Graham Stark

Graham William Stark (20 January 1922 – 29 October 2013) was an English comedian, actor, writer and director. Early life The son of a purser on transatlantic liners, Stark was born in New Brighton (part of Wallasey) in Wirral, Cheshire, England. He attended Wallasey Grammar School and made his professional stage debut aged 13 in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in London. During the Second World War he served in 334 company of the BEF in Salonika, Greece, where he was a turner in group workshops. While there he first met Dick Emery, Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers, the latter two as fellow members of Ralph Reader's Gang Shows. Sellers would become a long-lasting close friend. With the Gang Shows, Stark toured the locations where military personnel were seeing active service. After the war he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and joined the regulars at Grafton's, a pub in Victoria run by Jimmy Grafton, a venue at which soon-to-be-prominent entertainers of the next few decades regularly gathered. Career Stark began to work on BBC Radio in the postwar years, helped by Tony Hancock's connections, making his debut in Happy Go Lucky and going on to Ray's a Laugh, thanks to the intervention of Sellers, For a time he was a regular in Educating Archie and substituted for Spike Milligan on The Goon Show when the comedian was ill. Stark was a regular supporting player on TV with Sellers in A Show Called Fred and Son of Fred, and with Benny Hill. His profile was sufficient for him to gain his own, albeit short-lived, sketch series, The Graham Stark Show (BBC 1964). Now entirely lost, it was scripted by Johnny Speight with each episode featuring a different group of supporting actors, including Deryck Guyler, Arthur Mullard, Derek Nimmo, Patricia Hayes and Warren Mitchell. An episode of Till Death Us Do Part, called "In Sickness and in Health", 1967, where Stark plays decrepit Dr. Kelly, survives.