Eric Sykes

Eric Sykes (4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012) was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series. Early life Sykes was born on 4 May 1923 in Oldham, Lancashire; his mother died three weeks later, leaving him and his two-year-old brother Vernon motherless. Their father was a labourer in a cotton mill and a former army sergeant. When Sykes was two, his father remarried and he gained a half-brother named John. Sykes was educated at Ward Street Central School in Oldham. He joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, qualifying as a wireless operator with the rank of leading aircraftman. Career Sykes's entertainment career began during the Second World War while serving in a Special Liaison Unit, when he met and worked with then flight lieutenant Bill Fraser. Sykes also collaborated with fellow RAF servicemen Denis Norden and Ron Rich in the production of troop entertainment shows. Whilst preparing for one of these shows in 1945, Sykes, accompanied by Norden and Rich, went to a nearby prison camp in search of stage lighting; the camp turned out to be the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which had recently been liberated by the Allies. Sykes, Norden, and Rich organised a food collection amongst their comrades to feed the starving camp inmates. When the war ended, Sykes decided to try his luck in London, arriving in the middle of the coldest winter in living memory (1946–47). He rented lodgings, expecting to find work quickly, but by the end of the first week he was cold, hungry, and penniless. The turning point in his life and career came on the Friday night of his first week in London: he had a chance meeting in the street with Bill Fraser, who was by now featuring in a comedy at the Playhouse Theatre. Fraser took the impoverished Sykes to the theatre, offered him food and drink, then asked if Sykes would like to write for him.