It was raining when we left for work this morning, but now
sitting in the lounge writing this and
looking out at the view from our third floor window , the sun is shining and it
is a balmy twenty degrees outside.
I was sad today to hear that the comedy hero Eric Sykes has
died. Mind you he was a hearty 89. I remember the thin dark harried actor best
opposite Hattie Jacques. co-starring as his
"identical" (but very differently proportioned) twin, gave rise to
some of television's most enduring comedy sequences. Sykes had been deaf since his early thirties.
His trademark horn-rimmed spectacles were in fact a sophisticated hearing aid,
enabling him to sense vibrations. Despite his deafness and later blindness,
Sykes continued to perform on stage and screen well into his seventies. In his
twilight years he appeared in The Others, with Nicole Kidman, and Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire. His final film appearance was in the British
coming-of-age comedy Son of Rambow.
One of the programmes was Educating Archie, on
which he worked with Hattie Jacques, Max Bygraves and Tony Hancock. By the
1950s he had become the highest paid scriptwriter in Britain. He offered
simple, innocent humour devoid of malice, writing for such big stars of the day
as Peter Sellers, and he also wrote for the surreal, cult comedy The Goon Show.
Hattie Jacques died in 1980aged only 58.
They were an incredibly funny acting couple
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