Hal Brooks
Clown who appeared on TV and promoted road safety in schools
HAL BROOKS, who has died aged 97, was a clown who appeared for many years at galas and carnivals around Britain with his clown groups, the Super Sausage Squad and the Boiled Egg Brigade.
As Kerby Drill, he toured infant and junior schools promoting road safety and was featured on television programmes such as Blue Peter, Crackerjack, Vision On and BBC Look Stranger.
The youngest of seven children, Harry Dennis Brooks was born into a working class family on February 23 1921 in North Kensington, west London. He left school at 14 and became a carpenter with an engineering company. Though he was in a reserved occupation at the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the Army and trained as a signaller.
He was put in charge of a gun emplacement at Mumbles in Wales and while there began entertaining in Welsh clubs as a lightning sketch artist, turning people’s names into cartoon faces. At a local dance he met his wife Enid – “Deena” – who would join him in the entertainment business.
Brooks’s career as a clown took off with appearances at Collins Music Hall in Islington after the war. In 1960 he moved to Bognor Regis where, for four years, he and Deena worked as children’s entertainers at the new Butlin’s holiday centre in the town, becoming known as Uncle Hal and Auntie Deena.
He then teamed up with the former Bertram Mills clown, Pierre Picton, to tour with a Model T Ford comedy car act. Later, with his son Jim and another partner, he formed his celebrated Super Sausage Squad and Boiled Egg Brigade acts.
As a trained carpenter, Brooks made most of his own props and also devised many for fellow clowns. On one occasion he made a full-sized comedy cow complete with firing udders.
He embarked on his road safety work after the death in 1974 of Nicolai Poliakoff, who as Coco the Clown had pioneered a schools road safety act. At the same time he and Deena ran various shops in Bognor Regis, including a joke and magic emporium and costumiers, and a home and garden craft shop.
As well as his television appearances, Brooks had a part in the 1962 film The Main Attraction, a romantic drama set in a travelling circus and starring Pat Boone and Nancy Kwan.
In the early 1980s Brooks built a large yellow “Billy the Bulb” character to raise money for Bognor’s Christmas lights. He also developed a sideline as an artist in a variety of mediums, including oil paint, papier-mâché, wood and recycled materials, selling his work at craft fairs and race meetings. The Prince of Wales is said to have a couple of pieces of his woodwork.
With Trevor Pharo, aka Bingo the Clown, Brooks organised the first International Clown Convention in Bognor in 1985. He toured local schools to get young people involved, and hundreds took part in the procession, which was policed by members of the local constabulary wearing red noses.
The convention became an annual event, and when he was no longer able to walk in the parade, Brooks devised a comedy wheeled contrivance in which he could continue to process alongside his fellow clowns, many of whom attended his funeral at Chichester crematorium, some in full motley.
His wife predeceased him and he is survived by their two sons.
Hal Brooks, born February 23 1921, died June 4 2018