Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when you start a book and after a few pages you’re hooked?
I’ve just read the prologue of Bounder!, Graham McCann’s biography of the great comic actor Terry-Thomas, and it promises to be a real corker.
You always write better, I find, when you’re keen on the subject, and Graham obviously is, judging by his appreciative intro. The first few pages simply ooze enjoyment in this very English cad, with his trademark gap-toothed grin and wonderful one-liners.
“You’re an absolute shower.” “Oh, I say!” “Hard cheese!” “Bang on.”
My former chief-sub, Steve, used to love repeating them and I’m sure he’s not the only one!
Terry-Thomas or T-T, was born in North Finchley, in 1911 and died in 1990 in straitened circumstances. Apparently, he was struggling with Parkinson’s Disease and medical bills, and living in relative obscurity, until aid came in the form of a starry benefit concert organised by writer Richard Hope-Hawkins and Jack Douglas.
It was a poignant end for a comedian who’d given so much pleasure to cinema and television audiences – Steve and myself among them. Rather than dwell on T-T’s last days, I look forward to reading about the intervening years in a biog that seems sure to deliver.
To me, Terry-Thomas will always be the rascally Sir Percy Ware-Armitage in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines – being caddish to his downtrodden manservant, Courtney, or beating poor Ian Carmichael at tennis in School for Soundrels.
Just thinking about them makes me smile.
Yes, T-T was a classic and it was sad to learn of his difficult final years. Ian Carmichael has now joined him in the great green room in the sky – and managed to turn up in my dream last night.
Were you playing tennis? I say, hard cheese!
TT is a childhood favourite of mine. But did you know that some of the catchphrases used by fellow posh bounder Leslie Phillips may actually have been TT’s originally. Here’s an extract from Wapedia.
His suave, seductive voice is his trademark as well as his catchphrases, “I say, Ding Dong”, “Hello” and “Lumme!”, which were partly, if not wholly, based on those of fellow cad actor Terry Thomas.
What’s your view on the ding dong about ding dong?
McCann calls Phillips TT’s ‘spiritual nephew’. It’s a good description. They starred together in Spanish Fly but the only ding dong seems to have arisen when TT did lots of ad libs while Phillips preferred to stick to the script!
Interesting. Phillips did an interview in a major newspaper where he indirectly and very subtly let it be known that he was the more ‘serious’ actor and TT had no stage background. But just who was the best comedy womanising bounder. Tez or Les?
Tez, without a doubt! Can you imagine Les playing alongside Sykes in TMMiTFMs? Leslie Phillips CBE is the best bounder we have left though, even if he’s taken on more serious roles.