Dick Emery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Gilbert "Dick" Emery (19 February 1917 – 2 January 1983) was an English comedian and actor whose popularity began on radio during the 1950s, and after his transition to television his popularity grew and developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
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[edit] Brief biography
Richard Gilbert Emery was born in Bloomsbury, London in 1917. Dick Emery was married five times. When he was not working in his profession as a comedian, he enjoyed aviation, motorcycling, model-making, and wrote a review feature for Meccano Magazine during 1971. He died in Denmark Hill, London from heart failure at age 65.
[edit] Radio
In 1952 Dick Emery gained a starring role in a fifteen minutes Radio Luxembourg series that aired on Saturday nights at 7:00 PM called Chance of a Lifetime. This was a quiz programme sponsored by Marshall Ward in which merchandise to the value of 30 was given away to contestants.
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[edit] Television
On television Dick Emery played sidekick to BBC-TV comedians such as Tony Hancock, in The Tony Hancock Show, and he also had a regular role in the ITV sitcom, The Army Game.
Emery's weekly BBC show, which ran irregularly from 1963 to 1979, consisted of sketches which mostly involved his dressing up as various characters. His characters included a vicar with large teeth, spinster Hettie, Clarence and a bovver boy (Roy Kinnear played his father but is 19 years younger than Dick Emery). The best-known were hapless pensioner "James Maynard Kitchener Lampwick" and "Mandy", a voracious blonde whose catchphrase was "Ooh, you are awful ... but I like you!" - which became the title of Emery's own British Lion theatrical release (in which Emery displayed the same penchant for characterisation, both male and female).
[edit] Films
Emery also appeared in several films, such as The Fast Lady (1962), Ooh… You Are Awful (1972), and was a voice actor on the animated Beatles movie Yellow Submarine.
[edit] Legacy
Emery's broad humour is still admired by similar comic actors such as Harry Enfield.
