Bob Monkhouse

In 1940 he got the urge to sell cartoon drawings and sold the first one to Mickey Mouse Weekly which was of a sack of coal next to a bottle of port to make the name Coalport. and was listed as R.A. Monkhouse of Dpuglas Close, West Worthing.

He was a movie buff and collector of many rare films. He was particularly fond of the horror genre and was very knowledgeable on the subject. Once said that his favorite film was Vincent Price's Dragonwyck (1946). He was also Honorary President of the long running Gothique Film Society during the 1960s and 1970s.

One of British TV's most popular performers with a career that spanned over four decades, funny-man Bob Monkhouse started off as a radio broadcaster (1947) and stand-up comic. He earned success early on as a gag writer, partnering with Denis Goodwin.

His role of the barber in Secret People (1952) was much bigger but a lot of it was cut due to the film being too long.

In 1953, the duo won their own TV show called Fast and Loose (1954), which was sketch-comedy based.

WIth his long standing writing partner Dennis Goodwin they created and starred in the BBC sketch series 'Fast and Loose' and in December 1956 ITV was presenting 'The Bob Monkhouse Show'. In 1958 he and Dennis were in a second series of 'My Pal Bob which they shot on film and leased to the BBC for one showing only.

A nightclub comedian to boot, he also pursued films on occasion appearing in such slapstick dillies as Carry On Sergeant (1958), Dentist in the Chair (1960), Dentist on the Job (1961) and A Weekend with Lulu (1961). But TV would be his prime venue, and he moved quite easily into various parlor game and variety show hosting duties.

For Love or Money (1959) was his first, a Brit version of "Candid Camera".

He and Leslie Phillips swapped roles in Weekend With Lulu (1961).

He was originally scheduled for either Stanley Baxter's or Leslie Phillips' roles in The Fast Lady (1962).

Along the way, he found emceeing chores with The London Palladium Show (1966), The Golden Shot (1967) (which made him a household name), Celebrity Squares (1975) (based on The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965)), Family Fortunes (1980), "The $64,000 Question", Opportunity Knocks (1956), The National Lottery (1994), and many others.

He was scheduled for a role in Up the Junction (1967) but had to drop out due to commitments.

His filmed role in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) ended up on the cutting room floor.

He was a guest at the Royal Variety Performance in 1986.

He was the original choice for the cameo role of the Tollmaster (eventually taken by his comic contemporary Ken Dodd) in Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen: Part One (1987).

Two of his three children had predeceased him. His son Gary, who had cerebral palsy, died in 1992. His other son, Simon, died in a Bangkok hotel room from a heroin overdose in 2001. Father and son had been estranged for almost a decade.

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to entertainment and charity.

He owned a Sony CV-2000, one of the first video recorders, which was introduced in 1965 and he used it to capture many of his own television performances which would otherwise not exist today. Over the period from the late 1960s until his death, his collection grew to a vast library of over 150,000 hours of material. As television companies routinely wiped their own copies in those days, many shows in the Monkhouse collection are unique. Upon his death all this material, in addition to hundred of hours of personal audio copies of radio shows commencing in the 1940s, were passed to an archivist for transfer to a permanent digital record.

Monkhouse died of prostate cancer in 2003. Yet, in 2007, he made a "comeback", appearing in a new TV campaign advertising a prostate cancer charity. The ad, made with the blessing of his widow, blends footage of Monkhouse with that of a body double then adds CGI manipulation of his face to match what is being spoken by a sound-alike.