'The theatre is a temple...
'and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy.
'Tonight I am pleased to announce a comedy.
'We shall employ every device we know, in our desire to divert you.'
Since Frankie Howerd died in 1992,
his house in Somerset has been left virtually untouched.
Look! Oh, yeah, w... Control yourselves, please!
Now, look!
Ooh!
Come on, there's one more! Come on.
Ooh! That's the lot.
All over the house,
the walls are decorated exactly as Frankie left them.
Still on a table in the lounge are his signed photographs
of his close friends Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor...
and stacked on dusty shelves,
lost recordings of Frankie's 1940s radio shows.
No, but the things is...
the BBC said to me, "Now look, Francis, you must have a new image.
"You MUST have a new image," you see.
They said, "You must show a part of yourself,
"which has never been seen before."
LAUGHTER
Shall we, missus, shall we find out what part we're talking about first,
before you start guffawing? No...
(LAUGHS)
"Ha-ha-ha!"
Don't you go, sir, you want to be a godsend. Don't you go!
LAUGHTER
Common lot here tonight. No, the thing is this, ladies and gentlemen,
there's a lot of me, which has not been seen on television...
I have many facets.
There's more evidence upstairs of the comedian's life.
In a chaotic bedroom, the odd sight of Frankie's ghetto blaster.
And still in the tape player, a cassette of Frankie rehearsing.
'That's naughty. Naughty! Naughty! Now, erm...
'if you can't force titters, or chortles or guffaws
'I'd be very grateful if you'd try and force a smile. A smile.
'Nothing worse than looking down
'and someone is glaring up at you like that.'
The house was sold in 2010.
But the new owners have yet to remove the many items
that once belonged to Frankie Howerd.
As a result, Frankie's former home offers a unique insight
into the life and career of one of the country's favourite comedians.
Oh, no! Oh, no, missus, no...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
But that's not all...
..across the country, in London, the professional and personal files
of Frankie Howerd's career have also recently come to light.
They were stored in his former agent's garden shed
for the last 20 years
and now the huge collection of unseen documents and photographs
can be viewed for the first time.
Amongst the collection,
are also hours of un-transmitted programmes, strange projects,
like Up The Alps, Frankie's misadventures at a ski resort.
What is she doing here?
The reams of letters show Frankie's wide circle of friends
including Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and Paul McCartney.
Also discovered were in-depth interviews,
which have never been broadcast.
And there's the story of Frankie Howerd's work with The Beatles
and a bizarre collaboration with the Bee Gees.
Who are you?
Your sons, father.
Oh yes. The leeches.
The unseen files and recordings
tell the story of a life of extreme highs and lows,
of a man touched by genius but cursed with anxiety and self-doubt.
They show how he survived a roller coaster career, getting laughs with
an act that broke all the rules, and influenced so many others.
They show that Frankie Howerd was a man who truly suffered for his art
and his art was comedy.
'I was AMAZED!
'And to you all, the best of luck.
'God bless you, thank you very much.'
APPLAUSE
Oh, to be incarcerated. I don't want to be incarcerated!
INCARCERATED!
Look it up in the dictionary.
Oh, I'm too young to die, too young...
Come on, then. Come on...
Wait a minute, I haven't finished yet.
I'm sure.
There's a monologue here.
It's my best bit.
Oh, I've forgotten where I am now.
As a comic he was just wonderful.
You're looking very well.
Oh, really?
Very well, I must say.
I must say, it's in the script.
I mean, it's the charm of it as well, really, you know?
It's just so charming to be...
Really, just making a selection of noises
and, "No, no..." and everyone just be falling about laughing.
Not actually saying all that much.
I, no, ah, well, now, ah, now, ooh, now this is it -
I was wondering how I could get these in!
Thank you. No, listen...
What he did was always brilliant and it remained brilliant,
you know, like the best comics, he was the one that was being funny,
and the stuff that he was talking about was really...
that was just stuff he said while he was being funny.
I come from a military background. Military background? Oh, yes.
Ooh, lot of heroes in our family. War heroes? Oh, yes.
Erm, no, no, the first...
No, no. No, you all jeer, you're mocking...
You are mocking Francis, mocking Francis!
For me, he was, he was stand up comedy.
Come on, now, get your titters out now, please.
Get your titters out.
Titter time has arrived, let's have all the little titters out.
That's right.
And the big ones, missus, yes.
Get your big titters out. Let's have all titters.
When Frankie Howerd was a boy he found God.
He went to church, he said his prayers,
he had a vision of himself as Saint Francis of Eltham, South London.
I started off with the intention of being a saint, roughly.
Well, some idea of being a saint and you also may have gathered,
since then, I've been a spectacular failure at that.
Evidence of his life-long interest in religion
can still be seen at his house in Somerset.
Resting on a table by the front door is the Howerd family bible.
And, for luck, Frankie would place his hand on this bible
each time he left the house.
As a young man, he even planned to become a priest,
but a trip to the Lewisham Hippodrome changed all that.
Frankie Howerd was seduced by the tainted world of show business
and began to worship the comedy icons of the variety theatre.
Max Miller, Sid Field, George Robey -
fallen angels with dirty jokes,
and the young Frankie Howerd was hooked.
A bawdy kind of comedy was now in his blood and for the rest
of his life Frankie would be torn between saint and sinner.
'Welcome to Variety Bandbox.'
In 1946, Frankie Howerd appeared on BBC radio's Variety Bandbox,
and became a star.
'Frankie Howerd.'
APPLAUSE
'Now, er, ladies and gentlemen.
'Now, look, now, listen, now, look.
'Now, look, no, I'm not the one to complain, am I?'
Variety Bandbox not only started his career,
but it really made him a huge star in Britain.
At one stage it was really THE big radio show,
and radio was far more popular than TV, and so
if you were at the top of radio you were at the top of show business.
Eric Sykes wrote a lot for him in those days,
and Eric wrote brilliantly for him. And surreal stuff -
taking an elephant on the tube, and... Oh, wonderful!
'Two elephants...
'two elephants...
'I was AMAZED!'
LAUGHTER
'So, I got a bit of string...
LAUGHTER
'..and I, erm, tied it round their necks, you see,
'and I let them out into the street.
'Oh, I did... Oh, I did feel a ninny!'
LAUGHTER
'Anyway...but the... No!
'But the way people stared, the way people stared, you'd think
'they'd never seen two elephants going down the underground before.'
LAUGHTER
I mean, it must have been extraordinary
hearing him on the radio in the '40s.
This bizarre torrent of exaggerated burlesque vocals.
And when you see his face, it fits entirely
because he's not actually a dead pan,
his face is just running round the whole playground -
hitting people and running away. His face is just massively elastic.
By the end of his four years on Variety Bandbox,
Frankie Howerd was one of the most famous comedians in the country,
earning huge amounts of money in the process.
He had made it to the top and wanted to stay there.
He was ambitious and talented, and he wanted it all.
He spoke of his ambition
in an interview with the BBC'S Arena in 1989.
The full interview was found in his agent's archives,
and unseen extracts from the tapes are being shown on television now
for the very first time.
I was very ambitious, very, to succeed.
I wanted to be famous.
I don't know why, actually...
but I did!
And, erm, an actual goal to be famous, we oft...
you know, the, the...
I often puzzle out, really, what the goal of being famous actually is,
what it does to be famous.
Frankie Howerd swept to the top with a burst of creative energy
that shook up the world of variety.
It's important for people to remember these days,
that in the time when Frankie Howerd became a star,
there was a very conventional view of what a stand up comedian was,
that he was basically a clown, he was a turn.
And they wore funny outfits, or very smart outfits,
and they had a very rigid line of patter.
And Frankie Howerd changed that,
and that was quite revolutionary at the time.
We didn't have anyone who looked like him!
You know, all the comics before him, all came on in smart suits
and bloody trilby hats, like Trinder and people like that,
and were smart, and slick, and doing great gags, and all this type of...
Frank was rambling, like he looked, he was rambling and strange.
We didn't know what the hell he was all about but he made me laugh.
Frankie's originality was no accident,
he had a vision of a new type of stand up comedy,
as he explains in this previously unseen interview.
I always used to come on and say I wasn't with this show at all,
"I'm not with, I'm not with this lot.
"Oh, no! They're a funny lot. Oh, I keep myself to myself.
"I think it's best, don't you?"
"Mmm," or I'd... "Mmm, you're right."
In the early '50s, Frankie Howerd was riding the crest of a wave,
and the next step was the movies.
Jumping For Joy was set in the dodgy world of London greyhound racing.
What's it to be this time, sonny?
Cactus Jack.
3-1, how much do you want on it, couple of hundred? (LAUGHS)
Yes. (LAUGHS) There you are.
He had ambitions to be a Bob Hope style international comedy star
but the films he was making
were never going to deliver international stardom.
(THEY ALL LAUGH)
His brief appearance in the Ealing comedy, The Ladykillers,
would really highlight the gap between comedy star, and film star.
Young man!
Do you mind?!
Now, go on, get out of it. Get this horse out the way, there!
He's been following me all the way down from Burton Street,
he's had three pound of my best pippins, and let's see - one, six...
Go on, get out of it. Go on, get out...
The Ladykillers would become a classic
thanks to the acting talent of Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness.
Frankie Howerd would, for now, have to accept the role
as a memorable bit-part player.
These original drawings from his own comic strip in Film Fun,
show that by the mid '50s Frankie Howerd was a major star.
It was all going so well...
nobody could have predicted what happened next.
The comedian Frankie Howerd
lived for many years in this house in Somerset.
It still contains many of his personal possessions,
including the OBE he was awarded in 1977.
I expected to leave a trail of wreckage in Buckingham Palace,
but apart from knocking into two footmen, I didn't do too badly.
And even this stayed on, which was quite something for me.
By his side to collect his OBE at Buckingham Palace
was his long-term partner Dennis Heymer.
They lived together in this house called Wavering Down.
It was Dennis who kept everything as it was
in the years following Frankie's death.
I went to Wavering Down and I knew Dennis,
who was Frankie's long-term partner.
It was slightly turned into a bit of a museum, you know,
sort of Howerd's End really, with, you know, his...
a wig of his had been preserved, and posters of his films.
So it was quite a sweet memorial to him in a slightly odd way.
Occasionally Dennis would host open days at the house,
where visitors could view strange items such as Frankie's false teeth.
And an X-ray of his pelvis.
I went to Frankie's house in the West Country to do
a report for The Guardian, and it was an extraordinary place.
Dennis was still alive at that time, and there were literally papers
on his table, his briefcase was there, also loads of Egyptian stuff.
They got all sorts of stuff from going to Egypt.
And the extraordinary thing was is that when I went there,
he'd been dead 15 years at least.
And it seemed like he'd left the place about 15 minutes before.
Frankie's partner, Dennis Heymer, had such a deep interest in
ancient Egypt that he bought himself a coffin in the style of a pharaoh.
He kept it in the lounge for years,
and was buried in the sarcophagus when he died in 2009.
# Do-do, do-do-do-do
# You dreamboat
# You lovable dreamboat... #
Dennis and Frankie had met in 1955 when homosexuality was still
a criminal offence.
I had friends like Frank, and Jimmy Edwards
and there was Russ Conway, the pianist, and they were gay.
They didn't come out. There was no hypocrisy involved - if they'd have
come out, or been outed, they would have been ruined and go to prison.
I mean, it was just a hideous era - they were haunted, hunted men.
Oh, yes, he said you see, he said,
"The trouble with you is," he said,
"you're so difficult to categorise."
He said, "You see, you don't fit in anywhere.
"You're neither one thing nor the other."
I don't know what he meant by that.
LAUGHTER
He said... Please...
Too much tittering - naughty titter-mongers.
When Frankie met Dennis, his career was at a crisis point.
A combination of insecurity and perfectionism had made him
very difficult to work with.
A letter to Frankie from the BBC at this time asks for
"no more fusses, no more arguments."
Behind the scenes he was a great worrier,
and always pushing everyone around him to do the best they could.
And it meant that he would inevitably have lots
and lots of arguments with producers, and engineers,
and just about anyone working on his shows.
He drove many producers to the point of collapse,
and one in fact had a full-blown nervous breakdown.
The patience of the BBC was further tested by a disastrous appearance
on the panel show What's My Line? in 1954.
The unscripted programme relied on quick-fire repartee,
but Frankie, paralysed by fear, said almost nothing.
I had a note the other day, from this what's-his-name.
The man in charge. What's his name, you know? Thing. Well, no...
I had this note, and it said, "Dear Howerd,
"your presence is requested in my office between 2.30 and 2.35."
I thought to myself, "Hello.
"He's never given me that long before. I must be worried."
So I went in there, and he was... He said, uh, you know, thing.
He said, "Ah yes," he said, "there you are..."
He looked at his secretary, and she said, "Howerd."
He said, "Ah yes. Come in, Trevor."
He said, "Now..."
He said, "Do sit down."
He's never offered me a seat before, so I knew I was all right.
He said, "Would you care for a cigarette?"
I said, "Thank you very much." So he threw his tin over.
He said, "I wonder if you'd roll me one as well while you're at it."
He had been the golden boy of BBC comedy,
but by the end of the '50s, his reputation was in tatters
as Galton and Simpson, the writers of Hancock's Half Hour, found out.
When we finished working with Tony Hancock, the BBC,
in the persona of Tom Sloan, Head of Light Entertainment,
called us up to the BBC.
He said, "Well, now you're not working with Tony
"any more, what do you want to do?"
We said, "Oh, we would like to write a series with Frankie Howerd.
He said, "Are you kidding?" He said, "He's finished."
We said, "What do you mean finished?"
He said, "His last series was terrible."
I don't know, Frank began to lose favour with everybody,
you know, one minute he was a huge star,
and then gradually, over a period, he wasn't, you know.
It was really awful to watch, to be honest.
I beg your pardon.
Who are you?
Who am I? I'm Frankie Howerd!
Who?
If your own agent has never heard of you, what chance do you stand?
I'm sorry, I don't recognise you.
As the offers of work dried up,
Frankie would begin to suffer periods of intense depression.
Of course it affected him greatly, he loved his audience.
You know, and if he was being rejected,
or wasn't being allowed to practice his craft
and that, he would get very depressed, everyone would, you know.
People say to me, "When are you going to retire?" I say,
"When they stop asking."
They stopped asking Frank, and he didn't...
That was terribly upsetting, you know.
Particularly at the age he was, he wasn't an old man
when he got the elbow really, you know.
It's rather...
..moving, thinking back, him sort of brooding at home
and nothing's happening, "Oh, it's over."
You know, it's over.
And it never was, happily, but he wouldn't know that at the time.
With his career on the slide, there was another shock
when Frankie discovered he had lost all his money in
dubious investments made by his agent, Stanley "Scruffy" Dale.
By 1960, Frankie Howerd, the most innovative comedian
of his generation, had no money, and no career.
He'd had career knocks, he'd had financial disasters,
then his mother died, and he was crushed as an individual
to a great extent, to the point where he even sought therapy with LSD,
that was being experimented on at the time, and he used to go for
fortnightly weekends, where he would be injected with LSD and Ritalin,
and then be psychoanalysed because he just couldn't
figure out how to get out of this trough that he'd found himself in.
In this unseen interview, he looks back on those difficult times.
I never actually gave up show business, I mean I...
I never stopped working, as we say, but it dwindled,
let's put it that way...
Down to a very trickle, you know, in a desert.
For a man who had once been at the top of the entertainment world,
the trickle of work was not enough.
It broke his heart, but he decided the next job would be his last.
At Frankie's house in Somerset,
a bronze figure on a side table tells the story of that next job,
and the impact it had on the rest of his career.
It's an award given to Frankie for his years of entertaining
speeches at the Evening Standard Drama Awards,
including the one he was about to make.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Frankie had accepted that it was all over for him.
He had made up his mind to do one last performance, and this was it.
But if this was the end, he wanted it to be Frankie Howerd at his best.
I want to make a little appeal to you, but it's not
an appeal for money, all right, love. She's getting her purse out.
You're all right, love. No, it's an appeal for you to try
and laugh as much as you can at the jokes...
I mean, they'd never had a compere for the awards like him.
Always bitching and gossiping about who'd...
He'd turned it into a show, it was wonderful.
And at that Evening Standard was Peter Cook.
And he and Dudley Moore,
they'd got this club they'd opened called The Establishment.
Peter Cook had opened The Establishment club
the year before, as the new home of cutting-edge comedy.
He offered Frankie Howerd a month-long run at the club.
He later told the story of their meeting
on This Is Your Life in 1976.
At the Drama Awards, which were quite serious,
he just sent the whole thing up so marvellously,
seemingly ad lib, and I thought The Establishment needed sending up
because we were a pretty snotty little club at that time,
and I thought we needed somebody to send it up.
But...
I was very scared, you see, to ask you,
because you were a big star, you see, so I had to have a
couple of scotches before I'd come up and say hello.
And then I read in your book that you were sloshed at the time.
I was. I was.
I was scared of you.
Half a bottle of scotch for God's sake.
I won't waste any more time. I'd say one of the funniest men in the world,
I'd say THE funniest, but Dudley's very sensitive.
At the very moment he had given up hope,
Peter Cook had thrown him a lifeline.
Peter Cook was very much a pure comedian.
He was really into the idea of comedy, rather than just advancing
his career, I think he loved comedy in its purest form, and I think with
Frankie Howerd, he just saw someone who transcended his surroundings.
He didn't obviously care about Frankie Howerd being a leftover
from the '50s or anything like that, he just really liked
Frankie Howerd and thought that Frankie Howerd's humour,
rightly or wrongly, would work in this new
context of The Establishment, and the world of Beyond The Fringe.
With its reputation for radical satire,
The Establishment club didn't seem to be the natural home for
Frankie Howerd, and he was convinced he was going to be a disaster.
He was very nervous leading up to it, you know, I mean...
because it was a complete change for him.
Part of him thought,
"Oh, I wonder if I'm going to be any good at this."
A tense and nervous Frankie heard Peter Cook make the introduction.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Frankie Howerd.
APPLAUSE
Frankie Howerd then walked on stage with his entire career on the line.
The Establishment Club, '63 and on stage a nervous Frankie Howerd.
'I'd like to explain how I happen to get here in this place...
..before we start, because, uh...as you know...if I...
..well, if you do know at all, I'm a humble music hall comedian.
A sort of variety artist, you know,
I'm not usually associated with these sophisticated venues.
LAUGHTER
Although Frankie could be nervous before a show,
when it started, he was...
..he was on and he was THE Frankie Howerd.
Out of all of the apparent nervousness and fragile quality
that he had, when it came to his act,
he was very brave when he thought what he was doing was right.
And that was the art, and he was going to protect it,
and defend it no matter what.
'Every year they have these Drama Awards,
the Evening Standard Drama Awards at the Savoy...the hotel.'
LAUGHTER
'Well there are so many cafes with that name now...'
LAUGHTER
And it's a...
..they have a dinner there, this young lad came over to me,
and quite a presentable boy, and I said, quite nice lad,
quite nice type, you know? And he said...
..he goes, "I was wondering..."
He said, "I was wondering if I could introduce myself?"
He said, "I'm Cook."
So I said, "Oh it was a lovely meal." I said, "It was lovely..."
LAUGHTER
It was a night that changed Frankie's life.
The fashionable crowd loved him.
It was a triumph and a resurrection at the home
of the new wave of comedy.
'Delighted for Frank because he was going through a bad period,
where people were assuming that he was finished.'
And it's very difficult, once people start thinking and believing it,
it's very difficult to get out of it, you know.
But he did it with one, with one bound he was free as they say.
I must say I did enjoy it very much.
I did it twice nightly.
It was rather odd to do a club, a night club, twice nightly.
But it did very well.
When I was there, playing there,
we had a visit from a distinguished gentleman called...
..well he thought he was distinguished, called Ned Sherrin.
(LAUGHS)
Who shall remain anonymous. And he, he...anyway he...
..engaged me to appear in That Was The Week That Was.
So that my satirical stage I went through then.
Ned Sherrin was the producer of That Was The Week That Was.
# That was the week that was
# It's over, let it go...#
The show defined the satirical comedy attitude of the day.
Into this new radical arena came the 46-year-old, Frankie Howerd.
And now the week at Westminster,
and our Lobby Correspondent is Mr Frankie Howerd.
APPLAUSE
Uh...before we, uh...this is the...
..oh this is one I'm on, yes.
It's about time, I've been waiting a hell of a time here to get on,
it's 11:35pm!
LAUGHTER
I thought I'd have to have another shave before I got on,
but never mind.
So, I enjoyed bits of it. Um...
LAUGHTER
And I mean the bits I understood.
Ladies and gentlemen, a fore... no, um...
Now he's found himself at the satirical centre of show business,
and he took the mickey out of it basically, that's what he did.
Of course, the longer he went on, the more his confidence grew.
He thought, "I'm back, here we go again, I'm back."
"I'm back on television, and it's working", you know.
And he began to really enjoy it.
I saw the producer, this...Ned Sherrin.
And, oh no, nice man...underneath.
And he, uh...
LAUGHTER
No, no. And listen...No, no please, no please...
For one night only the show that loved to attack politicians gave
the floor to a comedian who turned the whole concept on its head.
My technique was to play right against the current trend
of attacking...them.
I used to defend them. Which is...
..my defence was a jolly sight worse than anybody else's attack.
Because I would never say...
..joke about McMillan direct, I would just say,
I would talk about his wife, Dorothy, you see,
and I'd say, you know, "That's not him, no it's her..."
Everyone blames Mac. Everyone...
..now you know this is true, everyone blames McMillan for sacking
half the government last year, you see everyone blames McMillan
for sacking half the government, but you see, I don't.
No, I'm sorry I don't. I don't blame him.
I blame her.
LAUGHTER
No, I do. It's Dot, Dot.
LAUGHTER
It was over the garden wall again, he said, "I blame Dot."
She was suddenly Dot, Lady Dorothy McMillan.
That was brilliant, that was pure Howerd, "I blame Dot. Gossip."
There's a moment where you see the joy in his face
where he realises that they're not taking the mickey out of him,
that he's not a novelty act, that they haven't just put somebody
they remember as a kid on to be laughed at.
He's being laughed with, the audience are getting back into it.
And...It may have seemed old fashioned to them,
but in the midst of that kind of old fashioned delivery,
he was actually delivering some really interesting, satirical stuff.
It was massive on a Saturday night.
Pubs and restaurants would empty,
people going home to watch That Was The Week That Was.
He couldn't have had a better showcase for a comeback,
you know, to appear on that big show on a Saturday night, was great.
It was a career-defining performance.
He had entered the world of the sharp minds of Oxbridge satire,
and given a master class in the art of stand up comedy.
Frankie Howerd was now one of the hottest properties in show business.
From the bottom of the heap to the top in just a few eventful months.
He was being fated and admired,
but Frankie Howerd's finances were still in a sorry state.
But all that was about to change.
From across the Atlantic, from the heart of New York City,
a Steven Sondheim musical would greatly improve
the Frankie Howerd bank balance.
'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum',
the biggest hit show on Broadway, came to London's West End.
And Frankie got the starring role.
# Something familiar
# Something peculiar
# Something for everybody
# Comedy tonight. #
The play also started a running theme in Frankie's act.
For the first time he was being saucy with semi-naked women.
Go ahead and look her over as you did before,
but then when you get around, put your arm up like this, Christine.
And you look through and...
This rare film shows Frankie rehearsing with the show's
legendary Broadway director, George Abbott.
Like this, so I've got to feel her haven't I first, that's it.
I must keep this in because I enjoy this bit.
Ah, you've got one as well.
For a man who was trying to be discreet about his sexuality,
the lecherous character of Pseudolus was the perfect part.
And bawdy, sexual innuendo became a major part of his act
from this point on.
Two years of 'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum',
also sparked an interest in all things Roman.
At the house in Somerset, the garden is dotted with
versions of classical statues.
And Frankie had Roman columns installed in the lounge.
In one corner his 3D, Elvis Presley portrait hangs incongruously
next to one of the columns.
The pride of Frankie's Roman collection were two replica swords
which still sit by the fireplace.
They were given to him by his friend, Richard Burton,
and were the swords Burton used when he played Mark Anthony,
in the 1963 film, Cleopatra.
Frankie Howerd knew exactly what the Roman's had done for him,
on stage, and soon on television.
..# A comedy tonight. #
A Radio Times from December 1964 shows Frankie Howerd
was back on television.
The Frankie Howerd Show was written by the best in the business,
Galton and Simpson, the writers of Hancock's Half Hour
and Steptoe And Son.
In this episode, Frankie has had enough of living on his own.
I've never felt so bad.
Do you know, for one minute I was seriously considering the gas oven,
but that was no good, it was no good,
because it was only one of those tiny bachelor ones!
It's a hard enough job getting your foot in, let alone...
And I said to myself, "Francis, this is not the answer,
"not the coward's way out."
"Pull yourself together, you blithering fool..."
Because I often talk to myself like that, you know?
I don't care what I say to myself...
No, I give myself a right lashing sometimes.
I said, "Francis, you are still young, now get out into the world
and find yourself a mate, mate."
Frankie signs up with a lonely hearts agency
and is sent on a series of disastrous blind dates,
this one with June Whitfield.
Excuse me, I don't suppose for one moment you are,
but could you by any chance be a Miss Beryl Cuttlebun?
Yes, I am.
I'm sorry, yeah... Pardon?
I am Beryl Cuttlebun.
Ooooh! Ooooh!
Must be something wrong with her.
Um, would you permit me to introduce myself?
I am Francis A Howerd, esquire.
Oh, don't touch me, I can't stand men touching me.
Didn't I tell you?
I always get 'em, don't I?
Everyone enjoyed the sketches with Frankie and June.
Everyone, that is, except Frankie.
He didn't really like performing.
He hated it. And...
you know, he always said if he could win the lottery or something,
he wouldn't do it.
He was so nervous before he did a show.
The nervousness works to his advantage in the end,
as he worried away at every aspect of his performance.
And it was in this series that Frankie experimented with the device
of breaking off from the story to talk directly to the camera.
You must think I'm rather strange.
Oh, no. Oh, no, not at all.
What a funny woman!
It was quite something for a television
to take the viewer, basically, the viewers aside from the action,
and say, "Listen..."
It was a great technique and so perfectly suited to Frankie Howerd.
I just totally lap up that whole thing of he's talking
to the audience, and it's all, "You know, I've got, don't..."
I love the way he's bouncing off audience reactions,
it's just spontaneous, you know.
Nobody had done it and he was probably one of the few
people who could do it properly, and get away with it, you know?
Just that gap between the television and the audience at home,
drawing them in - lovely.
Elsie!
It's here!
I should turn the sound off if I were you. She's not on long.
I should turn the vision off as well.
Won't be long.
Ah, yes, thank you.
By the mid '60s, television fame was the only thing that counted
in the world of entertainment,
and Frankie Howerd was one of TV's biggest stars.
His shambolic style was even put to use in advertising,
and he became the unlikely face of Lyons Maid ice cream.
I'm doing this commercial for ice cream.
Fools! I've never touched the stuff! No!
Still, they're paying me...
Ah yes, here.
Strawberry and vanilla ice cream, rippled with a strawberry sauce,
or with a cherry on top?
Extravagant devils.
Audiences everywhere had a great affection for Frankie,
and he was also admired and adored by his fellow comedians.
As a guest star, he was the highlight of any programme,
and he was a regular on the Bruce Forsyth Show.
MUSIC SLOWS DOWN AND STOPS
He was wonderful to work with. I just loved the man.
Pretend you are sawing a piece of wood with one hand.
Oh, yes.
That's right. And blowing up a balloon with the other.
That's it.
No, you'll never make a trombone player.
Now pretend you're shaking...
I hope you are pretending.
...I'm waiting to continue the show. Pretend!
Attend or pretend?
Pretend... I'll start again.
Pretend...
You're....Where the hell are we now?
Frankie could forget his lines and that why he was,
"Oh, well, yes, oh, no, I'll make myself comfy..."
That used to cover up him trying to think of his lines.
That wants to be a G. Give him a G, love, give him a G.
Don't break that...
What?
Now... it doesn't matter....
That's a funny line!
You got the gist of it, didn't you?
I got the gist of it, all right, yeah.
It's not the words, it's the acting that's important, now...
All right, well, we only just met. For goodness' sake.
You... Listen...
Frankie often went into a whole other level of apparent
amateurishness when teamed with other performers.
He had a long-running routine with various female piano players,
who were hard of hearing and got everything wrong.
It was fashionable in those days for people who sang
to have an accompanist, have a pianist.
An awful lot of people sang...
stars, and always had their own pianist, and they would
perhaps be in evening dress, and the pianist at the piano.
And they were always men, always men, I never saw a woman pianist.
And...
So I thought, well, I'd get a woman.
Everyone else has a straight man pianist,
I'd have a comedy lady pianist.
Just to be different.
I'm going to do a song tonight ladies and gentlemen,
and I'm going to sing a song, which... Oh, God!
Don't laugh, don't.
No, don't, you'll get me into trouble, please, no, don't.
She's a funny woman.
No, she can't hear very well, she has this impediment of the ear,
and she's a bit miserable, you know?
I mean, some people are happy sufferers, but she, you know...
She's bitter with it, you know, poor soul.
Evening.
No, don't laugh, it might be one of your own, don't laugh.
Poor soul.
Now, um with the, yes, it's chilly tonight, yes.
Poor old soul, she's past it.
She would say, "Chilly, ooh, chilly, chilly."
And he'd go, "Oh, yes, chilly, chilly, I'm sweating like a pig."
And, you know, talking about "the pianist" over there.
Well, now, listen, we'll do a song, now, do a song.
(SHOUTING) Do a song now! Do a song now, yes.
Oh, she is a burden, I can't...
Now, this is a kind of aria, a kind of aria.
(SHOUTING) Do the aria now! Yes, the aria.
She doesn't know whether she's on her aria or her elbow!
I love the way that the sort of grand piano,
the slightly dour-looking female...
pianist and him making remarks to the audience about her,
clearly, you know, in the real world, within earshot.
But supposedly out of earshot of the pianist.
It's all about, you know,
I'm telling you something about this person and they can't hear me,
which is sort of what his whole act was kind of about anyway.
"Listen, no, listen, these people, let me tell you this, you know."
It was a comic idea he came up with during the war,
but it still worked on stage 45 years later.
Hers is a sad story.
Don't laugh, hers is a sad story.
Yours...
(SHOUTING) I was just saying yours is a sad story!
And of course, five years ago, tragedy struck.
(SHOUTING) Tragedy struck five years ago.
The 1960s saw Frankie Howerd fast becoming a British comedy icon.
And a clue to just how big he had become can be found in his files.
This invitation from Paul McCartney
is evidence of a close relationship with the Beatles.
Frankie even interviewed McCartney on television,
but all that survives is this short sound recording.
(FRANKIE) Mr Paul McCartney, here he is.
APPLAUSE
How do you manage to keep this youthful image?
That's what I want to know.
(PAUL) Well, you know, I just... I do a lot of exercise.
What sort of ex...?
Well, you know, every morning...
Anything you can tell us about?
Well, you know, every morning, twice round the block.
Twice round the block, I see.
Frankie had known The Beatles from their earliest days,
so when the Beatles needed help in 1965, they turned to Frankie Howerd.
These rare photographs tell the story
of Frankie's forgotten work on the Beatles' film, Help!
I'm fairly sure the Beatles wanted him in Help!
because he'd been a good supporter of them in their early days,
he actually managed to get them gigs when they were underage,
in places like Jersey.
And he was quite a good advisor in those days -
he used to meet them informally - and so they were big fans,
particularly Lennon and McCartney, I think.
Yeah, that... I mean, that says a lot about
Frankie's success at the time,
that he would be in a film with The Beatles,
The Beatles presumably could choose who they asked to be in their films,
and maybe they thought he was funny.
When The Beatles made their films, they put in people like Ivor Cutler,
they put in cult comedians -
they didn't put in Jimmy Tarbuck,
though I'm sure he'd have loved to have been in it.
They put in people like Frankie Howerd,
who, even though Frankie Howerd was popular, he was a cult figure.
The Beatles just liked comedy -
they were very good at appreciating comedy.
And he was in a scene with Paul McCartney and Wendy Richard
and they filmed it, it was all made,
but when they got to cut the movie,
Dick Lester cut the whole section out.
I think he was quite shattered
when he found that he was on the cutting room floor
because he enjoyed doing it,
and I think he thought it worked quite well.
Frankie Howerd was now right at the centre of '60s showbusiness.
And the disappointment of Help!
was soon replaced by the excitement of Carry On Doctor.
But... What the...?
ARGH!
Ooh...oi! Oof...
Frankie made two films in quick succession -
Carry On Doctor, and Carry On Up The Jungle -
and in both films, he was the highest-paid actor.
Quick, show him your doings.
I beg your pardon?
Show him your doings!
I will not. You show him yours.
He wants to see a bit of magic.
Well, you should have said, you see... Magic? Who?
Show me magic doing.
It's magic doings. Oh, dear, he's insistent, isn't he?
Well, now, have you...? No, you... Ah...
Now wait a... This, er... What's er, er...?
WATCH CHIMES
Oh, look - 12 o'clock.
That's it. You've got him going.
In his second film, Carry On Up The Jungle,
Frankie found a friend in Joan Sims.
This rare behind-the-scenes footage offers a glimpse
into what Frankie described as their "mad chemistry".
Ah, Lady Bagley, did you see the giraffes just now?
Yes, I did. Quaint things.
I wonder why it is they need such long necks.
Ah, well, that's quite simply, really -
it's because their heads are so far away from their bodies.
But what I wanted to know was,
if one came in close contact with a snake, could it harm one?
Well, that would depend on the snake.
There is... Ha! And there is a brown one, of course...
SNIGGERING
Go on, Frank.
Oh, sorry.
There is a brown one, of course - the African Viper,
which is quite deadly.
Oh, no, no.
No, this was definitely a green one, and it seemed to move sort of...
like that.
Ah, that would be a windscreen viper.
LAUGHTER
Stop!
Frankie Howerd now left behind the Carry Ons
in hospital and up the jungle,
for eruptions of laughter in Up Pompeii!
As the '60s drew to a close,
Frankie Howerd could reflect on the achievement of coming
back from the brink of obscurity, to the top of his profession.
He had made all kinds of films,
and starred in West End theatre productions.
But one thing still eluded him, a successful situation comedy.
But lurking around the corner was the spark of an idea.
The head of light entertainment at the BBC in those days was on holiday
and was looking around the ruins of Pompeii,
and said he half expected -
thinking of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum -
to see Frankie Howerd come round the corner in a toga, and that
suddenly sparked the idea into life of saying, "Why don't we do a sitcom?"
Oooh, some shocking things go on here you know.
Licentiousness, libertinage, orgies...
even bingo. Listen...
A pilot episode of Up Pompeii was made in September 1969,
and the first series soon followed.
It did Frankie the world of good, it was a marvellous show,
and he was great in it. Built for him.
Up Pompeii was the perfect vehicle for Frankie Howerd's comedy.
It thrived on innuendo and gossip,
and was set in a world of intrigue, treachery, and sex.
It was quite sort of naughty telly that
I shouldn't really be watching, because there were lots of
sort of, nubile girls wandering around, who were jolly pretty.
It's putting me off, turn round...
No bra or anything.
It was very sexual,
but mostly it was just about how ludicrous the situation was.
His whole thing, like any great comedian,
is like, isn't everything stupid, isn't everything ridiculous?
You're ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, life is pointless.
And the whole thing with that character was just,
aren't these people ludicrous, aren't they silly?
Remember the three wise monkeys, and keep your counsel.
Yes and you remember the three brass monkeys, and...
And keep out of a draught.
It was set in 79 AD,
But it was really the middle-aged comedian's take on the swinging '60s.
Frankie began each episode in stand-up comedy mode,
but this time it was called The Prologue.
Greetings, good citizens. The Prologue.
Oh, dear...
Cold as ever. Now...
It was always The Prologue, wasn't it? "The Prologue."
It was like, right, we're presenting a genuine historical epic here.
And the fact that he would... "The Prologue,"
then the soothsayer comes in, then somebody else. He's like, "Right..."
This god, Zeus, looked down on Earth and he saw this maiden, Leda,
and he fancied her, see.
So he said "Right." He said, "I will go down to Earth..."
Are you expecting anybody?
You know, it's the same thing he did with his stand-up,
where he would go, you know, I'm presenting the...
Oh - hang on, right... And then off he goes, you know.
Frankie Howerd used every trick of his comedy trade to make the show work.
But there was one trick which really stood out -
his favourite technique of talking straight to the camera, to the audience, to us.
I don't want to die. You don't want to die?
I'm too young to die. Too young to die.
We shall overcome. We will overcome.
We shan't go to war. We won't go to war.
Down with war. Down with war.
Down, down, down with war! Down with war.
What a shocking actor, isn't he?
It's Roman times and he's talking to a camera.
And sending up all the other characters! Made for him.
I love the fact that everyone is in a...
No-one is allowed to kind of look out except Frankie,
so the whole thing is this like, kind of play going on around him
and he's like this the whole time down the lens.
Fire and brimstone will rain down on the city.
The very ground will tremble, and all shall perish in the destruction.
And that is the end of the weather forecast.
(SHE WAILS DRAMATICALLY)
Ah. Silly old bag.
Up Pompeii was all about drawing attention to the camera,
the audience, the script, the poverty of the script,
the terrible acting involved.
And he'd be constantly stepping out and being Frankie Howerd,
and that made it very funny, very unusual.
And very radical in a way.
Frankie Howerd had finally made a classic situation comedy,
but not all his fans approved of Up Pompeii.
Discovered in the Howerd files are some of the huge
amount of letters he received from unhappy viewers.
I got a tremendous amount of... of, of, of letters.
And there were nine of the ten...
out of every ten liked it very much, and the tenth thought it was
the most dreadful thing ever seen on television.
"Dear Mr Howerd, these episodes are merely disgusting, not even funny."
"Dirt for dirt's sake gets terribly tedious."
"Neither my wife nor I would dream of missing one of your programmes,
"until the present series of Up Pompeii,
"and the filth that passes for humour."
"You don't have to rely on filth, Mr Howerd, you really don't.
"We loved you as you were."
The sensitive Frankie Howerd was hurt by the criticism,
and took time to reply to all the letters, usually adding
at the end, "I am sorry you did not like all the material in the
"Up Pompeii series,
"but it is difficult to please everybody all the time."
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Frankie Howerd.
The corny jokes and sexual references may have lost him
a few fans, but the series won him the Variety Club's top award
for show business personality of the year for 1971.
It had been a long and emotional journey,
but Frankie Howerd was finally back at the top.
Well, before I came on here tonight, Mr Delfont said to me...
..try not, he said, to look smug, as though you've actually deserved it.
And I said, well look, I'll try not to look smug, I said, if you try not
to look as though you've actually paid for the awards yourself.
I have been in show business, this month, 25 years. And...
..I started in the music halls and I did...
Started on Variety Bandbox, that was 25 years ago.
I was thinking tonight, my goodness, it's a long time ago, I've had a...
During that time, of course, I've had a...like many...
all of you...
ups and downs, I've had some success,
and I've had a good deal of failure.
But I'm thankful,
I must tell you this, to be even considered for an award
such as this, let alone to actually receive it.
And I want to tell you, that ladies and gentlemen,
especially may I say thank you to those
friends of mine in the public who have given me
over all these years their support.
You know, their support and
their laughs, their smiles, and dare I say it, their affection.
And I'm very grateful.
Off screen there were some unlikely business developments,
with Frankie's agent, Beryl Vertue,
merging their company with the management of the Bee Gees.
This gave rise to one of the strangest
projects of Frankie's career.
Still in the attic of Frankie's former home, Wavering Down,
is Frankie's record collection,
and amongst the albums is Cucumber Castle by the Bee Gees.
The hour-long film made to promote the album teamed
Frankie Howerd with the Bee Gees,
in a psychedelic medieval tale of kings and cucumbers.
It was a lavish, but ill-conceived project, and not surprisingly
has not been shown on television since it was first made.
This should be goodbye really.
Where are you going, Father?
I'm dying. I'm dying, you fool. Dying. Dying.
And nobody cares. Dying.
I haven't finished yet.
Dying. Dying.
I think I'm going. I think I'm going.
Bonsoir.
Oooh, I've changed my mind, I'm coming back.
I think those pills are working.
Soon after Cucumber Castle,
Frankie released a strange record of his own.
# Je t'aime, je t'aime. #
SNORING What?
I was phoned up one day by my agent,
"Do you want to make a record with Frankie Howerd?"
I said, "Yes, of course."
So I go along to the studio, and there's Frank and Ray and Alan.
And they said, "Do you know Je T'Aime?" I said no.
"Oh well, we'll play it to you."
So they played it, you see, a couple of times, and I said,
"I see, and I'm the heavy breathing?"
They said, "That's right."
Up Je T'Aime was his version of the French record, Je T'Aime,
the song which appeared to include a recording of the singer
Serge Gainsbourg having sex with his girlfriend, Jane Birkin.
The British version had Frankie Howerd in bed with June Whitfield.
# Oh, maintenant... #
And I was just going, "ooh, ah", this and the other, you know.
And it turned out in the end that they were in bed with her husband.
I remember that because I played her husband.
Oi.
What?
If you two don't keep quiet, I'm getting out of this bed
and I'm going to sleep in the other room.
Oh, I'm sorry Arthur.
But that was Je T'Aime, which got banned by the BBC for lewdness.
I mean, how ridiculous can you be?
Frankie Howerd now embarked on a series of feature films,
beginning with a film version of Up Pompeii.
Hey, you there, slave. Who, me?
Yes, you. Move your ass.
Well, that's nice, isn't it?
The next film was Up The Chastity Belt, and then Up The Front.
The series of Up films were in danger of typecasting
Frankie Howerd, as a comedian who could only do sexual innuendo.
A return to the BBC for An Evening With Francis Howerd
was an attempt to change this perception.
This show isn't going to be like all the shows I've been doing recently.
I mean, there's no... you know, there's no sort of...
uh...what's the...? Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
It's no, sort of curvaceous, you know, lovelies, lovely ladies.
Mind you, I hope we get as many titters in this show.
But the thing is... No.
See, I think it's time to prove that I can rise above all that.
LAUGHTER
Ha, ha, ha. Above all that. No.
Because in real life you know, in real life,
I mean, I look down on that sort of thing, frequently...
LAUGHTER
..frequently, you fools you, you fools.
However much he wanted to change,
Frankie Howerd was trapped by his own successful formula,
and just when he thought he was out, it would always pull him back in.
The worries about failure kept Frankie
to tried and tested formulas,
And he now rehashed the Up Pompeii template in Whoops Baghdad.
This'll wait till later. Listen, wait. Greetings, Salam.
Welcome to Old Baghdad,
gateway to the East, pearl of the Orient,
and the best knocking shop this side of Cairo.
Ah!
"Ah," you're saying to yourselves, "he's slipped one in already,"
that's what you're saying.
Yes, he has. I tell you why.
Because I don't want you to switch off, that's why.
In 1975, as offers in the UK dried up,
he set off for Canada to make The Frankie Howerd Show.
The 14 episodes, with their colourful titles, have never been
shown on UK television.
Frankie plays a lodger in a shared house full of misfits.
Honestly, I'm exhausted. Exhausted!
Yes. What? Don't laugh.
It's wicked to mock the afflicted.
Oh, I think what I'll do, I think...
LAUGHTER
No, listen. Listen now, please.
Don't be wicked.
I think I'll... Shut your faces a minute!
What I think I'll do, I think I'll have a tinkle...
On the pianoforte!
Frankie now had a new agent.
Beryl Vertue handed the management of Frankie's career
to Tessa Le Bars,
who talks about life with Frankie here
for the first time on television.
Just after I took over in '76,
I had to go over to see him in Canada.
I think he found it a little bit difficult over there.
I think he was very pleased to see me.
Obviously, Dennis was there with him all the time.
Dennis was an extremely calm sort of person,
who could put up with Frank's occasional
highs and lows of anxiety.
Dennis is the person who got him through every day,
from getting him to the right place at the right time
to checking out the lighting,
making sure everything went smoothly.
Yes, he was absolutely ideal for Frank,
and I suppose he and I, between us,
really kept him going throughout those years
that we were working together with him.
Oh, God, I'm going to faint.
Oh, yes.
Oh, I'm going to faint!
Do you mind, dear? They can't see the face.
Back in Britain, offers of television work remained limited.
This Is Your Life told the story of his career so far,
and everyone who had played a part was there...
Peter Cook.
Eric Sykes.
It was a night of high emotion, and there through it all
was his discreet and loyal partner, Dennis Heymer.
Let me just say this.
You know, it's nice to have these tributes,
and I'm very touched, I really am, but...
Silly old fool.
APPLAUSE
When I wasn't doing...
..so well, so many people were kind to me.
Dennis and Tessa and Blanche -
they all stood by me. I'm very grateful to them.
I'm sorry. I'm being stupid.
APPLAUSE
The late '70s and early '80s
saw another dip in Frankie Howerd's career.
From 1983, a variety of TV and theatre productions kept him busy,
but nothing captured that special Frankie Howerd quality.
A revival of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
failed to live up to former glories.
The net was cast wide for interesting projects,
and in 1985, Frankie Howerd found himself Up The Alps.
Up The Alps has never been shown on television before.
It shows that Frankie still had a spirit of adventure
and he was not going to give up on his career.
What is she doing here?
As television gave up on him, Frankie Howerd went back
on the road, touring theatres with his vintage stand up comedy act.
Because it's very funny, you know.
I didn't know I'd be here.
About six weeks ago, I was sitting at home one night,
watching the telly. Nothing on, mind you,
but you get used to that position, you know.
And the phone rang.
The phone rang and I thought, now, who can this be? Can't be my agent,
cos he thinks I'm dead.
There were old jokes and new jokes,
but one element remained the same -
the unique style of Frankie Howerd.
The ordinary suit,
the shambolic delivery, the connection to the audience.
Well, ah, no, you see I thought the management
would send me a car, see?
No, they sent me a map.
LAUGHTER
He toured relentlessly, up and down the country.
He'd built a reputation,
and they came in their thousands to see the man himself -
Frankie Howerd.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, his time had come again.
The alternative comedy of the late '80s was all about stand up,
and a new, younger audience now had an appreciation of
the comedy skills of a true original.
What? Don't, you are wicked.
No, you see... Listen. No.
Listen, listen!
Naughty!
Now listen.
I must ask you to shut your gobs.
Frankie Howerd began to sell out bigger and bigger theatres,
and the fans kept getting younger and younger.
He came back because of his talent. He was rediscovered again and again.
He put the work in and he just kept coming back,
and that strikes me...
For all that people talk about his depression and his anxiety,
that's an immense resilience,
and also an indication that he wanted to keep going back on stage.
All of a sudden, he became a cult figure again.
And then it was all up again, so it was wonderful.
Now in his 70s,
Frankie Howerd was as popular and admired as he'd ever been.
He was a prized guest on youth TV shows like The Word.
And all the best chat shows now wanted a piece of Frankie.
There was also a return to advertising,
as the face of Boddingtons Bitter.
Bitter ye not.
Boddies.
If you don't get Boddies, you'll just get...
Bitter!
This late success was everything he could've hoped for.
But the high point would come at the most unlikely of venues...
Oxford University,
and the debating chamber of the Oxford Union
was the chosen place for the swansong of Frankie Howerd.
He came on. The place went mad.
This was a young audience.
But the reception he got from the students was wonderful.
Before we start the actual comedy act,
what've you come to see, the sort of comedy stuff,
I just wanted to say a word to you, which is,
well, not serious, exactly,
but...
sincere. Yeah. No, it's because I'm not...
Well, you know, no, you don't know, but I mean...
No, but you'll believe me
when I tell you I'm not what you call an intellectual,
I'm not a... No, no.
I'm not what you call brainy, you know, a sort of clever clogs,
I'm not... Levels, O-levels and A-levels, ooh, no, no, no, not that.
Because you're all students,
so naturally to you I'm not what you'd call an academic.
By no way at all could you call me an intellectual...
Hear, hear.
Which is why I feel so much at home here tonight.
There were echoes of That Was The Week That Was,
the old-school comedian teaching an Oxbridge crowd a thing or two
about the toughest subject of them all, stand-up comedy.
Shut your face.
He's mocking!
Ooh, no! Ooh, no, missus, no!
No...
Nay, nay, thrice nay.
Oh, titter ye not! Titter ye not!
He's mocking Francis. You're mocking Francis!
This is your Francis.
Yes, my maiden name, Francis...
Frankie Howerd had nothing left to prove.
He was loved, admired and respected right to the end.
In April, 1992, he was admitted to hospital with heart trouble.
Frankie Howerd was admitted as an emergency
into the intensive care unit
here at the Harley Street clinic
with a very serious heart problem.
This is being treated currently with medication.
He came home for Easter, but on 19th April,
the great comedian passed away.
He was buried in the cemetery of St Gregory's Church in Somerset,
just a few miles from his house, Wavering Down.
I mean, I'd love to be the first man to play on the moon.
By "play", I mean act.
Act on the moon.
That'd be a...
But I don't think I'm going to be.
He just made you laugh.
And I mean, I think that is a wonderful epitaph for anybody.
If you say, "Well, what can you remember about Frankie Howerd?"
"He made me laugh." I mean, what a lovely epitaph.
He went through decades entertaining people
and making them laugh.
Not many people can say that.
He is always there, you know. If you take a sort of snapshot
of the late '50, '60s, '70s, '80s, all the way through to his death,
he's always there or thereabouts,
in a way that a lot of comedians weren't.
Everyone who's followed practically owes a debt to Frankie Howerd,
because all the ranges of stand up comedy owes a huge debt to him,
because he was the subversive one who dared to do it first.
He was way ahead of the game, he was a very modern comic.
He'd be just fine now. He'd be just fine.
People who were involved with him did love him,
you know, did love him,
for all his hotchpotch that he was.
I understood him so well, being a fellow Pisces.
And I'll always miss my friend, Frankie Howerd.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd