Web Page  No 2378

10th June 2017

Top Picture: The Half Penny and Farthing

Second Picture: A Bun Penny

Third Picture: A Florin

Forth Picture: A White Fiver

Money

When we were kids there seemed to be far more money about. I do not mean amounts but physically as in coins and notes of the Realm. If and when we started to receive pocket money a shilling seemed a fortune and a half crown was more money than we could of dreamt about. How many hours did we spend in learning how many pence to a shilling or half a crown or even a pound, no wonder foreign visitors became confused

The smallest denomination coin we had was, of course, the farthing (¼d) , from "fourthing", one quarter of a penny, or one nine hundred and sixtieth of a pound. Minted in bronze it replaced copper farthings and was used during the reign of six monarchs: Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II, ceasing to be legal tender in 1960. It featured two different designs on its reverse during its  years in circulation from Britannia  and from 1937 onwards a wren. Like all British coinage, it bore the portrait of the monarch on the obverse.

The halfpenny (½d) was 1/480th of a pound. Like the fathing it was originally minted in copper, but after 1860 in bronze. It ceased to be legal tender in 1969, in the run-up to decimalisation. The halfpenny featured two different designs on its reverse during its years in circulation. From 1672 until 1936 the image of Britannia appeared on the reverse, and from 1937 onwards the image of the Golden Hind. 

The Penny; Its symbol was d, from the Roman denarius. It was a continuation of the earlier English Penny. The penny was originally minted in silver, but from the late 18th century it was minted in copper and then after 1860 in bronze. This nickel brass version of the penny was made obsolete in 1971 by decimalisation, and was replaced by the decimal penny that we see today. When we handle an old penny today we wonder at the size and weight of them. One way of children saving was to collect ‘Bun Pennies’, ie penny coins with a portrait of Queen Victoria wearing her hair in a bun. They became increasingly rare as they were started to be withdrawn because of wear. 

From here on we progressed into silver coins. The sixpence (6d) the tanner or sixpenny bit, was worth 1/40th of a pound. It was first minted in the reign of Edward VI and circulated until 1980. Following decimalisation in 1971 it had a value of  2 ¹⁄₂ new pence. The coin was made from silver from its introduction in 1551 to 1947, and thereafter in cupronickel.

The British two shilling coin, also known as the "two bob bit", was issued from 1849 until 1967. It was worth twenty-four old pence. In 1968, in the run-up to decimalisation, the two shilling coin was superseded by the decimal ten pence coin, which had the same value and initially the same size and weight. It continued in circulation, alongside the ten pence coin, until 1992, when the 10p was reduced in size.

The Florin: Except for the short period during the reign of Edward III when a gold florin was struck by the Royal Mint, the florin did not feature as part of the British coinage until 1849. It was introduced as a concession to enthusiasts for a decimal system of coinage, being one-tenth of a pound in value. It owed its name not to any resemblance in shape or value to the gold florins but to the fact that it was about the same size as Dutch and Austrian florins current at that time. Its first issue aroused public indignation owing to the omission of the words DEI GRATIA and FIDEI DEFENSOR from Queen Victoria’s titles, the coin thereby commonly being known as the Godless or Graceless florin. This omission was soon corrected and the florin proved to be a useful addition to the silver circulation, if sometimes troublesome because of its close similarity in size to the half-crown.

The goal when we were kids and trying to save was to get as many half crowns in your money box as possible. A half crown was equivalent to two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound. The half crown was first issued in 1549, in the reign of Edward VI. No half crowns were issued in the reign of Mary, but from the reign of Elizabeth I half crowns were issued in every reign except Edward VIII, until the coins were discontinued in 1967. The half crown was demonetised (ahead of other pre-decimal coins) on 1 January 1970.

Well there we go a quick look at the coins we all used to have in our pockets. Maybe another time I will look at 10/-, £1, £5 (including white fivers) and the £10 notes. One thing I remember from my childhood is receiving, as presents, Postal Orders, but that is an entirely different subject.

 Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 10th June 1960-1965

On 10/06/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 10/06/1961 the number one single was Surrender - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 10/06/1962 the number one single was Good Luck Charm - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was England lose World Cup Quarter Final 3-1 to Brazil.

On 10/06/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Buddhist monk burns himself alive as protest.

On 10/06/1964 the number one single was You're My World - Cilla Black and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was 1st World Book Fair in London

On 10/06/1965 the number one single was Long Live Love - Sandie Shaw and the number one album was The Sound of Music Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was 750th anniversary of Magna Carta.

Web Page  No 2376

3^rd June 2017

Top Picture: Show Biz Eleven

Second Picture: The TV All Stars Football Club. Back Row: Bernie Winters, Jess Conrad, Pete Murray, Larry Taylor, Ray Merrill and Peter Thompson. Front Row: Unknown, Leslie Wise, Unknown, Mike Winters, Unknown, Tommy Steele.

Third Picture: The Modern Team

The Showbiz XI

For half a century, celebrities have risked making fools of themselves with no need for reality TV, by playing football all in a good cause

The lure of the football pitch for theatre folk has always been strong. Ever since football became a mass attraction, variety artists have been attached to the game. Before the First World War, George Robey, “The Prime Minister of Mirth”, organised charity fund-­raising matches involving top football stars and music-hall favourites, which drew large crowds. After the war, the tradition continued with teams representing actors, the cinema, pantomime artists, dance bands and the pioneering women’s team, Dick Kerr’s Ladies.

By the 1950s, with variety dying, the only regular such fixture was a Boxers v Jockeys match raising funds for sportsmen’s charities. But entertainment was being  transformed by  television and rock’n’roll and  in 1957this ­produced ­a charity football ­phenomenon – the Showbiz XI. 

Started in a coffee bar in Soho by disc jockey and song plugger Jimmy Henney and Cliff Richard’s manager, Franklyn Boyd, it was primarily an outlet for young musicians and actors to indulge themselves in a game that many of them might well have taken up professionally in different circumstances. Early line-ups included Sean Connery, Tommy Steele, Jimmy Tarbuck, Tony Newley, Lonnie Donegan, Des O’Connor and Patrick McGoohan, who was a rugged centre-half, plus various theatrical agents, managers and hangers-on. Although the team often trained at Highbury, ex-professional players featured rarely: only Billy Wright and Wally Barnes, a former Arsenal wing-half then working as a commentator, were ever-present.


Current pros were banned, of course. Stanley Matthews was reprimanded by the FA for appearing in a fund-raiser between the Tennis Stars and a Showbiz XI in December 1960 because the Showbiz team was “unaffiliated”. He was forced to give a written undertaking not to do it again.


One among the pioneers was Jess Conrad, unlike Tommy Steele, Sean Connery and many of the others, he boasted no athletic ability whatsoever. But he had a dream. “I went in goal because, when I was younger, a Russian ­goalkeeper, Lev Yashin, caught my imagination. The pictures of him were so reminiscent of Batman sweeping through the air, and he was dressed all in black.” The fact that he couldn’t kick a ball mattered little. For the next 40 years, Jess would earn quite a reputation as a shot-stopper, diving and risking his heavily insured teeth at the same time. He would ultimately captain, manage and organise the Showbiz XI. He also designed the logos, sourced the sponsors, negotiated with the FA, and packed the hampers as the various teams travelled to the four corners of the UK and beyond. When he was making movies, it was written into his contract that, every Saturday, wherever he was, he would be flown back to London to play.


He kept a record of every match and every score because they were deadly serious when it came to the result. He explained: “They wouldn’t have played if they hadn’t thought they were any good, they just wouldn’t have exposed themselves. We tried comedy football, which was a disaster, throwing buckets of water over people, silly hats, but people never ever came to see that, what they came to see was a football match at reasonable standard.”


They turned up in their thousands. In May 1957,  Alma Cogan kicked off a Showbiz XI game at West Ham in front of 23,000, while crowds often reached 30,000. Games were so popular that a “lighter” rival, the TV All-Stars, appeared. Mike and Bernie Winters picked teams featuring stars created by  ITV shows such as The Army Game, Emergency Ward 10 and Sunday Night At The London Palladium. Their matches would often feature slapstick silliness, which turned off some of the more traditionalist players.

When professional players led by Jimmy Hill were threatening to strike in 1961, the players’ union planned strike fund-raising matches. The Showbiz XI felt the cause was too political and declined to help, but the All-Stars obliged. George Eastham played alongside Mike and Bernie Winters, incurring the wrath of the FA.

The list of causes supported years is endless, from the Aberfan disaster to the Bradford Fire, Hillsborough to Dunblane, local hospices and special schools, Save The Valley, the Wishing Well Appeal, community centres. The roll-call of players includes Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks, David Frost, Nicky Campbell, Rod Stewart, Roy Castle, Freddie Starr, Dennis Waterman, Ray Winstone and Robbie Williams, and ex-players such as Vinnie Jones and Paul Gascoigne.


Injury forced Jess Conrad to quit in the 1980s. He bemoans the changes that have occurred saying “We came into the business as young, ordinary guys, and felt we had to give something back. Younger performers today want money and proper expenses. It’s more of a business, but there are bigger sponsors and it’s better publicised so we make more money.”


Cliff Richard apparently sacked Franklyn Boyd because he was always somewhere else with the Showbiz team. And Larry Parnes, Tommy Steele’s manager back in 1961, told him in no uncertain terms that, having just landed a starring role in a West End pantomime, he wasn’t to play football. Tommy goes off, plays – and breaks his leg. No way can he tell Parnes, so he gets smuggled into the theatre, makes his first entrance down the stairs from his dressing room – and pretends to fall down and break his leg. The understudy had to go on and Larry Parnes never learned the truth.”


Today, Jess Conrad is the Showbiz XI president and confines his role to introducing the team before the game.

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 3^rd June 1960-1965

On 03/06/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 03/06/1961 the number one single was Surrender - Elvis Presley and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 03/06/1962 the number one single was Good Luck Charm - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 03/06/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 03/06/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 03/06/1965 the number one single was Long Live Love - Sandie Shaw and the number one album was Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page  No 2374

27^th May 2017

Top Picture: Raleigh Bicycle advert

Second Picture: Raleigh Grifter

Third Picture: Raleigh Pink Witch

How Raleigh became Britain's most famous bike brand

How did it begin? 

In 1888, when Frank Bowden, a lawyer who had grown rich speculating on the stock exchange, bought a bike from a small Nottingham business called Woodhead, Angois and Ellis to help him recover from ill health. He was so impressed by his purchase that he bought Ellis's shares and eventually took full control the company, renaming it after the Raleigh brand that the original owners had established. The name was based on its location: Raleigh Street.

It succeeded very quickly. In an industry, that had been previously dominated by small, artisan bike-builders, Frank Bowden spotted the potential for growth and expanded so quickly that within 20 years Raleigh had become the biggest bike-building operation in the world, employing 850 employees and producing 56,000 bikes a year.

But what was its secret?  Frank Bowden was fortunate that his investment preceded two decades of innovations in bicycle design, most significantly the introduction of hub gears and cable brakes. Also adopting John Dunlop's pneumatic tyre helped, enabling Raleigh to broaden the bike's from the image of the Victorian gentleman to the working man.

However, Frank Bowden and his son, Sir Harold, who succeeded his father as chairman, were ahead of their time in many respects and could take much credit for the success too. They understood the potential in offering replica, mass-market versions of marquee products. They insisted on benevolent management and, as the decades passed, were careful always to celebrate the brand's rich heritage. Crucially, they also never allowed the quality of the product to decline, retaining all production within a Nottingham factory site that eventually ran to 40 acres.

 
No athlete did more for the company than Reg Harris, the brilliant Lancastrian who dominated track sprinting in the late 1940s and 1950s and whose bronze statue is in the Manchester Velodrome. Decades before all leading brands closely aligned themselves to superstar athletes, Raleigh ensured it was synonymous with Reg Harris in a career that included five world titles. In return, Reg Harris helped Raleigh to reach its peak period in the early 1950s when it sold more than a million bikes a year.

Raleigh suffered with the rest of the industry in the 1960s when small cars became widely affordable for the first time, turning bikes into reverse status-symbols associated with the poorly paid. As the cycling journalist Roger St Pierre said, "Suddenly, if you rode a bike, you were a pleb." The sudden decline in sales slowed only when Raleigh capitalised on the boom in small-wheeled bicycles and bought the Moulton company. But that venture was still not as successful as Raleigh's next big idea ...

With uneven wheels, a gear lever positioned to threaten the teenage groin and motorbike-style geometry, the Chopper was an unlikely design, yet Raleigh sold 1.5 million of them through the 1970s, plunging the company back into the black and creating an icon of popular culture whose passing many still mourn. (Unless, that is, they crashed while enjoying the precarious “backie” that the bike's L-shaped saddle encouraged. Such accidents led to several court cases in the United States.)

Today Raleigh is not so big in the cycling world though things have been turned around since the dark days of the 2000, when Raleigh's parent company fell bankrupt. With the launch of Team Raleigh in 2010, Raleigh began a belated, but much-needed assault on the market for high-end road bikes. Similarly, classic designs such as the Clubman and the TI Raleigh Team Replica prove the current ownership understands the draw of the company's history, a quality that some of their predecessors missed. Raleigh still dominates the market for children's bikes in the UK, too, possibly because former owners of the Boxer, Grifter, Bomber et al are keen for their offspring to enjoy similar thrills.

If you can afford more than two grand for a road bike, you would struggle to find a better value than the Raleigh Militis. The company's flagship marque has the same carbon frame and fork as the bike ridden by Team Raleigh.

One of the oddities that Raleigh produced was the Pink Witch targeted specifically a young teenage girls. It was only available in pink and came fitted with mirrors, a shopping basket on the front and even a lipstick holder!

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 27th May 1960-1965

On 27/05/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Wagon Train (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Sterling Moss wins Monaco Grand Prix.

On 27/05/1961 the number one single was You're Driving Me Crazy - The Temperance Seven and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Probation Officer (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 27/05/1962 the number one single was Good Luck Charm - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was London share values crash.

On 27/05/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 27/05/1964 the number one single was You're My World - Cilla Black and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 27/05/1965 the number one single was Long Live Love - Sandie Shaw and the number one album was Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions

Web Page  No 2372

20^th May 2017

Top Picture: Richard Wattis, Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques

Second Picture: With Tommy Cooper in The Plank

Third Picture: With Hattie Jacques and Harry Secombe

Eric Sykes,  (4th May 1923 – 4th July 2012)

When we were young right through to our adult lives Eric Sykes was forever on the TV or Radio but what we did not realise was that he was also a radio, stage, television and film writer, actor, and director whose career spanned more than 50 years. He wrote for and/or performed with many leading comedy performers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers and Johnny Speight. He first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC television series.

Born 4th May 1923 in Oldham; his mother died three weeks later. He was the second child of his parents' marriage. His father was a labourer in a cotton mill and a former army sergeant. When Eric was two, his father remarried and he gained a half-brother named John. Educated at Ward Street Central School in Oldham, Eric joined the RAF during the War, qualifying as a wireless operator with the rank of Leading Aircraftman.

His entertainment career began while serving in a Special Liaison Unit, where he met Flight Lieutenant Bill Fraser. He also collaborated with fellow RAF servicemen Denis Norden in the production of troop shows. Whilst preparing for one of these shows in 1945, he and  Denis Norden went to a nearby prison camp in search of stage lighting; the camp turned out to be the Bergen-Belsen which had recently been liberated. They organised a food collection among their comrades to feed the starving inmates.

When the war ended he 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 by the end of the first week he was cold, hungry, and penniless. The turning point came on the Friday night of this first week when he had a chance meeting with Bill Fraser, who was featuring in a comedy at the Playhouse Theatre. He took the impoverished Eric to the theatre, offered him food and drink, and then asked if he would like to write for him. Eric began providing scripts for both Bill Fraser and Frankie Howerd and soon found himself in demand as a writer. He worked on Educating Archie from 1950, and also Variety Bandbox. Working on Educating Archie led to him to meet Hattie Jacques for the first time.

His writing career had begun in 1948 but from the early 1950s he began to make a transition from radio to TV, writing one-off shows including 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 Emney. He also made his first screen appearance in the film Orders Are Orders (1954), which also featured Sid James, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Bill Fraser, and Donald Pleasence.

He shared a small office above a grocer's shop in Shepherd's Bush with Spike Milligan. Late in 1954 they began collaborating on scripts for The Goon Show, their first script was for a Goon Show special called Archie in Goonland, a crossover between The Goon Show and Educating Archie. The special was broadcast in June 1954 and featured the regular Goon Show cast plus Peter Brough and Archie Andrews and Hattie Jacques. It was not a success and neither a recording nor the script has survived. In 1955 Eric Sykes wrote and performed in a BBC Christmas spectacular, a spoof pantomime called Pantomania, which featured many well-known personalities of the era. That same year he signed a contract as scriptwriter and variety show presenter for the newly formed ATV, while continuing to write and perform for the BBC.

In 1956 he performed, wrote and acted as script editor for Rediffusion’s TV comedy The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d, trying to translate the humour of the Goons to television. It starred Peter Sellers, with Eric Sykes, Kenneth Connor, and Valentine Dyall. During this year he also made his second film, playing a minor role in the Max Bygraves film Charley Moon, which also featured Bill Fraser, Peter Jones, Dennis Price, and child actress Jane Asher. During 1956–57, he also wrote for and performed in The Tony Hancock Show, where he again worked with Hattie Jacques.

By this time he had developed hearing problems; he subsequently lost most of his hearing, but learned to lip-read and watch other performers. In 1959 he wrote and directed the BBC special Gala Opening, with a cast that included 'Professor' Stanley Unwin and Hattie Jacques and he had a role in the Tommy Steele film Tommy the Toreador.

In the 1960s Eric Sykes and his old friend Hattie Jacques co-starred in a new 30-minute BBC TV sitcom, Sykes and a..., created with Johnny Speight. The original concept had Eric living with his wife, with simple plots centring on everyday problems, but he soon realised that by changing the house-mate from wife to sister it offered more scope for storylines. In the revised concept Eric Sykes lived at 24 Sebastopol Terrace, East Acton, with his unmarried twin sister Harriet, played by Hattie Jacques. The other regular cast members were Deryck Guyler as local constable "Corky" Turnbull and Richard Wattis as their snobbish, busybody neighbour Charles Brown.

Nine short seasons of Sykes and A... were made between 1960 and 1965, ranging between six and nine episodes plus a short 1962 special in the BBC's annual Christmas Night with the Stars programme. Twenty-five of the original fifty-nine episodes of Sykes and A… have survived in the BBC archives. It was during this series that he introduced one of his best known creations, the wordless slapstick film The Plank.

In 1962 he played his first starring film role in Village of Daughters featuring a mostly British cast including John Le Mesurier (who was married to Hattie Jacques). During 1965, he made what proved to be the final series of Sykes and A... and appeared in three major films.

In 1967 he and his old comrade Jimmy Edwards started touring with the farce Big Bad Mouse and they would return to this on and off until 1975.

Returning to television, Eric and Hattie appeared in the 1967 special Sykes Versus ITV with Tommy Cooper.

In 1969 he starred with Spike Milligan in Curry and Chips, the series provoked a storm of complaints about its use of racist epithets and bad language (although Eric refused to swear, as he did throughout his career). It was cancelled after six episodes.

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In 1972, seven years after the cancellation of Sykes and A..., the BBC revived the series under the title Sykes. Sixty-eight colour episodes of Sykes were made between 1972 forty-three of the shows were re-workings of scripts from the 1960s series. The third version of The Plank was made in 1979 for Thames TV as a half-hour TV special. Eric was the subject of Thames Television's This Is Your Life, broadcast on 25th December 1979.

In the 1980s he wrote and appeared in a remake of his 1969 short film Rhubarb which featured 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 1985 he played the Mad Hatter in the Anglia Television adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, with Michael Bentine, Leslie Crowther, and Leonard Rossiter..

He toured Australia with Run for Your Wife (1987–88) with a cast that included Jack Smethurst and David McCallum. In 1989 in his first series since the Sykes series ended he starred as the secretary in the comedy The Nineteenth Hole it was not a success and ran for only one series.

From March 1997 together with Tim Whitnall, Toyah Willcox, and Mark Heenehan, he provided narration for the Teletubbies. It is his voice that announces "Teletubbies!" during the title sequence. 

In 2000 he appeared in Gormenghast and in 2001 he had one of his few serious screen roles, playing a servant in the thriller film The Others, also in 2005 he played Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Two years later he appeared in Last of the Summer Wine and in New Tricks, as well as My Family.

He became partially deaf as an adult. His hearing started to deteriorate in the  War and he had an operation in 1952 followed by another two years later. Recovering from the second procedure he discovered he was profoundly deaf. His spectacles contained no lenses but were a bone-conducting hearing aid. Disciform macular degeneration, brought about by age and possibly smoking, left him partially sighted, and he was registered as blind. He had stopped smoking cigarettes in November 1966, but continued to smoke cigars until 1998. He underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1997 and suffered a stroke in 2002.

He married Edith Eleanore Milbrandt on 14th February 1952 and they had four children, Catherine, Julie, Susan and David. In the year he died they marked their 60th wedding anniversary.

He was appointed OBE in 1986 and in the 2005 was promoted to CBE.

He died on the morning of 4th July 2012, aged 89, at his home in Esher after a short illness, his family was with him when he died. He has a memorial plaque in St Paul's Church in Covent Garden.

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

On this day 20th May 1960-1965

On 20/05/1960 the number one single was Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Royal Variety Performance (ATV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 20/05/1961 the number one single was On the Rebound - Floyd Cramer and the number one album was GI Blues - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 20/05/1962 the number one single was Nut Rocker - B Bumble & the Stingers and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Marilyn Monroe sings Happy Birthday for JFK.

On 20/05/1963 the number one single was From Me To You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Liberal Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 20/05/1964 the number one single was Don't Throw Your Love Away - Searchers and the number one album was Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Microphones found in Moscow's US Embassy.

On 20/05/1965 the number one single was King of the Road - Roger Miller and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Queen visits West Germany