Setbacks & Fightbacks #3: Frankie Howerd - The serial survivor
Published: Sunday 29th June 2025
The many rises and falls of Frankie Howerd: the phrase would work well enough as one of his infamous innuendos, but it also captures the contours of his whole career. No other great British comedian seemed so vulnerable to being made a victim of the vagaries of cultural fashion, and no other was so courageous in the way he kept fighting his way back into favour.
To liken the arc of any entertainer's experiences to that of a rollercoaster is always to invite charges of having settled for a cliché, but in the case of Frankie Howerd the description is hard to avoid. He had so many ups and downs he would have been forgiven for thinking that his career was being acted out in some kind of peculiar theme park.
First, there was his rejection by RADA. This came when he was still a teenager.
He had wanted, from an early age, to be an actor. He didn't want to be a comedian; he wanted to be a 'serious' actor. Having been bitten by the bug while performing in school plays, he went on to attend a local evening class for more intensive instruction.
It was here that, after he started to show sufficient promise, he was encouraged to aim his sights on securing a scholarship at RADA. There were three set pieces to master if he wanted a chance to pass: one a short speech from a contemporary play, and two soliloquies from Shakespeare. He studied each of them every day until the morning of his audition arrived.
It was something of a triumph that he was even taking this test, because, up until recently, his natural nervousness had rendered him incapable of coping with any kind of public scrutiny without stammering and shaking. Only since his tutors had taught him techniques to calm himself down had he felt ready to face such a challenge.
Clutching the packet of grated cheese sandwiches that his doting mother had made for his lunch, he caught the train from his home in Eltham, south east London, to Holborn Viaduct in the city's centre, and then, with a growing sense of trepidation, walked slowly through Bloomsbury, with all of the lines from the three speeches rattling around inside his head, until he arrived outside the entrance to the grand-looking RADA building at 62 Gower Street. What happened next was an experience that he would never, ever, forget.
Shuffling inside, he found himself at the back of a vast echoey room that appeared to be almost full with his fellow applicants. It only took one quick glance over at them - smart, smug, matinee idol types - and one furtive glance back at himself - suddenly revealed as a scruffy, shambling, 'sweating oaf' - for all of the old demons to come crashing back. The others looked as if they belonged; he felt that he did not.
As he stood there, rooted helplessly to the spot, he held on tightly to his packet of sandwiches ('I had to cling to something'), and felt sure that he could hear more than a few mocking laughs. He knew what he had to do, but at that singularly vital moment, in spite of all of those months of lessons and learning and desperately hard work, he knew that he had lost all faith in his ability to get it done.
He tried breathing deeply in and out; that didn't help. He tried flexing and unflexing his muscles; that didn't help, either. He tried to visualise a calm performance; that went disastrously wrong, because all he could visualise was a nervous one. The heart was beating harder than ever, the legs were feeling like lead, the sweat was trickling down his spine.
Called in for his audition, he walked awkwardly over to his spot, still clutching his packet of sandwiches absent-mindedly to his chest, and then, sensing that he was having some trouble in keeping still, looked down and noticed that his left leg had already started to tremble. The more he tried to stop it, the worse the quivering became.
When he looked up in embarrassment at the examiners (one of whom - the imperious actor Helen Haye - he recognised immediately as the haughty wife of the master villain in Alfred Hitchcock's recent movie, The 39 Steps), he found that they were all staring back not at his face but straight down at his almost hypnotically pendulous leg. Panicking, he took his right hand (which remained wrapped around his now-squashed packet of sandwiches) and slammed it down hard and fast against his left knee, praying that the violent gesture would at least bring the shaking to a stop.
It did not. The hand did not stop the knee; the knee started the hand. All the intervention achieved was to provide the row of open-mouthed examiners with the even more peculiar spectacle of a crumpled young man and what was left of his crumpled sandwiches being shaken ever more wildly by a wildly shaking left leg.
It looked a bit like a dance, and a bit like an exorcism, and a bit like a fit, but it was definitely a disaster. When, eventually, his leg, and the rest of him, finally came to a halt, his sandwiches had showered the examiners in a mixture of shredded cheese and breadcrumbs, and his suit was in almost as bad a shape as his frazzled nerves.
'Begin,' he was told coldly, and so, red-faced and reluctantly, he did so: 'Yes...Well...Um...To-to-to...er be...or not-not-not to...um...Yes, well...To be...Well, th-that's the question, isn't it?...'.
He was well aware that it was already over, right there and then, but, somehow, he struggled on to the bitter end. 'I should have thrown up my hands and run for my life,' he would recall, 'but beneath the panic lay that hard subsoil of determination, and so I stumbled and stammered and squeaked and shook my way through all of the three set pieces.'
They thanked him. He thanked them. He went out. The next candidate came in. The grey day turned black.
Howerd spent the train journey home slumped deep inside 'an anguish of desolation and shame': 'I'd let everyone down: my mother, my headmaster, my schoolmates, and myself. I was a complete and utter failure'.
When he arrived back in Eltham, he found that he simply could not bear to face anyone, not even his mother, and so he went instead to a field at the back of his house, where he sat down in the long grass and started to sob. 'Never before or since,' he would say, 'have I wept as I did on that day.' He stayed there for two blank and miserable hours.
Eventually, however, once the sobbing had stopped and the tears had started to dry, a bright thought burst through the gloom. Perhaps, he reflected, he had not reached the end at all, but had merely taken a wrong turn. Sitting bolt upright, he - as a Sunday School scholar - then said to himself:
You're a fool. A fool....You must have courage. Courage. The way you're behaving is absolutely gutless....Look, you believe in God, don't you? And you know that God seems to have given you talent. You feel that to be true....Now God is logical. He must be, otherwise life is stupid. Pointless. Without meaning....OK, perhaps RADA and straight acting aren't for you. What then is the alternative?
It did not take long for this characteristically brusque internal inquisition to summon up an acceptable response: 'Comedy? Is that the alternative? If you're not meant to be a great Shakespearean, are you meant to be a comedian? Is that it?...Why not try and see?'
There seemed only one answer to such a question, and that was: why not, indeed? 'I didn't have anything to lose,' he concluded, 'except my pride - and that was wounded enough already after such a traumatic day.'
This was the first sign of Howerd's remarkable shrewdness when facing a setback. He would always be able, eventually, to stand back, analyse the issue, and find a way to turn a weakness into a strength.
In this particular case, he was able to realise that if he could stop his nervousness from using him, and start using it instead, he could find a way forward. He resolved, therefore, to stop straining to stifle his anxieties on stage, and start making them part of his act. By shaking a little, by stammering sometimes, he would appear vulnerable, and by being somewhat forgetful instead of word perfect, he would seem 'normal' and more real.
With this change of perspective, the stand-up comic Frankie Howerd was born. There would be no Max Miller-style slickness and speed in his delivery, no sense of superiority in his attitude to the audience. There would simply be a man, just as fallible and awkward and insecure as most of those who were watching him, and thus so much easier with whom to identify, embrace and enjoy.
He tried out this new approach by adapting a Max Miller gag. The fast-talking Miller had told it like this:
'Ere's a funny thing happened to me this afternoon. A girl said to me: 'Hello, Max!' I said: 'I don't know you'. She said: 'It's my birthday. I'm twenty-one today'. She said: 'Will you come up to my flat for coffee and games?' I said: 'Don't bother with the coffee - but I will come up'. Well, it was raining outside, and there are only two things to do when it's raining - and I don't play cards. 'Ere!
Howerd, on the other hand, started telling it like this:
Oh, no, don't, n-n-no, please, don't. No. Liss-en! Um. Where was I? Ah! Yes! Now! You'd have screamed! Oh, you would! Yes. I have to laugh meself when I think about it! Yes. I do! No, er, the thing was, th-th-there was this girl, y'see. Yes. This, er, this girl. And - oh - she was pretty! What? Pretty? Oh! I should say so! Pret-tee! Yes. This girl. Oh! Ever so pretty. And, er - where was I...?
On and on he would go, moving forward, pulling back, stepping sideways, moving forward again, drawing his audience deeper and deeper into his distinctive comic world, until, when he sensed that they were ready, he finally hit them with the punch line.
He was no longer trying to hide his own inadequacies. He was no longer trying - and failing - to be like the other stand-up comics. He was now trying - and, increasingly, succeeding - to be more like himself.
He started using everything - his arching eyebrows, his skewer-shaped mouth, his swooping vocal inflexions, his risible sartorial awkwardness, his occasional lapses of memory - to make a strength of his imperfection. In doing so, he became the most distinctive, and the most innovative, comedian in the country.
He was given his own show on radio. He was then given another one on TV. From the late-1940s through until the late-1950s, he had one success after another. Then the rollercoaster took him hurtling back down to earth.
His act fell out of fashion. His manager swindled him out of a fortune. He was left to deal with massive debts.
It all hit Howerd incredibly hard. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and then struggled to find the strength to fight his way back.
After years of being at the top of the bill in the biggest theatres in Britain, he was reduced to squabbling with the manager of Archie Andrews, a wooden doll, over whose name should go first at a small show they were both doing in Crewe. His old writers, such as Eric Sykes, rallied round him, offering to produce new material for free, but the problem was that few of his old employers were now inclined to hire him.
A sobering sign of how far his fortunes had fallen came when two of his old friends, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, failed to get a series for him commissioned by the BBC. Currently riding high on the success of their own recent work with Tony Hancock, they had been given the impression by Tom Sloan, the Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the corporation, that they were now free to do more or less whatever they wanted for their next project.
When, however, they suggested a show for Frankie Howerd, the executive turned them down. 'He looked at us as though we'd just said something astonishing,' Ray Galton would tell me, 'and then he said, "Frankie Howerd? Oh, no, no, he's finished. You don't want to do a series with him".'
It didn't surprise Howerd himself. There had been so many rejections in recent years that he no longer expected anything else.
By the end of 1961 he decided that he had suffered enough. He planned to quit the business completely and open a pub instead.
His last planned public appearance was set to be a brief speech at the 1962 Evening Standard Drama Awards ceremony, which was due to be held in January at London's Savoy Hotel. Although initially reluctant to accept, he eventually decided that such an engagement would represent a rather fitting final fling: 'I'd make my farewell appearance in evening dress, in posh surroundings, in front of a good class of audience!'
It would in fact turn out, much to his surprise, to spark another comeback. Armed with a script specially written for him by Eric Sykes, Johnny Speight and Galton & Simpson, and fortified by a few sips of Scotch, he stormed the occasion, earning the warmest reception he had experienced in years.
Peter Cook, one of his biggest fans, happened to be present, and was so impressed that he asked him to appear at his new Soho night club, The Establishment. Howerd, though flattered, was resistant, especially as he knew the venue specialised in political satire, but Cook was persistent, and eventually he agreed to a short residency there, starting in September 1962, for the fee of £400 per week.
Realising that he was due to follow, of all people, American comedy's current enfant terrible Lenny Bruce, Howerd was so terrified at the prospect of stepping out in front of such a sophisticated audience that he was shaking in the wings, but, supported once again by sharp and smart material crafted for him by his old writer allies, he walked on and proceeded to win over a whole new audience, as well as reigniting the interest of his old one, beginning with a mock apology:
Ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you this - I hope you haven't got the wrong impression, ladies and gentlemen, if you've come along here tonight expecting Lenny Bruce, I'm sorry, I'm no Lenny Bruce. And if you've come here expecting a lot of crudeness, and a lot of vulgarity, I'm sorry, but you won't get it from me, so you might just as well piss off now!
Then he was off, cleverly adapting his usual intimate and gossipy style of comedy to suit the new context, bringing satire to the mainstream, from the university common room to over the garden fence, rambling away about the Prime Minister of the day, Harold Macmillan ('He might be very nice, under that moustache. But it's a pity really, it spoils him...') as if he was merely an eccentric neighbour ('I said, "Harold, be careful, do! Don't rush, I beg of you. Don't rush!" But, you see, I don't think he got the message. No. I don't think he got the message. Of course, it's very difficult when you're shouting through a letterbox...'), and reflecting on various incidents relating to current affairs as though they were run-of-the-mill family matters.
The reaction could not have been more favourable. 'Frankie Howerd has been out of the West End entertainment world for long enough for his appearance at The Establishment to be considered as a Return,' The Stage newspaper reported, 'and a return it certainly is, with a performance of remarkable brilliance and authority.'
The London Evening Standard was similarly effusive in its praise. Referring to the supposed chasm between variety and satire that some had predicted would make Howerd's season in Soho an embarrassing debacle, the paper reported how easily, and speedily, he had actually closed the gap: 'He is able to step comfortably across any gulf which exists between these two poles of entertainment, and he had last night's Establishment crowd laughing just as unrestrainedly as any provincial coach-party'.
The critical consensus was that it had been one of the greatest comic performances of recent years. Suddenly, as a consequence, Frankie Howerd found himself right back in fashion.
Tom Sloan now decided that he was worth another BBC series (two of them, in fact, both written by Galton & Simpson, between 1964 and 1966). He also starred in his own West End shows (including the London production of the Broadway hit A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which ran from 1963 to 1965, and the revue Way Out In Piccadilly, which lasted from 1966 to 1967), made a couple of Carry On movies (Carry On Doctor in 1967 and Carry On Up The Jungle in 1970), and had another huge hit with his own sitcom Up Pompeii! (1969-70). The man who had been up and then down was now up again, as popular as he had ever been.
The Royal Family - especially the Queen Mother - were open in their affection for him; Hollywood celebrities such as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made a point of visiting him whenever they were in England; and all the top impresarios were competing for his services. It was a heady time for Howerd, and the memory of the hard and lonely time spent out in the wilderness only made this second wave of success all the sweeter.
By the mid-Seventies, however, he had slipped back down yet again. Eclipsed on TV by the more overtly camp Larry Grayson (who, as far as Howerd was concerned, had 'stolen' his act), and offered little in the way of new projects except for more variations on the format of Up Pompeii!, he grew so frustrated that he tried his luck elsewhere than England.
There was a pilot for US TV called Up The Toga (1972) that failed even to reach the screen. There was a series for Canadian TV called The Frankie Howerd Show (1976), which did get broadcast but was generally considered a flop. There was also a mini-series for Australian TV entitled Up The Convicts (also 1976), which met with a similar fate.
Nothing seemed to work for him during this period. He thought that his luck had finally changed when he was signed up for a role in The Bee Gees' much-hyped movie adaptation of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), only to find himself, once it was released, associated with one of the biggest critical and box office disasters of the decade.
The rise of 'alternative' comedy in Britain during the late 1970s made Howerd's style of humour seem more outdated than ever. It also didn't help that, just when he could have done with looking as though he had sufficient vim and vigour to confound those in the industry who were starting to write him off, his increasingly painful knee joints were making him move like someone considerably older than someone who, according to his 'official' birthdate (which was 1924 instead of the real one of 1917), was still only supposed to be in his early fifties.
He continued to propose new projects, but none of them were being picked up by producers. He was still making live appearances, but some of the venues were no longer selling out. By the end of the decade he was having to make do with such comparatively modest ventures as a cabaret tour of New Zealand and a one-off concert on the QEII.
The beginning of Eighties only brought him more of the same kind of disappointment. A wartime-themed BBC sitcom, called Then Churchill Said To Me, was filmed in 1982, but ended up being shelved - supposedly because of heightened political sensitivities following the outbreak of the Falklands conflict, but more probably because it was deemed to be embarrassingly poor - and would not reach the screen during his lifetime.
His health was declining at much the same rate as his career. He had broken his pelvis in 1980, and put on some weight as a consequence of his restricted mobility; in 1983, he underwent a major operation after being warned that, as his knee joints had begun to crumble, he would soon be wheelchair-bound unless he agreed to urgent surgery; and, even though he did indeed sometimes use it as an excuse to initiate a little physical contact, he really was suffering from an increasingly painful bad back.
All of these aches and pains, combined with his occasional struggles with stage fright, made him more prone than ever to bad moods and petulant outbursts. He was drinking more, and taking medication for his escalating ailments, which only made him even more depressive and mercurial. He was angry and frustrated with himself, deep down, because he was now finding it so hard to move around, memorise his lines and time their delivery, but he still found himself taking the frustration out, at times, on those innocent individuals who just happened to be around him.
It upset his old friends and close colleagues to see him keep pushing himself on when he was clearly so unhappy and unwell. Barry Took, in particular, was depressed to find him in such a poor state when, late in 1983, he agreed to adapt Volpone, Ben Jonson's classic Jacobean farce about an ageing con-man's bid to out-con his young pretenders, as a starring vehicle for Howerd at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley. Re-titled The Fly And The Fox, the actual process whereby Took and Howerd had collaborated on 'Howerding up' the text had proven to be quite enjoyable, but, when the production went ahead, the writer was taken aback by the apparent decline in the powers of the performer:
He was, I'm afraid, dreadful. Maybe to say that he seemed without talent or timing is too harsh, but, by his own very high standards, he was really poor. Looking back, you see, it's not as surprising now as it was then, because, back then, I didn't know that Frank was several years older than he'd claimed, and I just couldn't understand why he was so sluggish compared to just a few years before, let alone compared to how electrifying he'd been when I'd first seen him perform. It wasn't easy to accept.
The critics tended to concur. Lamenting the absence of the play's traditional satirical bite and narrative drive, they complained, albeit reluctantly, that Howerd often appeared oblivious to the broader aspects of the story, as well as 'clogging up the pace' with his laboured movements and delivery.
After this disappointment, Howerd licked his wounds while he drifted through shorter and less demanding engagements, such as a brief spell as a 'roving reporter' for ITV's new breakfast show, Good Morning Britain; an ill-considered role as the MC of Channel 4's ill-considered, and ill-timed, attempt to adapt for a British audience Chuck Barris's notorious US anti-talent contest, The Gong Show (which, in spite of a great deal of pre-transmission publicity, was 'gonged' itself straight after its shambolic pilot edition); a commission from Marks & Spencer to lend his name to a flimsy book of ghost-edited, and supposedly 'side-splitting,' anecdotes called Howerd's Howlers (for which the discerning reader required a ghost laugher); and a job as the narrator of a cartoon series for ITV called The Blunders. He even agreed to participate in a show called Roland Rat's Yuletide Binge, which really did make his heyday seem long ago and far away.
In 1987, he suffered yet another physical setback. Shortly after recording a version of his one-man show for Channel 4 (who broadcast it under the title of Superfrank) and a short radio series for the BBC (called Frankie Howerd's Forum), he fell and damaged one of his fragile knees so badly that he had to have another operation that effectively put him out of action for the best part of half a year.
His devoted agent Tessa Le Bars did her best to help Howerd through all of the gloom, but he remained restlessly self-critical and introspective. The act, he feared, had once again become a problem, and this time he could find no solution.
His luck at last began to change at the start of the 1989, when a performance at the Hackney Empire's Up The Festival event met with an encouragingly positive reaction. The real turning-point, however, arrived in April, when he was invited to go to the Merriott Hotel in Mayfair to deliver a speech to the Gallery First Nighters' Club, a group of avid theatre-going faithfuls who were always happy to pay homage, each year, to their heroes.
When it came to his turn to talk, he felt his nerves (and his knees) go, and had to be helped to his feet by the club's president, Jack Rossiter. He flashed Rossiter a look of panic, but Rossiter, who had been around long enough to know how best to respond to an attack of stage fright, simply whispered to him, 'It's just another show - all right?' Howerd looked at him, still seeming somewhat dazed, nodded and mumbled, 'Just another show,' and then proceeded to deliver his speech.
When he finished, three hundred people stood up and applauded. 'What you said back there,' he told Rossiter as he shook hands and prepared to leave. 'It's what I wanted to hear.'
He felt much calmer after that, and started to reacquire much of his old appetite for performing in front of an audience. After easing his way back into circulation via a series of semi-private speaking engagements, the odd low-profile club date and even a mock-debate at the Cambridge Union (while everyone else addressed the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, he addressed the rise and fall of the Moss Empires), Howerd felt ready to take his stand-up act back out on a twenty-five-date nationwide tour (which he called Frankie Howerd Bursts Into Britain).
What surprised him most of all, as he went from venue to venue, was the age range of his audiences. He was not just attracting the people who had been fans for twenty or thirty or more years. He was also drawing-in some of the children, and even a few of the grandchildren, of such long-standing fans.
He had won over the odd high-profile youth culture figure before - the late Sid Vicious, for example, had hailed Howerd as the 'main man' back in the late-1970s, when the Sex Pistols were at their most self-consciously iconoclastic - but not until now had he enjoyed the kind of extraordinarily broad multi-generational appeal that had so many ordinary young people flocking in to watch him perform. It suddenly gave him a heightened feeling of hope. It made him feel as if he still had a future.
Howerd took to calling his new student following his 'Frankie Pankies', and they, in turn, started turning up to his shows wearing T-shirts on which they had printed such phrases as 'Get Your Titters Out' and 'Nay, Nay and Thrice Nay'. Greeted by loud cheering each time that he stepped out on stage, much of the physical pain and fatigue that had dogged him in recent years now seemed to fade away as he basked in the warmth of his reception.
'Can you believe,' he asked Barbara Windsor, half-jokingly and half-genuinely, when she visited his dressing room to congratulate him after one of his shows, 'I'm still doing the same old rubbish I've been doing for years?' 'I think he was stunned by the new adulation,' she reflected, 'but he wasn't complaining. Not one bit.'
More 'Frankie Pankie' ventures followed, striking while the iron was hot, throughout the rest of the year, including the recording of a number of novelty 'dance' tracks (including Frankie's Grooving and Get Your Titters Out) which would eventually see the light of day in such fashionable formats as extended and alternative mixes on coloured 12-inch vinyl, and a line of 'Frankie Says'-themed merchandise.
This latest, and arguably most unlikely, comeback culminated in November 1990, when Howerd (at the age of seventy-three) made an appearance before a hall full of students inside the Debating Chamber of the Oxford Union. Treating the occasion - rather like he had done during his season at the Establishment club - as a sort of upmarket Workers' Playtime (and drawing on material supplied by several more of his writer friends), he deferred to the undergraduates at the very same time that he showed them who was really the boss:
Before we start the actual comedy act 'thing' - what you've come to see, the sort of comedy stuff - ah, I just wanted to say a word to you, er, which is, well, not serious, exactly, but, um, sincere. Yes. No, it's because, you see, 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'd call an 'intellectual'. [The audience starts to laugh] No, no, I'm not, no, I'm not what you'd call 'brainy,' er, you know, a sort of 'clever clogs'. I've not got levels - 'O' levels and 'A' levels - oh, no, nah, nothing like that. 'Cause, 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 - [A plummy-voiced plant at the back of the chamber cries out: 'Hear! Hear!'] - which is why I feel so much at home here tonight!
Some of the students had probably come merely to laugh at their own self-conscious campness, but even they soon realised that they were in the presence of a genuinely great, and rejuvenated, stand-up comic rather than just someone they had co-opted to cult status. The sharpness of his early put-downs showed just how expertly ruthless he could be, if he needed to be, and so there was a genuine sense of respect, as well as affection, for him long before the evening had reached its end.
It was a triumphant night, and fortunately, as a production team from London Weekend Television was there to capture it on camera, the genuine brilliance of his performance would subsequently be seen and enjoyed by a much bigger, and even more appreciative, audience. The critical reaction could not have been much better - nor could it have been more well-deserved. He had, against all the odds, done it all over again.
Frankie Howerd would remain where he belonged, at the top of his profession, for the final two years of his life. He died on 19th April 1992 at the age of seventy-five.
It had been an extraordinary career, distinguished not only by rare talent but also by an even rarer courage. No matter how many times others wrote him off, he kept writing himself back into the story. For all of his bouts of self-doubt, he knew, deep down, that his gifts were too great to be wasted, and so he never, ever, gave up - which makes his attitude as enduringly inspirational as his art.
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Love comedy? Find out moreThe Frankie Howerd Collection
Frankie Howerd, one of the 20th Century's best-loved comics, left behind a wide variety of work. Arguably his most well-known and loved role was that of Lurcio in Up Pompeii!, available on DVD here for the first time.
Contents are as follows:
Up Pompeii! Pilot episode (1969)
Up Pompeii! Series 1 (1970)
Up Pompeii! Series 2 (1970)
Further Up Pompeii! Special (1975)
Then Churchill Said To Me (1982)
Comedy Greats: Frankie Howerd
The Comedy Greats DVD contains sketches from An Evening With Frankie Howerd and Royal Variety Performances, as well as chat show appearances with the likes of Michael Parkinson and Terry Wogan.
First released: Monday 16th October 2006
DVD- Distributor: 2 Entertain
- Region: 2 & 4
- Discs: 5
- Minutes: 676
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: BBCDVD2119
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Oh, Please Yourselves! - Frankie Howerd At ITV
At the time of his death in 1992, Frankie Howerd was firmly established as a national comedy treasure, his risqué jokes, double entendres and meandering anecdotes having enlivened television schedules over nearly four decades. Some of his most successful shows were produced for ITV, and this set presents six shows broadcast on the network between 1973 and 1991 that reflect an ever-broadening appreciation of his comic genius - from the hugely popular variety shows of the seventies to the enthusiastically received routines on Britain's university campuses during the early nineties, confirming Frankie Howerd's status not only as a comedy icon but a cult hero embraced by a generation of young student aficionados.
Featuring guests John Le Mesurier, Sheila Steafel, Kenny Lynch and Norwegian Bond girl Julie Ege, with writing from Johnny Speight, Barry Cryer and Vince Powell, this marvellous collection presents Frankie at his finest.
The programmes included are:
Superfrank!
Francis Howerd In Concert
Frankie And Tommy
Frankie Howerd Reveals All
Frankie Howerd On Campus
Further Up Pompeii
Plus, two Russell Harty interviews, from 1974 and 1976.
First released: Sunday 28th August 2011
DVD- Distributor: Network
- Region: 2
- Discs: 2
- Catalogue: 7953425
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Frankie Howerd - The Lost Television Pilots
A collection of rare television pilots featuring the one and only Frankie Howerd.
Born 6th March 1917, Francis Alick Howerd was once described by Barry Cryer as a comic actor whose career was a series of comebacks. Frankie Howerd was very successful in Britain, but found it harder to break into the US, Canadian and Australian markets. These pilots made in the 1970s provide a rare insight into his work abroad.
From these pilots, the most famous series is Up The Convicts, made by the 7 Network in Australia, and ran for just four episodes. Frankie played Jeremiah Shirk, sentenced to a penal colony in New South Wales, Australia. If you enjoy watching Up Pompeii then Up The Convicts will give you pleasure as well.
This collection includes: Up The Convicts - Episode 3, The Gong Show pilot & The Frankie Howerd Show (CBC) - 2 episodes.
Also included are a number of rare interviews with Frankie Howerd, from Ryan's Roost, The Mike Douglas Show and The Merv Grffin Show.
First released: Monday 13th August 2018
DVD- Distributor: Simply Media
- Region: 2
- Discs: 2
- Minutes: 166
- Catalogue: 188964
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Frankie Howerd: Stand-up Comic
The most authoritative biography of Britain's most subversive twentieth century clown from celebrated biographer Graham McCann, author of Dad's Army: The Story Of A Classic Television Show and Morecambe & Wise.
The rambling perambulations, the catchphrases, the bland brown suit and chestnut hairpiece: such were the hallmarks of a revolution in stand-up comedy that came in the unique shape of Frankie Howerd. His act was all about his lack of act, his humour reliant on trying to prevent the audience from laughing ('No, no please, now...now control please, control').
This new biography from Graham McCann charts the circuitous course of an extraordinary career - moving from his early, exceptional, success in the forties and early fifties as a radio star, through a period at the end of the fifties when he was all but forgotten as a has-been, to his rediscovery in the early sixties by Peter Cook. Howerd returned to television popularity with Up Pompeii!, which led to work with the Carry On team. In his last few years he became the unlikely doyen of the late eighties 'alternative' comedy circuit. But his life off-stage was equally fascinating: full of secrets, insecurities (leading at one point to a nervous breakdown) and unexpected friendships.
Graham McCann vividly captures both Howerd's colourful career and precarious private life through extensive new research and original interviews with such figures as Paul McCartney, Eric Sykes, Bill Cotton, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims and Michael Grade. This exceptional biography brings to life an exceptional British entertainer.
First published: Monday 18th October 2004
- Published: Monday 4th July 2005
- Publisher: HarperCollins
- Pages: 384
- Catalogue: 9781841153117
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- Published: Thursday 25th February 2016
- Publisher: HarperCollins
- Download: 1.22mb
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- Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
- Pages: 384
- Catalogue: 9781841153100
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Howerd's Howlers
This hilarious collection of anecdotes will provide hours of amusement for everyone. Gathered together with the assistance of Frankie Howerd, the volume presents page after page of side-splitting humour.
First published: Tuesday 1st January 1985
- Publisher: Octopus
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