Bobby Ball Comedian
THE COMEDIAN Bobby Ball, who has died at 76, was one half of the most successful Northern double- act since Morecambe and Wise.
With his partner Tommy Cannon, he packed theatres and bestrode ITV’s Saturday night schedule. At the peak of his fame in the early 1980s, it seemed the whole country was parroting the catchphrase, “Rock on, Tommy” and pulling at pairs of makebelieve braces.
Eric Morecambe was among the admirers, telling David Frost on TV that with the right management, “they could go all the way”.
He was half right: Cannon and Ball had the management but not the temperament for permanent success, and the act broke up – temporarily – amid rancour, following a couple of disappointing series made at Yorkshire TV after London Weekend had called it a day.
Bobby went on to forge an acting career with parts in Last Of The Summer Wine, Heartbeat, Mount Pleasant, Benidorm, The Cockfields and Not Going Out, the latest series of which he completed filming shortly before his death.
He also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing.
He was born Robert Harper on January 28 1944 at Boundary Park
General Hospital in Oldham, to Bob and May Harper.
He attended the nearby High Crompton Secondary School and later went to work in a factory as a welder. It was there that he met his comedy partner, Thomas Derbyshire.
The pair adopted stage names and went on the road, on the club and cabaret circuit of the North.
Granada gave them early exposure on its Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, but it was LWT’s boss Michael Grade who saw potential for a series of their own, and recruited Eric and Ernie’s old writer, Sid Green, to feed them material.
The Cannon & Ball Show was almost a non- starter, having originally been planned as a segment within the ill- fated Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night and then falling victim to ITV’s prolonged strike of 1979. But when viewers finally saw it they embraced its stars as if they were old friends.
In 1982 Tommy and Bobby starred in the film The Boys In Blue and guest starred in Eric Sykes’ slapstick film Mr H Is Late in 1988, before the move to Yorkshire, where they were cast as shopping centre security guards in a sitcom called Plaza Patrol, and fronted a game show, Cannon and Ball’s Casino.
At the time, they were barely on speaking terms outside of performances and rehearsals, with Ball blaming the falling out on “gossiping” assistants. However, with no new TV work and mounting bills, they embarked on a tour schedule and set their differences aside.
It was in the 1988 pantomime at the Bradford Alhambra, in which they performed a sketch Sid Green had resurrected for them from his days with Eric and Ernie, that Ball took the first steps to becoming a born- again Christian. Cannon followed soon after. In 2005, they took part together in the fifth series of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
Ball married his first wife, Joan Lynn, in 1964, and they had two sons, Robert, born in 1965, and Darren, in 1969. They separated in 1970 and Ball married Yvonne Nugent in 1974, with daughter Joanne arriving in 1972.
At home in Lytham, Lancashire, Ball was patron of the NHS Blue Skies charity.