Eric Sykes

For other people named Eric Sykes, see Eric Sykes (disambiguation).

Eric Sykes
Sykes, c.1955
Born	(1923-05-04)4 May 1923 Oldham, Lancashire, England
Died	4 July 2012(2012-07-04) (aged 89) Esher, Surrey, England
Medium	Television, radio
Years active	1947–2012
Spouse	Edith Milbrandt (m. 1952–2012, his death)
Notable works and roles	Sykes, The Goon Show, The Plank
Template:Infobox comedian awards

Eric Sykes CBE (4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012) was an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose career spanned more than 50 years. He wrote for and/or performed with many other comedy performers and writers, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus and Johnny Speight. Sykes came to prominence through writing for radio and as actor in the 1950s, notably his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in popular BBC comedy television series.

Early life

Sykes was born 4 May 1923 in Oldham, Lancashire; his mother died three weeks after his birth. He was the second child of his parents' marriage; his older brother by two years was named Vernon. Sykes's father was a labourer in a cotton mill and a former army sergeant. When Eric was two, his father remarried and Eric 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, becoming a wireless operator with the rank of leading aircraftman.

Career

Sykes's entertainment career began while in a Special Liaison Unit, when he met and worked with Flight Lieutenant Bill Fraser. When the war ended went to London, arriving in the middle of the coldest winter in memory (1946–47). He rented lodgings, expecting to find work quickly, but by the first week he was cold, hungry and penniless. The turning point came on the Friday night: he met in the street with Bill Fraser, who was in a comedy at the Playhouse Theatre. Fraser took the Sykes to the theatre, offered him food and drink, and asked he would write for him. Sykes provided scripts for Fraser and Frankie Howerd and was in demand as a comedy writer. Forming a partnership with Sid Colin, he worked on the BBC radio ventriloquism show Educating Archie, which began in 1950, and also Variety Bandbox. Working on Educating Archie led to meeting Hattie Jacques.

1950s

Sykes began to write for television in 1948, but it was from the early 1950s that he began a transition from radio to TV, writing episodes and one-off shows for the BBC. His credits included 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 and Edwin Styles. Sykes made his first screen appearance in the army film comedy Orders Are Orders (1954), which featured Sid James, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Bill Fraser and Donald Pleasence.

Sykes's office above a grocer's shop at 130 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush, was shared from around 1953 by Milligan. (Sykes and Milligan later formed Associated London Scripts (ALS) with Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, a writers' agency which lasted for over a decade until being dissolved in 1967.) Late in 1954 Sykes and Milligan began collaborating on scripts for The Goon Show. Their first collaboration was for Archie in Goonland, a cross between The Goon Show and Educating Archie. It 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 and neither recording nor the script has survived. Sykes and Milligan are credited as 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 in Children's Hour on 8 December 1955.

In 1955 Sykes wrote and performed in a BBC Christmas spoof pantomime called Pantomania, which featured BBC personalities of the era; it was directed by Ernest Maxin, who went on to produce comedy routines for Morecambe & Wise. That year Sykes signed as scriptwriter and variety show presenter for the new independent television company, ATV, while continuing to write and perform for the BBC.

In 1956 Sykes performed, wrote, and acted as script editor for the Rediffusion TV comedy The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d, the first attempt to translate the Goons to television. It starred Peter Sellers, with Sykes, Kenneth Connor and Valentine Dyall. During this year he made his second film appearance, a minor role in the Max Bygraves film Charley Moon, which featured Bill Fraser, Peter Jones, Dennis Price and (as a child) Jane Asher. During 1956–57, Sykes wrote for and performed in The Tony Hancock Show, again 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 TV studio rehearsal room, just before going on air. Later that year he wrote and appeared in Opening Night, which celebrated the opening of the National Radio Show at Earl's Court. In 1957 he created Closing Night, which closed the 1957 show.

By this time Sykes had hearing problems; he subsequently lost most of his hearing, but learned to lip-read and watch other performers say their lines to get his cues. In 1957 he wrote and appeared in Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular, the first of two shows in this series that he wrote for Peter Sellers. The first went out as Eric Sykes Presents Peter Sellers, and the second, in 1958, as The Peter Sellers Show.

In 1959 Sykes wrote and directed the one-off BBC special Gala Opening, with 'Professor' Stanley Unwin and Hattie Jacques, and he played a small role in the Tommy Steele film Tommy the Toreador.

1960s

At the turn of the decade Sykes and Hattie Jacques co-starred in a 30-minute BBC TV sitcom, Sykes and A..., which Sykes created with Johnny Speight, who had worked with him in the 1950s on two Tony Hancock series for ITV. The concept for the series had Eric living in suburbia with his wife, with simple plots centering on everyday problems, but Sykes realised that changing the house-mate from wife to sister offered more scope and allowed romantic entanglements with others.

In the revised concept, Sykes played a version of his 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. Other regular cast members were Deryck Guyler, as local constable Wilfred "Corky" Turnbull, and Richard Wattis as the snobbish, busybody neighbor, Charles Brown. Wattis left after series 3 and his departure was explained by having Mr Brown emigrate to Australia. Other performers included Hugh Lloyd, John Bluthal, Leo McKern and Arthur Mullard.

The first series (five episodes, all by Johnny Speight) premiered on 29 January 1960 and established 'Eric and Hat' as one of Britain's most popular and enduring comedy partnerships. The second series of six episodes (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, now lost. Twenty-five of the original 59 episodes survive in the BBC archives. It was during this series that Sykes introduced one of his best known creations, the wordless The Plank, which appeared in Episode 2, Series 7 of Sykes And A..., on 3 March 1964.

In December 1961 Sykes co-starred with Warren Mitchell in Clicquot et Fils, a one-off, 30-minute comedy written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. This was the première of a BBC series Comedy Playhouse, a proving ground for many successful TV comedy series.

In 1962 Sykes played his first starring film role, 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 married to Hattie Jacques), and Roger Delgado. This was followed by a supporting role in the MGM British comedy, Kill or Cure, starring Terry-Thomas with British comedy stalwarts including one of the first film appearances by Ronnie Barker. Both films were made by the same writer-director team behind the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple film, Murder She Said.

During 1965, Sykes made the final series of Sykes and A... and appeared in three films. He had a small role in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, joining British and American TV and film luminaries. The spy spoof The Liquidator was directed by Jack Cardiff and starred Rod Taylor with Sykes in a secondary role. His third film that year was the Boulting brothers' Rotten to the Core starring Anton Rogers (who replaced Peter Sellers) with Sykes. Sykes had a minor film role in another spy comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966), written by Galton and Simpson.

In 1967 Sykes expanded one of his routines into a 45-minute wordless colour short, The Plank which featured Sykes, Tommy Cooper, Jimmy Edwards, Graham Stark, Hattie Jacques and future Goodies star Bill Oddie. (The film was later remade for Thames Television in 1978.) Also in 1967 Sykes and Jimmy Edwards started touring with the theatrical farce Big Bad Mouse which, while scripted, let them ad lib and address the audience. They returned to the production on and off until 1975, touring the UK twice and taking the show abroad, including to Australia.

Returning to television, Sykes and Jacques appeared in the 1967 Sykes Versus ITV with Tommy Cooper and Ronnie Brody. In 1968 he had a supporting role in an Anglo-American film co-production, the Edward Dmytryk western Shalako, starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot.

In 1969 Sykes co-starred with Milligan in the ill-fated television sit-com Curry & Chips, a satire on racial prejudice created and written by Johnny Speight for London Weekend Television. Milligan, who had grown up in British India, played Kevin O'Grady, a half-Pakistani half-Irish man who comes to a British factory and ends up boarding with his ineffectual foreman Arthur Blenkinsop (Sykes), who has to defend Kevin against 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 complaints about liberal racist epithets and bad language (although Sykes refused to swear, as he did throughout his career). It was cancelled on the instruction of the Independent Broadcasting Authority after six episodes.

Sykes made another minor film appearance in 1969 in 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 in an episode of Till Death Us Do Part. This was followed in 1971 by a six-episode series Sykes and A Big, Big Show for the BBC and a special Sykes: With the Lid Off for Thames Television.

In 1972, seven years after cancellation of Sykes and A..., the BBC revived the series as Sykes. Forty-three of the shows were re-workings of scripts from the 1960s series, which had been recorded in monochrome. These included a remake of the 1960s episode Sykes and a Stranger. Sixty-eight episodes of Sykes were made between 1972 and 1979. .

In 1973 Sykes had a small role as a police sergeant in the Douglas Hickox thriller Theatre of Blood.

In 1977, Sykes wrote and starred in another television special, Eric Sykes Shows a Few of Our Favourite Things. He also wrote the 1977 Yorkshire Television adaptation of Charley's Aunt and appeared as Brassett.

The third version of The Plank was made in 1979 for Thames TV.

Sykes was the subject of Thames Television's This Is Your Life, broadcast on 25 December 1979.

1980s

Sykes wrote and appeared in two Thames Television specials broadcast during 1980 – The Likes of Sykes and Rhubarb Rhubarb. The latter, a remake of his 1969 short film Rhubarb which Sykes also directed, 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. The film employed an idea drawn from the British showbiz in which extras used the word "rhubarb" to simulate low-level background dialogue, which had been a running joke in The Goon Show. In 1981 Sykes wrote, directed and starred in the comedy If You Go Down in the Woods Today for Thames, with Roy Kinnear, Fulton Mackay and George Sewell.

During 1982 Sykes played the chief constable in the slapstick The Boys in Blue, which starred Cannon and Ball, with Jon Pertwee. For Thames TV he appeared in and wrote The Eric Sykes 1990 Show with Tommy Cooper and Dandy Nichols and It's Your Move, a wordless slapstick depicting a couple (Richard Briers and Sylvia Syms) moving into a new home who hire accident-prone house removers, headed by Sykes. It featured Tommy Cooper, Bernard Cribbins, Jimmy Edwards, Irene Handl, Bob Todd and Andrew Sachs. Sykes produced one further silent movie for Thames in 1988, Mr H. Is Late, set at a funeral. In 1984 Sykes played the Genie in the children's film Gabrielle and the Doodleman, which 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 Michael Bentine, Leslie Crowther and Leonard Rossiter, and he had an uncredited role as an arcade attendant in the Julien Temple film musical Absolute Beginners (1986) which stars Patsy Kensit. In 1986 Sykes played Horace Harker in "The Six Napoleons", an episode of the Granada TV adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories starring Jeremy Brett.

Sykes toured Australia with Run for Your Wife (1987–88) with a cast that included Jack Smethurst, David McCallum and Katy Manning. In 1989, in his first series since the Sykes series ended in 1979, Sykes starred as the secretary in the ITV situation comedy The Nineteenth Hole, written by Johnny Speight. The series ran for only one series, dropped by ITV for being unfunny, racist and sexist.

1990s

From March 1997, Sykes, with Tim Whitnall Toyah Willcox and Mark Heenehan, narrated the BBC pre-school TV series Teletubbies. He announces "Teletubbies!" during the title sequence and on the Teletubbies theme music which became a number one single in December 1997.

2000s

In 2000 Sykes appeared as Mollocks, the servant of Dr Prunesquallor, in the BBC's mini-series adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, the last production to feature Milligan and Sykes (although they did not appear together on screen). In 2001 he had one of his few serious screen roles, a servant in the thriller film The Others, starring Nicole Kidman. In 2005 he played Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.

In 2007 he appeared in Last of the Summer Wine and in New Tricks, as well as 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.

His autobiography If I Don't Write It, Nobody Else Will was published in 2005, by Harper Perennial.

Personal life

Sykes became partially deaf as an adult. His hearing started to go in the Second World War and he had an operation in 1952 followed by another two years later. When he came round from the second one he was deaf. His spectacles contained no lenses but were a bone-conducting hearing aid. Disciform macular degeneration, brought about by age and possibly smoking, left Sykes partially sighted, and he was registered as blind. He was a patron of the Macular Disease Society. He stopped smoking cigarettes in November 1966, but continued to smoke cigars until 1998. In 2002 he suffered a stroke and underwent heart bypass surgery.

He married Edith Eleanore Milbrandt on 14 February 1952 and they had three daughters, Catherine, Julie, Susan, and a son, David.

In the 2005 New Year Honours List, Sykes was promoted within the Order of the British Empire from officer (OBE) to commander (CBE). He had been made an OBE in 1986 for services to drama, following a petition by MPs. Sykes was an honorary president of the Goon Show Preservation Society.

He followed Oldham Athletic and in the 1970s was an honorary director.

Death

Sykes died on the morning of 4 July 2012, aged 89, at his home in Esher, Surrey, England, after a short illness. His family was with him.

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 OBE
• 1988 Freedom of the City of London
• 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from Writers' Guild of Great Britain
• 1998 Honorary Fellowship of the University of Lancaster
• 1998 Eric Morecambe Award from Comic Heritage
• 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grand Order of Water Rats
• 2001 Bernard Delfont Award for outstanding contribution to show business from the Variety Club of Great Britain
• 2002 Oldie of the Year
• 2004 CBE

Film and television

Films he created or appeared in

• 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)
• Rhubarb (1969)
• Mr. H is Late (1969)
• Sykes: With the Lid Off (1971)
• Eric Sykes Shows a Few of our Favourite Things (1977)
• The Plank (1979), a remake of The Plank (1967)
• Rhubarb Rhubarb (1980), a remake of Rhubarb (1969)
• The Likes of Sykes (1980)
• If You Go Down in the Woods Today (1981)
• It's Your Move (1982), a remake of It's Your Move (1969)
• Mr. H Is Late (1988)
• The Big Freeze (1993)

Television series he created and appeared in

• Sykes and a... (1960–65 series)
• Sykes and a Big Big Show (1971 series)
• Sykes (1972–79 series)

Other roles

The following entries are films unless otherwise stated.

• Orders Are Orders (1954)
• Very Important Person (1961)
• Kill or Cure (1962)
• Village of Daughters (1962)
• Heavens Above! (1963)
• The Bargee (1964)
• One Way Pendulum (1964)
• Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)
• Rotten to the Core (1965)
• The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966)
• Shalako (1968)
• Monte Carlo or Bust (1969)
• Theatre of Blood (1973)
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Six Napoleons (1986)
• dinnerladies (TV) (1998)
• Gormenghast (miniseries) (2000)
• Mavis and the Mermaid (short film) (2000)
• The Others (2001)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
• New Tricks (TV) (2007)
• My Family (TV) (2007)
• Heartbeat (TV) (2007)
• Son of Rambow (2007)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot: 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

External links

• Eric Sykes at IMDb
• Obituary: Eric Sykes from BBC News
• Eric Sykes' appearance on This Is Your Life