry-Thomas, Tony Hancock, Robert Morley
Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...
and Flora Robson
Flora Robson
Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...
, as well as US stars Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
and Red Skelton
Red Skelton
Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...
. The spy spoof The Liquidator
The Liquidator (film)
The Liquidator is a 1965 MGM film starring Rod Taylor as Brian "Boysie" Oakes, Trevor Howard as his Intelligence Chief Mostyn and Jill St. John as Mostyn's secretary Iris MacIntosh. It was based on the first of a series of Boysie Oakes novels by John Gardner, The Liquidator.-Plot:The film follows...
was directed by Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
and starred Rod Taylor with Sykes, Jill St. John
Jill St. John
Jill St. John is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Tiffany Case, the lead Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever.-Early life:...
, Trevor Howard
Trevor Howard
Trevor Howard , born Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith, was an English film, stage and television actor.-Early life:...
, Akim Tamiroff
Akim Tamiroff
Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian actor. He won the first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire , of Armenian ethnicity. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors...
, Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...
, David Tomlinson
David Tomlinson
David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was an English film actor. He is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, fraudulent magician Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and as hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug.-Early life:Born...
, John Le Mesurier and Derek Nimmo
Derek Nimmo
Derek Robert Nimmo was an English character actor. He was particularly associated with upper-class "silly-ass" roles, and clerical roles.-Career:...
. His third film of that year was the Boulting brothers' Rotten to the Core starring Anton Rogers (who replaced Peter Sellers) with Sykes - this featured an early screen appearance by Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling, OBE is an English actress. Her career spans four decades in English-language as well as French and Italian cinema.- Early life :...
.
In 1966 Sykes had a minor film role in the spy spoof The Spy with a Cold Nose
The Spy with a Cold Nose
The Spy with a Cold Nose is a 1966 British comedy film directed by Daniel Petrie.-Cast:* Laurence Harvey as Dr. Francis Trevelyan* Daliah Lavi as Princess Natasha Romanova* Lionel Jeffries as Stanley Farquhar* Eric Sykes as Wrigley...
, written by Galton and Simpson, which also featured Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...
, Lionel Jeffries, Eric Portman
Eric Portman
Eric Portman was a distinguished English stage and film actor...
, Denholm Elliott
Denholm Elliott
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...
and June Whitfield
June Whitfield
June Rosemary Whitfield, CBE is an English actress, well known in the United Kingdom since the 1950s for roles in radio and television comedy series....
.
In 1967 Sykes had expanded his routine for The Plank into a 45-minute wordless colour short The Plank featuring Sykes, Tommy Cooper
Tommy Cooper
Thomas Frederick "Tommy" Cooper was a very popular British prop comedian and magician from Caerphilly, Wales.Cooper was a member of The Magic Circle, and respected by traditional magicians...
, Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards DFC was an English comedic script writer and comedy actor on both radio and television, best known as Pa Glum in Take It From Here and as the headmaster 'Professor' James Edwards in Whack-O!-Biography:...
, Roy Castle
Roy Castle
Roy Castle OBE was an English dancer, singer, comedian, actor, television presenter and musician. He attended Honley High School, where there is now a building in his name...
, Graham Stark
Graham Stark
Graham Stark is an English comedian, actor, writer and director.Stark was born in Wallasey on the Wirral in Cheshire, England. He first came to prominence on BBC Radio, making his debut in Happy Go Lucky and going on to Ray's A Laugh, Educating Archie and substitute on The Goon Show...
, Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns
Stratford Johns, born Alan Edgar Stratford-Johns, was a popular British stage, film and television actor who is best remembered for his starring role as Detective Inspector Charlie Barlow in the innovative and long-running BBC police series Z-Cars, created by Troy Kennedy-Martin.-Early life:Johns...
, Jim Dale
Jim Dale
Jim Dale, MBE is an English actor, voice artist, singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United Kingdom for his many appearances in the Carry On series of films and in the US for narrating the Harry Potter audiobook series, for which he received two Grammy Awards, and the ABC series Pushing...
, Jimmy Tarbuck
Jimmy Tarbuck
Jimmy Tarbuck OBE or Tarby is an English comedian. Growing up he was a schoolmate of John Lennon.His first television show was It's Tarbuck 65! on ITV in 1964. He has also hosted numerous quiz shows, including Winner Takes All, Full Swing, and Tarby's Frame Game...
, Hattie Jacques and future Goodies
The Goodies
The Goodies are a trio of British comedians who created, wrote, and starred in a surreal British television comedy series called The Goodies during the 1970s and early 1980s combining sketches and situation comedy.-Honours:All three Goodies now have OBEs...
star Bill Oddie
Bill Oddie
William "Bill" Edgar Oddie OBE is an English author, actor, comedian, artist, naturalist and musician, who became famous as one of The Goodies....
. Also in 1967 Sykes and his old comrade Jimmy Edwards started touring with the theatrical farce Big Bad Mouse
Big Bad Mouse
Big Bad Mouse is a frequently revived 1960s British stage play and theatrical comedic farce that, although not specifically written for them, became famous as a loose vehicle for the many talents of the British comedy actors Jimmy Edwards and Eric Sykes and has constantly seen various revivals with...
which, while keeping more or less to a script, gave them rein to ad lib and address the audience. They would return to the production on and off until 1975, touring the UK twice and also taking the show abroad, including to Australia.
Returning to television, Sykes and Jacques appeared in the 1967 special Sykes Versus ITV with Tommy Cooper and Ronnie Brody
Ronnie Brody
Ronnie Brody was a British actor who appeared in many comedy television series and films.His film appearances included: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Carry On Loving and The Beatles film Help!....
. In 1968 he had a supporting role in a British-American film co-production, the Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...
western Shalako
Shalako (film)
Shalako is a 1968 British western film directed by Edward Dmytryk, starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. Stephen Boyd portrayed a classic western villain. Jack Hawkins played an upper class Englishman abroad in the "new" country...
, starring Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...
and Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...
.
In 1969 Sykes co-starred with Spike Milligan in what proved to be one of the few major flops of his career, the ill-fated television sit-com Curry & Chips, a satire on racial prejudice created and written by Johnny Speight and made for London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
. Milligan, who had grown up in India, played Kevin O'Grady, a half-Pakistani half-Irish man who comes to work in a British factory and ends up boarding with his ineffectual foreman Arthur Blenkinsop (Sykes), who has to regularly defend Kevin against his racist workmates. The supporting cast included pop singer turned actor Kenny Lynch
Kenny Lynch
Kenny Lynch, OBE is an English singer, songwriter, entertainer and actor from London. Lynch appeared in many variety shows in the 1960s...
, Geoffrey Hughes
Geoffrey Hughes
Geoffrey Hughes, DL is an English actor.As well as a wide range of TV and film appearances, Hughes is best known for a series of supporting roles in popular UK television dramas...
, Norman Rossington
Norman Rossington
Norman Rossington was an English actor best remembered for his roles in The Army Game, the Carry On films and the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night.-Early life:...
, Sam Kydd
Sam Kydd
Sam Kydd was an Ulster-born English actor. An army officer's son, he was born in Belfast, but moved to London, England when he was a child. He was educated at Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England....
, Jerrold Wells and Fanny Carby as Arthur and Kevin's landlady. The series provoked a storm of complaints about its liberal use of racist epithets and bad language (although Sykes refused to swear, as he has done throughout his career). It was cancelled on the orders of the Independent Broadcasting Authority
Independent Broadcasting Authority
The Independent Broadcasting Authority was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television - and commercial/independent radio broadcasts...
after six episodes.
Also in 1969, Sykes wrote, directed and performed in two comedy short films in the style of The Plank. It's Your Move
It's Your Move (1982 film)
It's Your Move is the title of two short films written and directed by Eric Sykes . The story of both films involves a married couple moving into a new home and enduring the ineptitude of removal men. As with most other films directed by Sykes, the action unfolds in a style echoing the silent,...
was a wordless slapstick comedy depicting the travails of young couple (Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
and Sylvia Sims) moving into a new home, who hire an accident-prone firm of house removers, headed by Sykes. It featured an all-star cast including Tommy Cooper, Bernard Cribbins
Bernard Cribbins
Bernard Cribbins, OBE is an English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian with a career spanning over half a century who came to prominence in films in the 1960s, has been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid 1950s, and as of 2010 is still an active...
, Jimmy Edwards, Irene Handl
Irene Handl
-Life:Irene Handl was born in Maida Vale, London, the daughter of an Austrian banker father and French mother. She took to acting at the relatively advanced age of 36, and studied at the acting school run by the sister of Dame Sybil Thorndike...
, Bob Todd
Bob Todd
Bob Todd was an English comedy actor, mostly known for appearing as a straight man in the sketch shows of Benny Hill and Spike Milligan. For many years he lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent....
and Andrew Sachs
Andrew Sachs
Andrew Sachs is a German-born British actor. He made his name on British television and is best known for his portrayals of Manuel in Fawlty Towers, a role for which he was BAFTA-nominated, and Ramsay Clegg in Coronation Street.-Early life:Sachs was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Katharina , a...
. In Rhubarb all the characters interact using only the word "rhubarb". The idea was drawn from the British showbiz tradition in which extras used the word "rhubarb" to simulate low-level background dialogue, and the expression was a running joke in The Goon Show. The cast list included Sykes, Hattie Jacques, Harry Secombe, Jimmy Edwards and Carry On regular Kenneth Connor, with a rare on-screen appearance by Johnny Speight.
Sykes also made another minor film appearance in 1969 in the comedy Monte Carlo or Bust!, which was also titled as Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies.
1970s
In 1970 Sykes returned to BBC television with a guest appearance in an episode of Till Death Us Do Part. This was followed in 1971 by a six episode series Sykes and A Big, Big ShowSykes and a Big, Big Show
Sykes and a Big, Big Show is a British sitcom-sketch show that aired on BBC1 in 1971. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Eric Sykes and directed by Harold Snoad and Douglas Argent...
for the BBC and a special Sykes: With the Lid Off for Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
.
In 1972, seven years after the cancellation of Sykes and A..., the BBC revived the series under the title Sykes
Sykes
Sykes is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1972 to 1979. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Eric Sykes, who had previously starred with Jacques in Sykes and A... and Sykes and a Big, Big Show ....
. Eric and Hat (who had by then moved to 28 Sebastopol Terrace) were rejoined by both Richard Wattis as the snooty Mr Brown (who had returned from Australia) and Derek Guyler as PC "Corky" Turnbull.
Forty-three of the shows in the Sykes series were re-workings of scripts from the 1960s series, which had been filmed in monochrome
Monochrome
Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
. These included a remake of the 1960s episode Sykes and a Stranger, which had originally featured Leo McKern but in the new version saw Peter Sellers taking the role of a childhood sweetheart of Hattie's who arrives on the Sykes's doorstep claiming Hattie as his fiancé.
Sixty-eight episodes of Sykes were made between 1972 and 1979. Richard Wattis died suddenly in February 1975, so from Series 4 onwards his character was replaced by a new neighbour, Melanie Rumbelow, played by Joy Harrington. Carry On veteran Joan Sims
Joan Sims
Joan Sims was an English actress best remembered for her roles in the Carry On films, and latterly for playing Madge Hardcastle in As Time Goes By.-Early life:...
also made occasional appearances as Madge Kettlewell, the widowed local baker who fancies Eric. The series was brought to an enforced end by Hattie Jacques's death from a heart attack in October 1980.
In 1973 Sykes had a small role as a police sergeant in the Douglas Hickox
Douglas Hickox
Douglas Hickox was an English film director. Hickox was born in London, where he was educated at Emanuel School. Hickox worked extensively as an assistant director and second unit director throughout the 50's and early 60's, making his first major picture in 1970...
thriller Theatre of Blood
Theatre of Blood
Theatre of Blood is a horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart. The cast includes such distinguished actors as Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Joan Hickson, Robert...
, starring Vincent Price
Vincent Price
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...
with an all-star supporting cast including Jack Hawkins
Jack Hawkins
Colonel John Edward "Jack" Hawkins CBE was an English actor of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.-Career:Hawkins was born at Lyndhurst Road, Wood Green, Middlesex, the son of master builder Thomas George Hawkins and his wife, Phoebe née Goodman. The youngest of four children in a close-knit family,...
, Diana Rigg
Diana Rigg
Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service....
, Robert Morley, Diana Dors
Diana Dors
Diana Dors was an English actress, born Diana Mary Fluck in Swindon, Wiltshire. Considered the English equivalent of the blonde bombshells of Hollywood, Dors described herself as: "The only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva."-Early life:Diana Mary Fluck was born in Swindon,...
, Michael Hordern
Michael Hordern
Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...
, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price
Dennis Price
Dennis Price was an English actor, remembered for his suave screen roles, particularly Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and for his portrayal of the omniscient valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G...
and Milo O'Shea.
In 1977, Sykes wrote and starred in another television special, Eric Sykes Shows a Few of Our Favourite Things, with Hattie Jacques, Irene Handl, Jimmy Edwards and Peter Cook
Peter Cook
Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath," although Cook's...
. He also wrote the script for the 1977 Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television, now officially known as ITV Yorkshire and sometimes unofficially abbreviated to YTV, is a British television broadcaster and the contractor for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV network...
adaptation of Charley's Aunt
Charley's Aunt
Charley's Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances....
and appeared in the role of Brassett, playing alongside Jimmy Edwards and Judi Maynard.
The third version of The Plank
The Plank (1979 film)
The Plank is a popular 30-minute, 1979 British slapstick comedy, which was a remake of an earlier 1967 version of the film which was written and directed by Eric Sykes. The 1967 version of "The Plank" was, in turn, based on an episode called "Sykes and A Plank", which Eric Sykes wrote for his...
was made in 1979 for Thames TV
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
as a half-hour TV special, with a cast including Eric, Arthur Lowe (taking Tommy Cooper's role), Charlie Drake
Charlie Drake
Charlie Drake was an English comedian, actor, writer and singer.With his small stature , curly red hair and liking for slapstick he was a popular comedian with children in his early years, becoming nationally-known for his "Hello, my darlings" catchphrase...
, Charles Hawtrey and Wilfrid Hyde-White.
Sykes was the subject of Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
's This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life (UK TV series)
This Is Your Life is a British biographical television documentary, based on the 1952 American show of the same name. It was hosted by Eamonn Andrews from 1955 until 1964, and then from 1969 until his death in 1987 aged 64...
, broadcast on 25 December 1979 with guests including Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...
, Spike Milligan, Douglas Bader
Douglas Bader
Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader CBE, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, FRAeS, DL was a Royal Air Force fighter ace during the Second World War. He was credited with 20 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged.Bader joined the...
and Hattie Jacques.
1980s to present
Sykes wrote and appeared in two Thames TelevisionThames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
specials broadcast during 1980 -- The Likes of Sykes and Rhubarb Rhubarb
Rhubarb Rhubarb
Rhubarb Rhubarb is a 30 minute television comedy special made by Thames TV and transmitted in 1980. The special is a re-make of Eric Sykes' 1969 film, Rhubarb.-Plot:...
. The latter special, a remake of his 1969 short film Rhubarb which Sykes also directed, featured many of his old friends including Jimmy Edwards, Bob Todd, Charlie Drake, Bill Fraser, Roy Kinnear
Roy Kinnear
Roy Mitchell Kinnear was an English character actor. He is best remembered for playing Veruca Salt's father, Mr. Salt, in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.-Early life:...
, Beryl Reid
Beryl Reid
Beryl Elizabeth Reid, OBE was a British actress of stage and screen.-Early life:Born in Hereford, England in 1919, Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools.-Career:Reid applied for and was accepted in a revue in...
and Norman Rossington. It was his last screen appearance with Hattie Jacques.
In 1981 Sykes wrote, directed and starred in the offbeat comedy If You Go Down in the Woods Today
If You Go Down in the Woods Today
If You Go Down in the Woods Today is the name of a British TV film comedy released in 1981, written, directed and starring Eric Sykes, also featuring Robin Bailey and Norman Bird amongst a cast of dozens. The film, produced by Thames TV, has been described by Sykes as 'a comedy thriller, an Agatha...
for Thames, with a cast including Roy Kinnear, Fulton Mackay
Fulton Mackay
Fulton Mackay OBE was a Scottish actor and playwright, best known for his role as prison officer Mr. Mackay in the 1970s sitcom Porridge.-Early life:...
and George Sewell
George Sewell
George Sewell was an English actor.-Early life and early career:The son of a Hoxton printer and a florist; Sewell left school at age 14 and worked briefly in the printing trade before switching to building work, specifically the repair of bomb-damaged houses...
.
During 1982 Sykes played the Chief Constable in the slapstick police comedy film The Boys in Blue
The Boys in Blue
The Boys in Blue is a 1982 British comedy film directed by Val Guest and starring Tommy Cannon, Bobby Ball, Suzanne Danielle and Roy Kinnear. It is loosely based on the 1938 Will Hay film Ask a Policeman...
, which starred the comedy duo Cannon and Ball
Cannon and Ball
Cannon and Ball are an English comedy double act consisting of Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball. The duo met in the early 1960s while working as welders in Oldham, Lancashire...
, with Jon Pertwee
Jon Pertwee
John Devon Roland Pertwee , was an English actor. Pertwee is best known for his role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which he played the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge...
. For Thames TV that year he also appeared in and wrote The Eric Sykes 1990 Show with Tommy Cooper and Dandy Nichols
Dandy Nichols
-References:* Dandy Nichols at screenonline.* Dandy Nichols at The Museum of Broadcast Communications.-External links:...
and It's Your Move
It's Your Move
It's Your Move is an American sitcom starring Jason Bateman, Tricia Cast, Caren Kaye, Ernie Sabella, David Garrison, and Garrett Morris. The show originally aired on NBC from 1984 to 1985.-Premise:...
, a remake of his 1969 short film featuring virtually all of the cast from the original.
In 1984 Sykes played the Genie in the children's film Gabrielle and the Doodleman, which also featured Windsor Davies
Windsor Davies
Windsor Davies is a British actor, well known for playing the part of Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the 1970s/1980s British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum.-Early life and career:...
(who would also appear with Sykes in the BBC's Gormenghast in 2000), Bob Todd, Lynsey De Paul
Lynsey De Paul
Lynsey de Paul is an English singer-songwriter. Allmusic journalist, Craig Harris stated, "one of the first successful female singer-songwriters in England, de Paul has had an illustrious career".-Early life:De Paul was born to Meta and Herbert Rubin, a property developer...
and Gareth Hunt
Gareth Hunt
Alan Leonard Hunt was an English actor, known as Gareth Hunt, best remembered for playing the footman Frederick Norton in Upstairs, Downstairs and Mike Gambit in The New Avengers.-Early life:...
.
In 1985 he played the Mad Hatter
Mad Hatter
Hatta, the Hatter is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the story's sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. He is often referred to as the Mad Hatter, though this term was never used by Carroll...
in the Anglia Television
Anglia Television
Anglia Television is the ITV franchise holder for the East Anglia franchise region. Although Anglia Television takes its name from East Anglia, its transmission coverage extends beyond the generally accepted boundaries of that region. The station is based at Anglia House in Norwich, with regional...
serial adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, joining an all-star cast that included Paul Eddington
Paul Eddington
Paul Eddington CBE was an English actor best known for his appearances in popular television sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s: The Good Life, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.-Early life:...
, Michael Bentine
Michael Bentine
Michael Bentine CBE was a British comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goons. A Peruvian Briton by heritage as a result of his father's nationality, In 1971 Bentine received the Order of Merit of Peru because of his fund-raising work for the 1970 Great Peruvian...
, Eleanor Bron
Eleanor Bron
Eleanor Bron is an English stage, film and television actress and author.-Early life and family:Bron was born in 1938 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin...
, Leslie Crowther
Leslie Crowther
Leslie Crowther, CBE was an English comedian, actor and gameshow host.-Biography:Crowther was born in West Bridgford in Nottinghamshire. At the end of 1944 he moved to London with his parents, but was evacuated for a few months to Bute until just after the war ended.His father, Leslie Frederick...
, Leonard Rossiter
Leonard Rossiter
Leonard Rossiter was an English actor known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp , and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin...
and Joan Sanderson
Joan Sanderson
Joan Sanderson was an English television and stage actress. During a long career she invariably played dragonish dowagers, stuck-up spinsters and suburban matrons.-Theatre:...
, and he also had an uncredited role (as an arcade attendant) in the Julien Temple
Julien Temple
Julien Temple is an English film, documentary and music video director. He began his career with short films featuring the Sex Pistols, and has continued with various off-beat projects, including The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners and a documentary film about Glastonbury.-Temple...
film musical Absolute Beginners
Absolute Beginners
Absolute Beginners is a novel by Colin MacInnes, written and set in 1958 London, England. It was published in 1959. The novel is the second of MacInnes' London Trilogy, coming after City Of Spades and before Mr. Love and Justice...
, starring Patsy Kensit
Patsy Kensit
Patricia Jude Francis "Patsy" Kensit is an English actress, singer, model and former child star, known for her television and film appearances. Her films include Lethal Weapon 2 and she has been married to rock stars Jim Kerr and Liam Gallagher, as well as herself fronting the band Eighth Wonder...
with David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Ray Davies
Ray Davies
Ray Davies, CBE is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for the Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave...
, James Fox
James Fox
James Fox, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:James Fox was born in London, England to theatrical agent Robin Fox and actress Angela Worthington. He is the brother of actor Edward Fox and film producer Robert Fox. The actress Emilia Fox is his niece and the actor Laurence Fox is his son. His...
and Mandy Rice-Davies
Mandy Rice-Davies
Mandy Rice-Davies , is a Welsh former model and showgirl best known for her role in the Profumo affair and her association with Christine Keeler, which discredited the Conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963.-Early life:She was born Marilyn Rice-Davies in...
, the former friend of Christine Keeler
Christine Keeler
Christine Margaret Keeler is an English former model and showgirl. Her involvement with a British government minister discredited the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1963, in what is known as the Profumo Affair....
with whom she was involved in the famous Profumo Scandal in the 1960s.
In 1986 Sykes played Horace Harker in the "The Six Napoleons", an episode of the Granada TV adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories starring Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett , born Peter Jeremy William Huggins, was an English actor, most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in four Granada TV series.-Early life:...
.
Sykes toured Australia with the play Run for Your Wife (1987–88) with a cast that included Jack Smethurst
Jack Smethurst
Jack Smethurst is an English TV and film comic actor whose career dates back to the 1950s.-Career:Smethurst made his film debut in 1958's Carry On Sergeant...
, David McCallum
David McCallum
David Keith McCallum, Jr. is a Scottish actor and musician. He is best known for his roles as Illya Kuryakin, a Russian-born secret agent, in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as interdimensional operative Steel in Sapphire & Steel, and Dr...
and Katy Manning
Katy Manning
Katy Manning is an English actress best known for her part as the companion Jo Grant in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She has also made many theatre appearances, and is now a citizen of Australia. She is myopic...
.
In 1989, Sykes starred as the Secretary in the ITV situation comedy The Nineteenth Hole, written by Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight , was a British television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.He emerged in the mid 1950s. He wrote for the radio comics; Frankie Howerd, Vic Oliver, Arthur Askey, and Cyril Fletcher. For television he wrote for the Arthur Haynes Show, Morecambe & Wise, and Peter Sellers...
, it was not a success and ran for only one series.
From 1997, Sykes, together with Tim Whitnall
Tim Whitnall
Tim Whitnall , is a British actor, musician, playwright and screenwriter probably best known for his portrayal of the alien Angelo on the British CITV sitcom Mike and Angelo....
and Toyah Willcox
Toyah Willcox
Toyah Ann Willcox is an English actress and singer. In a career spanning more than thirty years Toyah has had 13 top 40 singles, released 22 studio albums, written two books, appeared in over forty stage plays and ten feature films, as well as voicing and presenting numerous television shows...
, provided narration for the BBC pre-school TV series Teletubbies
Teletubbies
Teletubbies is a BBC children's television series targeted at pre-school viewers and produced from 1997 to 2001 by Ragdoll Productions. It was created by Ragdoll's creative director Anne Wood CBE and Andrew Davenport, who wrote each of the show's 365 episodes. The programme's original narrator was...
. It is his voice that announces "Teletubbies!" during the title sequence and on the Teletubbies theme music
Teletubbies say "Eh-oh!"
Teletubbies say "Eh-oh!" is a hit single which was number one in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in December 1997. It remained in the Top 75 for 29 weeks after its first release and three weeks more after two re-releases and sold well enough to be certified as double-platinum. It is mostly a...
which became a number one single in December 1997.
In 2000 Sykes appeared as Mollocks, the servant of Dr Prunesquallor, in the BBC's mini-series adaptation of Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
's Gormenghast
Gormenghast series
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, featuring Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book.-Works in the series:...
, which was the last production to feature both Sykes and Milligan (although they did not appear together on screen), and Milligan's last screen appearance before his death in 2002. In 2001 he had one of his few serious screen roles, playing a servant in the blockbuster supernatural thriller film The Others
The Others (2001 film)
The Others is a 2001 psychological horror film by the Spanish-Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman. It is inspired partly by the novella The Turn of the Screw....
, starring Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
. In 2005 he played Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling, published on 8 July 2000.The novel won a Hugo Award in 2001, the only Harry Potter novel to do so...
.
In the British New Year's Honours List
British honours system
The British honours system is a means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories...
published on 31 December 2004, Sykes was awarded a CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for services to drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
, following a petition by MPs
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
as a consequence of his having been excluded from the Birthday Honours List. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted among the top 50 acts by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Also in 2005, his autobiography If I Don't Write It, Nobody Else Will was published.
In 2007 he appeared in Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast on BBC One. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and...
and in New Tricks, as well as taking a small role in an episode of the sitcom My Family.
In October 2010 Sykes appeared in Hallowe'en Party
Hallowe'en Party
Hallowe'en Party is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1969 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for twenty-five shillings. In preparation for decimalisation on...
, an episode in the twelfth series of Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
.
Personal life
Sykes became partially deaf as an adult. His spectacles contain no lenses but are a bone-conductingBone conduction
Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull.Bone conduction is the reason why a person's voice sounds different to him/her when it is recorded and played back. Because the skull conducts lower frequencies better than air, people perceive their own...
hearing aid
Hearing aid
A hearing aid is an electroacoustic device which typically fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and modulate sound for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as "ear trumpets" or "ear horns", were passive funnel-like amplification cones designed to gather sound energy and...
. Disciform macular degeneration
Macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration is a medical condition which usually affects older adults and results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field because of damage to the retina. It occurs in “dry” and “wet” forms. It is a major cause of blindness and visual impairment in older adults...
, brought about by age and possibly smoking, has left Sykes partially-sighted, and he is registered as blind. He is a patron of the Macular Disease Society. In 2002 he suffered a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
and underwent heart bypass surgery.
He married Edith Eleanore Milbrandt on 14 February 1952 and they have three daughters, Catherine, Julie, Susan, and a son, David.
Sykes is an honorary president of the Goon Show Preservation Society
Goon Show Preservation Society
The Goon Show Preservation Society is a non-profit organisation formed to help preserve and research the history of the Goon Show. It was founded in 1972 by the Kent born Michael Coveney ....
.
Awards
- 1961 Guild of TV Producers and Directors' Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1964 BBC TV Personality of the Year
- 1980 Pye Colour TV Award
- 1980 The Golden Rose of Montreux (for The Plank)
- 1985 The 25th Golden Rose of Montreux
- 1986 OBEOrder of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
- 1988 Freedom of The City of LondonCity of LondonThe City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
- 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from Writers' Guild of Great BritainWriters' Guild of Great BritainThe Writers' Guild of Great Britain, established in 1959, is a trade union for professional writers. It is affiliated with both the Trades Union Congress and the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds .-Activities:...
- 1998 Honorary Fellowship of University of LancasterLancaster UniversityLancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a leading research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at...
- 1998 Eric MorecambeEric MorecambeJohn Eric Bartholomew OBE , known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the award-winning double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death of a heart attack in 1984...
Award from Comic Heritage - 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grand Order of Water RatsGrand Order of Water RatsThe Grand Order of Water Rats is an entertainment industry charity, and brotherhood, based in London. The Water Rats were founded in 1889 by comedian Joe Elvin. The first King Rat, as the head of the charity is termed, was music hall singer Harry Freeman. Comedian Dan Leno joined in 1890 and was...
- 2001 Bernard Delfont Award for outstanding contribution to show business from the Variety Club of Great Britain
- 2002 OldieThe OldieThe Oldie is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons, and has an eclectic list of contributors, including James Le Fanu, John Sweeney, Thomas Stuttaford, Virginia Ironside,...
of the Year - 2004 CBEOrder of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
Films created by and starring Eric Sykes
- Pantomania, or Dick Whittington (1956)
- Opening Night (1956)
- Dress Rehearsal (1956)
- Closing Night (1957)
- Gala Opening (1959)
- The Liquidator (1965)
- The Plank (1967)
- It's Your Move (1969)
- RhubarbRhubarb (1969 film)Rhubarb was a 1969 British short film written and directed by Eric Sykes, starring Sykes and Harry Secombe. The dialogue consisted entirely of repetitions of the word "rhubarb", all the characters last names were "Rhubarb", and even the license plates on vehicles were "RHU BAR B"...
(1969) - Mr. H is Late (1969)
- Sykes: With the Lid Off (1971)
- Eric Sykes Shows a Few of our Favourite Things (1977)
- The PlankThe Plank (1979 film)The Plank is a popular 30-minute, 1979 British slapstick comedy, which was a remake of an earlier 1967 version of the film which was written and directed by Eric Sykes. The 1967 version of "The Plank" was, in turn, based on an episode called "Sykes and A Plank", which Eric Sykes wrote for his...
(1979), a remake of The Plank (1967) - Rhubarb RhubarbRhubarb RhubarbRhubarb Rhubarb is a 30 minute television comedy special made by Thames TV and transmitted in 1980. The special is a re-make of Eric Sykes' 1969 film, Rhubarb.-Plot:...
(1980), a remake of RhubarbRhubarb (1969 film)Rhubarb was a 1969 British short film written and directed by Eric Sykes, starring Sykes and Harry Secombe. The dialogue consisted entirely of repetitions of the word "rhubarb", all the characters last names were "Rhubarb", and even the license plates on vehicles were "RHU BAR B"...
(1969) - The Likes of Sykes (1980)
- If You Go Down in the Woods TodayIf You Go Down in the Woods TodayIf You Go Down in the Woods Today is the name of a British TV film comedy released in 1981, written, directed and starring Eric Sykes, also featuring Robin Bailey and Norman Bird amongst a cast of dozens. The film, produced by Thames TV, has been described by Sykes as 'a comedy thriller, an Agatha...
(1981) - It's Your MoveIt's Your Move (1982 film)It's Your Move is the title of two short films written and directed by Eric Sykes . The story of both films involves a married couple moving into a new home and enduring the ineptitude of removal men. As with most other films directed by Sykes, the action unfolds in a style echoing the silent,...
(1982), a remake of It's Your Move (1969) - Mr. H Is Late (1988)
- The Big FreezeThe Big Freeze (1993 film)The Big Freeze is a featurette-length film written and directed by Eric Sykes. The action centres around mishaps involving a father and son plumbing team attending to business in sub-zero temperatures at a retirement home in Finland. Like other Sykes directorial vehicles, the piece is a silent...
(1993)
Television series or specials created by and starring Eric Sykes
- Sykes and a...Sykes and A...Sykes and a... is a black-and-white British sitcom starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques that aired on BBC1 from 1960 to 1965. It was written by Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight, John Antrobus and Spike Milligan...
(1960-651960 in televisionThe year 1960 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1960.For the American TV schedule, please see: 1960-61 American network television schedule.-Events:...
series) - Sykes and a Big Big Show (1971 series)
- SykesSykesSykes is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1972 to 1979. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Eric Sykes, who had previously starred with Jacques in Sykes and A... and Sykes and a Big, Big Show ....
(1972-791972 in televisionThe year 1972 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1972.For the American TV schedule, see: 1972-73 American network television schedule.-Events:...
series)
Other roles
The following entries are films unless otherwise stated.- Orders Are OrdersOrders Are OrdersOrders Are Orders is a 1954 British comedy film directed by David Paltenghi, and featuring Peter Sellers, Sid James, Tony Hancock, Raymond Huntley, Donald Pleasence and Eric Sykes. It was a remake of the 1933 film Orders Is Orders.-Synopsis:...
(1954) - Kill or Cure (1962)
- Village of DaughtersVillage of DaughtersVillage of Daughters is a 1962 British comedy film directed by George Pollock.-Plot:Herbert Harris is a traveling salesman who makes his way into a remote Italian village to sell his wares. There, he finds many single and attractive women who all pursue him madly. He quickly learns that the village...
(1962) - Heavens Above!Heavens Above!Heavens Above! is a 1963 British satirical comedy film starring Peter Sellers, directed by John and Roy Boulting, who also co-wrote along with Frank Harvey, from an idea by Malcolm Muggeridge...
(1963) - The BargeeThe BargeeThe Bargee is a 1964 British comedy film directed by Duncan Wood, and starring Harry H. Corbett, Hugh Griffith, Eric Sykes and Ronnie Barker. The screenplay was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.-Plot:...
(1964) - One Way PendulumOne Way PendulumOne Way Pendulum is a 1964 British comedy film directed by Peter Yates and starring Eric Sykes and George Cole. It is an adaptation of the play by N. F. Simpson.-Cast:* Eric Sykes as Mr. Groomkirby* George Cole as Defense counsel/friend...
(1964) - Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying MachinesThose Magnificent Men in Their Flying MachinesThose Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes is a 1965 British comedy film starring Stuart Whitman and directed and co-written by Ken Annakin...
(1965) - Rotten to the Core (1965)
- The Spy with a Cold NoseThe Spy with a Cold NoseThe Spy with a Cold Nose is a 1966 British comedy film directed by Daniel Petrie.-Cast:* Laurence Harvey as Dr. Francis Trevelyan* Daliah Lavi as Princess Natasha Romanova* Lionel Jeffries as Stanley Farquhar* Eric Sykes as Wrigley...
(1966) - ShalakoShalako (film)Shalako is a 1968 British western film directed by Edward Dmytryk, starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. Stephen Boyd portrayed a classic western villain. Jack Hawkins played an upper class Englishman abroad in the "new" country...
(1968) - Monte Carlo or BustMonte Carlo or BustMonte Carlo or Bust is a 1969 comedy film. The story is based on the Monte Carlo Rally - first raced in 1911 - and the film recalls this general era, set in the 1920s. The film is a British/French/Italian co-production, and was released in the United States under the title Those Daring Young Men in...
(1969) - Theatre of BloodTheatre of BloodTheatre of Blood is a horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart. The cast includes such distinguished actors as Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Joan Hickson, Robert...
(1973) - dinnerladiesDinnerladiesDinnerladies is a British sitcom written, co-produced by and starring Victoria Wood. It ran on BBC One for 16 episodes from 1998 to 2000.-Plot:...
(TV) (1999) - Gormenghast (miniseriesMiniseriesA miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
) (2000) - Mavis and the Mermaid (short film) (2000)
- The OthersThe Others (2001 film)The Others is a 2001 psychological horror film by the Spanish-Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman. It is inspired partly by the novella The Turn of the Screw....
(2001) - Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film)Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a 2005 fantasy film directed by Mike Newell and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the fourth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman...
(2005) - New Tricks (TV) (2007)
- My FamilyMy Family (TV series)My Family is a British television comedy, created and initially co-written by Fred Barron, which was produced by DLT Entertainment and Rude Boy Productions, and broadcast by BBC One for eleven series between 2000 and 2011, with Christmas specials broadcast from 2002 onwards...
(TV) (2007) - Heartbeat (TV) (2007)
- Son of RambowSon of RambowSon of Rambow is a 2008 comedy-drama film written and directed by Garth Jennings. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival. It was later shown at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Glasgow Film...
(2007) - Agatha Christie's PoirotAgatha Christie's PoirotAgatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
: Hallowe'en Party (TV film) (2010)
Records
- Dr Kildare/Bedtime Story (Y7092, 7 inch single, Decca Records 1962) with Hattie Jacques
- Eric and Hattie and Things (LK 4507, LP, Decca Records 1962) with Hattie Jacques