Comic Actor Eric Sykes Has Died

In wide-ranging career, he will be remembered for the long-running and widely acclaimed Sykes And A... TV series Hattie Jacques.

He also scripts for stars such Peter Sellers, Frankie Howerd and Stanley Unwin.

His manager, Norma Farnes, said: "Eric Sykes, 89, star of TV, stage and films died this morning after a short illness.

"His family were him."

Mr Sykes was still appearing the West End stage into 80s, even though he became totally deaf and nearly blind.

Whenever he was asked when he was going to retire work, he invariably replied that he enjoyed what he did so much that he did not regard it as work all.

His TV series Sykes And A... attracted huge audiences in its nine series - involving over 125 shows - between 1960 1965, and then from 1972 to 1979.

The episodes have been repeated scores of times .

Mr Sykes was the mastermind silent film The Plank, about the mishaps caused by a man carrying a large plank, is now regarded as a movie classic.

Other films in which he or wrote or both, included Heavens Above! (1963), Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1965), Monte Carlo Or Bust (1969), Theatre Of Blood (1973), Rhubarb, Rhubarb (1980), Boys In Blue (1982), and Splitting Heirs (1993).

Not letting age interfere his work, he also starred Nicole Kidman in the acclaimed movie The Others when he approaching his 80s.

In 2005 he played Frank Bryce in the Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire movie.

two novels were The Great Crime Of Grapplewick (1997) and Smelling Of Roses (1998). In 2000, he wrote Sykes Of Sebastopol Terrace, an illustrated guide the TV series, including short stories based its episodes.

And in 2003 he produced an anthology of favourite comics, with Tommy Cooper heading his list.

He born in 1923 in Oldham and went on to in the Royal Air Force, during which he was introduced to showbiz, like many comics of his generation.

In 1952 he married Eith Eleanore Milbrandt, with he had one son and three daughters.

He was an OBE in 1986 and a CBE in 2005.


Adapted from: Sky News, July 5, 2012.