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Windsor in e was taking a wag to o to farce. ars. ried his best to get Nicholas Parsons knighted only to find that knighthoods were reserved for classical actors. He advised his friend “perfect your Lear”.
Parsons perfected the wrong Lear – his one-man show concerned the nonsense poet rather than Shakespeare’s King.
June Whitfield, another pal from their days on radio’s A Rhyme In Time, makes a poignant posthumous appearance in Gyles’s one-man show.and he is delighted to be interviewing Dame Judi Dench on stage, 60 years after he saw her in Romeo And Juliet.
BRANDRETH hits it off with most people although, alas, not the Sex Pistols who he encountered in a Manchester hotel. “Exciting to meet you, Mr Rotten,” Gyles said cheerily. Johnny’s reply was unprintable but the second word was “off”.
He draws a veil over unsavoury encounters with the predatory Frankie Howerd and Jimmy “Whack-o!” Edwards.
Spike Milligan was more fun. When Gyles compiled a collection of nonsense verse, Spike wrote the introduction. Both were due to appear at the launch party but Milligan was delayed.
“As I apologised to the disappointed crowd, behind me I heard a whimpering noise.then a big box started moving and out of it popped Spike! He’d been sitting in that box since
5pm, it was now 7.30, just for that joke.
“I met all the Goons,” he continues.
“Harry Secombe was a lovely man but this isn’t funny. I was doing my LBC show in
April 2001 and he was too unwell to come to the studio so I interviewed him over the phone.
“Harry was standing on his landing at home and as we concluded our chat, he emitted one of his famous squeals and the line went dead. It seems he had taken a step backwards and fallen down the stairs.three or four hours later, he was dead.
“I’m sad to say I may have played a small part in the tragic demise of one of my heroes.”
● The Gyles Brandreth Break A Leg tour (gylesbrandreth.net) runs April 19-July 26