BILL MAYNARD DIES AT 89
his dad bought him a ukulele and a book on how to play it.
Bill remembered: “When I came out, I learned the guitar, the mandolin. I had singing and dancing lessons and by nine, I had an entire act.”
Within two years he was earning more than his dad’s 35 shillings (£1.75) a week. He began in variety, taking his professional name from an advert for Maynard’s Wine Gums.
In 1949, Bill married Muriel Linett. They had two children. Soon he was working as a double act at Butlins with Terry Scott, later a household name in Terry and June.
After a tour of Army camps with Jon Pertwee, he landed a stand-up slot at London’s Windmill Theatre. He later recalled: “BBC talent scouts came there.
“They knew if you could make people laugh at The Windmill you could make them laugh anywhere.”
In 1955, he and Terry starred in their own show, Great Scott, It’s Maynard. He said: “It turned me into a superstar. I couldn’t go anywhere. I was a sex symbol. I was treated like royalty.”
Bill always claimed he would be “mobbed” by women in the street. He once said: “David Beckham had nothing on me. My clothes used to get ripped to pieces. They used to pull my hair out.”
He had many affairs during his marriage to Muriel and spoke openly about them in a 2009 interview.
He said: “I was a sex symbol working in the West End with those lovely girls … and I had an amazing wife.
“She would say ‘If anybody else didn’t fancy him, then I probably wouldn’t have fancied him myself ’. There’s an amazing amount of difference between love and sex. What I had with my wife was the love affair of marriage.”
The couple grew closer as Muriel battled cancer and after she died in 1983, Bill confessed: “Even though those affairs didn’t mean anything, I look back with such guilt.”
As a big star, Bill was making big money in the early 60s. He said: “I was earning £1000 a week. What would that be today? £100,000? I went from that to doing local rep theatre, earning £9 a week. Why? Because I had this silly idea that I wanted to be a serious actor, darling.
“It was a mistake. I was paying tax a year behind my earnings. So when I was bringing home £9, I was paying tax on £1000 a week. I had to sell everything and went back to working the clubs. It was awful.”
Bill slowly rebuilt his career. A role in Dennis Potter’s TV play Paper Roses won him critical acclaim. Then he had success in comedies Selwyn Froggitt and The Gaffer.
In 1989 he wed singer Tonia Bern, widow of speed record breaker Donald Campbell, who he first met when she had been a guest on his TV show in the late 50s. The pair had a long-distance marriage which later fell apart, although they stayed friends.
Looking back, Bill was most proud of making people laugh.
He once said: “I made 31 films. Most of them were rubbish. But the rest of my career – I’m proud of it. I’ve had a grand life.”