Frankie Howerd

Francis Alick Howard was born on 6 March 1917 at the City Hospital in York, England, the son of Francis Alfred William Howard, a soldier, and Edith Florence Howard, née Morrison, who worked at the Rowntree's factory. The family lived in Hartoft Street, which Howard later described as a poor area of the city near the River Ouse. When his father was posted to Woolwich, the family relocated to Eltham, London, where Howard attended Shooter's Hill Grammar School. He would go on to become one of England's most distinctive comic performers, adopting the stage name Frankie Howerd — the altered spelling chosen, in his own words, to be different.

Howerd made his first stage appearance at age 13, though an unsuccessful audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art ended his early ambitions as a serious actor. His path toward comedy began during his service in the British Army in World War II. In 1944 he attained the rank of bombardier in Plymouth, was subsequently promoted to sergeant, and on 6 June 1944 took part in the D-Day effort, though he was held on a boat off the coast of Normandy. He launched his professional career in the summer of 1946 in a touring production called For the Fun of It, and by early December of that year had made his radio debut on the BBC's Variety Bandbox alongside other ex-servicemen. His material during this period was written with the assistance of Eric Sykes, Ray Galton, Alan Simpson, and Johnny Speight. Sykes in particular shaped Howerd's delivery by inserting verbal interjections such as "ooh" and "ahh" as punctuation pauses; Howerd chose to deliver these literally, and they became defining features of his stage persona. He subsequently toured the Music Hall circuit, developing catchphrases including "titter ye not."

In 1954, Howerd made his screen debut opposite Petula Clark in The Runaway Bus, a film written specifically for his comic style, produced over five weeks on a budget of £45,000. Through the late 1950s he experimented with stage farces, Shakespearean comedy, and television sitcoms. His career regained momentum at the start of the 1960s with a season at Peter Cook's Establishment Club in Soho, followed by appearances on the satirical television programme That Was the Week That Was in 1963. That same year he appeared in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a run that continued through 1965 and led to sustained television work. In 1966 and 1967, he co-hosted a 90-minute Christmas television special, The Frankie and Bruce Christmas Show, alongside Bruce Forsyth.

In 1967, Howerd appeared as Francis Bigger, one of the lead characters in Carry On Doctor, with Variety noting his "brilliantly droll sense of comedy." The following year, 1968, he brought his work to New York, appearing on Broadway in Rockefeller and the Red Indians. That same year, on 20 August 1968, the television special Frankie Howerd Meets the Bee Gees aired on Thames Television, for which Galton and Simpson had provided the script.

Howerd's television series Up Pompeii!, which ran from 1969 to 1970, became one of his most celebrated vehicles. The show was a direct follow-up to his work on Forum and was characterized by his direct addresses to the camera and his seemingly improvised asides to the audience. A later sale of his scripts revealed that these apparently spontaneous remarks had in fact been meticulously planned in advance. A film version of Up Pompeii followed in 1971, and British exhibitors voted him the ninth most popular star at the British box office that year. He reprised versions of the character Lurcio in Up the Chastity Belt and Up the Front, both also released in 1971 and 1972 respectively. Also in 1971, he recorded a comic version of "Je t'aime" with June Whitfield, later included in the 2004 CD reissue of Oh! What a Carry On!

In 1976, Howerd appeared in The Frankie Howerd Show on CBC Television in Canada, which received strong ratings but was not renewed. A cabaret tour of New Zealand followed in 1979. In 1978, he appeared in the Hollywood musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, playing Mean Mr. Mustard alongside Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, George Burns, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Steve Martin. He had been cast by producer Robert Stigwood, on whose record label he was signed at the time. The film was both a critical and commercial failure. In 1982, he appeared in televised productions of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, as the Learned Judge, and H.M.S. Pinafore, as Sir Joseph Porter, KCB.

After six years without a regular UK television series, Howerd returned to British screens in 1987 in the Channel 4 programme Superfrank!, scripted by Miles Tredinnick and Vince Powell. In 1990, he contributed a performance of "Sects Therapy" to Freudiana, the final recording studio collaboration between Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. That same year, his last major West End appearance — a one-man show — took place at the Garrick Theatre. His regular accompanist from 1960 onward was pianist Sunny Rogers, who appeared in both his television and live theatre work, including that final Garrick engagement.

Howerd was appointed OBE in 1977. He died on 19 April 1992. Throughout his career he had concealed his homosexuality from both his audience and his mother; he had met sommelier Dennis Heymer at the Dorchester Hotel in 1958, when Howerd was 40 and Heymer was 28, and Heymer became his long-term partner.