Harry Secombe

Sir Harry Donald Secombe (8 September 1921 – 11 April 2001) was a Welsh actor, comedian, singer and television presenter.

After leaving school in 1937, Secombe became a pay clerk at Baldwin's store.

With war looming, he decided in 1938 that he would join the Territorial Army.

Very short sighted, he got a friend to tell him the sight test, and then learnt it by heart.

He served as a Lance Bombardier in No.132 Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

He referred to the unit in which he served during the Second World War in the North African Campaign, Sicily, and Italy, as "The Five-Mile Snipers".

While in North Africa Secombe met Spike Milligan for the first time.

In Sicily he joined a concert party and developed his own comedy routines to entertain the troops.

He made his first radio broadcast in May 1944 on a variety show aimed at the military services.

Following the end of fighting in the war but prior to demobilisation, Secombe joined a pool of entertainers in Naples and formed a comedy duo with Spike Milligan.

Secombe joined the cast of the Windmill Theatre in 1946, using a routine he had developed in Italy about how people shaved.

An early review said that Secombe was "an original humorist of the infectious type and is very funny in a series showing how different men shave and in an impression of a vocalist."

Secombe always claimed that his ability to sing could always be counted on to save him when he bombed.

Secombe was a member of the British radio comedy programme The Goon Show (1951–1960), playing many characters, most notably Neddie Seagoon.

After a regional touring career, his first break came in radio in 1951 when he was chosen as resident comedian for the Welsh series Welsh Rarebit, followed by appearances on Variety Bandbox and a regular role in Educating Archie.

Secombe met Michael Bentine at the Windmill Theatre, and he was introduced to Peter Sellers by his agent Jimmy Grafton.

Together with Spike Milligan, the four wrote a comedy radio script, and Those Crazy People was commissioned and first broadcast on 28 May 1951.

In 1955, whilst appearing on The Goon Show, Secombe was approached by the BBC to step in at short notice to take the lead in the radio comedy Hancock's Half Hour.

The star of the show, Tony Hancock, had decided to take an unannounced break abroad, on the day before the live airing of the second season.

Secombe appeared in the lead for the first three episodes and had a guest role in the fourth after Hancock's return.

In 1958 he appeared in the film Jet Storm, which starred Dame Sybil Thorndike and Richard Attenborough and in the same year Secombe starred in the title role in Davy, one of Ealing Studios' last films.

The power of his voice allowed Secombe to appear in many stage musicals.

Produced by Dennis Main Wilson, this soon became The Goon Show and the show remained on the air until 1960.

Secombe mainly played Neddie Seagoon, around whom the show's absurd plots developed.

This included 1963's Pickwick, based on Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, which gave him the no. 18 hit single "If I Ruled the World" – his later signature tune.

In 1965 the show was produced on tour in the United States, where, on Broadway, he garnered a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Secombe scored his biggest hit single in 1967 with his version of "This Is My Song", which peaked at no. 2 on the charts in March 1967 while a recording by Petula Clark, which had hit no. 1 in February, was still in the top ten.

He also appeared in the musical The Four Musketeers (1967) at Drury Lane, as Mr. Bumble in Carol Reed's film of Oliver! (1968), and in the Envy segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971).

An accomplished tenor, he also appeared in musicals and films – notably as Mr Bumble in Oliver! (1968) – and, in his later years, was a presenter of television shows incorporating hymns and other devotional songs.

Secombe was born in St Thomas, Swansea, the third of four children of Nellie Jane Gladys (née Davies), a shop manageress, and Frederick Ernest Secombe, a commercial traveller and office worker for a Swansea wholesale grocery business.

From the age of 11 he attended Dynevor School, a state grammar school in central Swansea.

His family were regular churchgoers, belonging to the congregation of St Thomas Church.

A member of the choir, from the age of 12 Secombe would perform a sketch entitled The Welsh Courtship at church socials, acting as "feed" to his Sister Carol.

His elder brother, Fred Secombe, became the author of several books about his experiences as an Anglican priest and rector.

He went on to star in his own television show, The Harry Secombe Show, which debuted on Christmas Day 1968 on BBC1 and ran for 31 episodes until 1973.

When Secombe visited the Falkland Islands to entertain the troops after the 1982 Falklands War, his old regiment promoted him to the rank of sergeant – 37 years after he had been demobbed.

All four episodes are lost, but following the discovery of the original scripts, the episodes were rerecorded in 2017, with his son, Andrew Secombe performing the role held by his late father.

With the success of The Goon Show, Secombe developed a dual career as both a comedy actor and a singer.

At the beginning of his career as an entertainer, his act would end with a joke version of the duet Sweethearts, in which he sang both the baritone and falsetto parts.

Trained under Italian maestro Manlio di Veroli, he emerged as a bel canto tenor (characteristically, he insisted that in his case this meant "can belto") and had a long list of best-selling record albums to his credit.