Frankie Howerd

Howerd was born the son of a soldier Francis Alfred William (1887–1934) and Edith Florence Howard (née Morrison, 1888–1962), at the City Hospital in York, England, in 1917 (not 1922 as he later claimed).

His mother worked at the Rowntree's factory.

The family lived in Hartoft Street, which he later described as "a poorish area of the city near the River Ouse".

He retained an affection for his home city, to which he often returned.

When his father was posted to Woolwich, the family moved to Eltham, London while he was a young child, and he was educated at Shooter's Hill Grammar School in Shooter's Hill.

His first stage appearance was at age 13 but his early hopes of becoming a serious actor were dashed when he failed an audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He began to entertain during World War II service in the British Army.

It was at this time that he adapted his surname to Howerd "to be different".

Francis Alick Howard (6 March 1917 – 19 April 1992), better known by his stage-name Frankie Howerd, was an English actor and comedian.

In 1944 he became a bombardier in Plymouth, was promoted to sergeant, and on 6 June 1944 was part of the D-Day effort but was stuck on a boat off Normandy.

Despite suffering from stage fright, he continued to work after the war, beginning his professional career in the summer of 1946 in a touring show called For the Fun of It.

His act was soon heard on radio, when he made his debut, in early December 1946, on the BBC's Variety Bandbox programme with a number of other ex-servicemen.

His profile rose in the immediate postwar period (aided with material written by Eric Sykes, Galton and Simpson and Johnny Speight).

Sykes had headed a rival concert party during the war and was asked by Howerd if he could provide his material; Sykes obliged and offered to write anything more Howerd needed.

Sykes punctuated the material with various 'ooh's and 'ahh's to provide "punctuation pauses" in the delivery, but Howerd decided to deliver these verbatim.

Howerd then toured the Music Hall circuit with an act including what became his standard catch-phrases such as "titter ye not".

He also became a regular in the 1950s editions of the weekly hard-copy comic Film Fun.

In 1954 he made his screen debut opposite Petula Clark in The Runaway Bus, which had been written for his specific comic talent.

Filming took five weeks, with a budget of £45,000.

He then experimented with different formats and contexts, including stage farces, Shakespearean comedy roles, and television sitcoms.

At the start of the 1960s, he began to recover his old popularity, initially with a season at Peter Cook's satirical Establishment Club in Soho in London.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he was involved in shows for the BBC and Thames Television (as well as Frankie Howerd Reveals All for Yorkshire Television in 1980).

He was boosted further by success on That Was the Week That Was (TW3) in 1963 and on stage with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1963–1965), which led into regular television work.

In 1966 and 1967, he co-hosted a 90-minute Christmas show called The Frankie and Bruce Christmas Show with Bruce Forsyth, featuring many top acts of the day.

Howerd appeared as Francis Bigger, one of the lead characters in 1967's Carry On Doctor, of which Variety noted, "Added zest is given by the inclusion of Frankie Howerd as a quack 'mind-over-matter' doctor who becomes a reluctant patient. Howerd's brilliantly droll sense of comedy is given plenty of scope."

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson wrote for him from 1964 to 1966 when he worked for the BBC and also for a one-off show for Thames, Frankie Howerd meets the Bee Gees, shown on 20 August 1968.

He was known for his seemingly off-the-cuff remarks to the audience, especially in the show Up Pompeii! (1969–70), which was a direct follow-up from Forum.

His television work was characterised by direct addresses to camera and by his littering monologues with verbal tics such as "Oooh, no missus" and "Titter ye not".

A later sale of his scripts, however, showed that the seemingly off-the-cuff remarks had all been meticulously planned.

Barry Cryer said of his technique: "What he could do with a script was amazing, like all the great performers. He transformed something you'd just written – what you hoped was in a Frankie Howerd idiom – but when you heard him do it, my God, it was something else; – it was gossiping over the garden wall, the apparent waffle – he was like a tightrope walker, you thought he's going to fall off in a minute, you thought, 'Come on, Frank', we're waiting for a laugh, and then, suddenly, Bang. He knew exactly what he was doing."

Another feature of his humour was to feign innocence about his obvious and risqué double entendres, while mockingly censuring the audience for finding them funny.

The success of the film version of Up Pompeii in 1971 saw British exhibitors vote him the ninth most popular star at the British box office that year.

He would play versions of the character Lurcio in Up the Chastity Belt (Lurkalot), also in 1971, and Up the Front (Boot Boy Lurk) in 1972.

In 1971 Howerd recorded, with June Whitfield, a comedy version of the song "Je t'aime", previously recorded by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, in which she featured as "Mavis" alongside Howerd's "Frank", and a third unexplained sleeping partner named "Arthur".

In 1976, Howerd appeared in The Frankie Howerd Show on CBC Television in Canada.

It received good ratings but was not renewed.

He was awarded an OBE in 1977.

In 1978, Howerd appeared in the big-budget Hollywood musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band playing Mean Mr Mustard, acting alongside musical and film talent such as Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, George Burns, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Steve Martin.

He was cast by producer Robert Stigwood as he was on Stigwood's record label at the time.

The song was included in the 2004 CD re-issue of Oh! What a Carry On!.