Entertaining was in my boy’s blood — he joked right to the end ...
BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspirational stories of ordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones . . .
FROM the moment he arrived in my life until his unexpected departure last year, richard made me happy. He was a gloom-lifter, always ready with a joke. He stayed that way to the end, even when life played the joker on him.
Entertaining others was in his blood. Perhaps it was my fault. I was an actress and as a baby he came to work with me.
I did a lot of TV work — Emergency-Ward 10 and commercials where I would play the perfect mother. richard was in one advert with me, for a furniture store.
His father died when he was four, which changed everything. I had to go back on the road, on the theatre circuit, and richard came, too. So did our pets. What a spectacle it must have been — the cat, the bird and the boy!
The boy was brilliant. He was very intelligent, highly capable. I did a lot of musical theatre. richard would help me learn my lines. I remember him prompting from the wings during oh! What A Lovely War, whispering ‘hey Tommy, hey Tommy’ to the soldiers on stage.
He worked backstage, too. By the age of ten he was the call boy, responsible for making sure everyone got on stage in time. Every Christmas there was a pantomime and summers would always be at the sea, at Butlins, in the company of comedians such as Frank Carson, Jim Bowen and singer Lonnie Donegan.
We even had our own ventriloquist act. He’d sit on my knee, doing an impression of a dummy and say, ‘Gots my name?’ and I would sing Sonny Boy.
We lived near Teddington Studios where morecambe & Wise was filmed and friends who were appearing in the show would come to stay. Free digs! Arthur Tolcher, the harmonica player and former child star who inspired the running gag ‘Not now, Arthur’ often stayed with us and took us to watch the filming.
Eric and Ernie made such a fuss of richard. Eric would greet me with the words ‘Is the little dwarf with you?’ No one was very PC in those days.
I always thought richard would have made a good comedian, but that’s not the way his life went. He got a job making corporate videos, married and had a son, max. He was ever so proud of max, who went to Army college and joined the Coldstream Guards. richard would go to see him at Horse Guards Parade for the Queen’s Birthday Parade.
richard was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago. His marriage had ended and he came to live with me. We had a terrible time of it, but there were still moments when we could have a laugh. once, for a joke, he climbed on my 85-year-old knee and we did our ventriloquist act. We must have looked daft but halfway through, the door opened and the man who was delivering the oxygen tank arrived, along with a district nurse. They were a wonderful audience, his final one.
richard didn’t think he was dying. When he was admitted to hospital and they talked about whether he would be resuscitated, he thought it was a joke.
I was grief- stricken after he died. You can never get over the loss of a child. But in his wallet I found a picture taken of us when he was a little boy. I treasure that.
Richard Wilbourne, born May 9, 1963, died May 24, 2017, aged 54.