Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The gaffe-r
Giant of comedy and host of telly’s first blunders show.. Denis Norden dies at 96
AS the king of the clanger, Denis Norden was loved by generations for his perfect comic timing and strong sense of the ridiculous.
Norden, who died yesterday aged 96, fronted the television show It’ll Be Alright On The Night for 29 years until he retired in 2006, pulling in nearly 18 million viewers at its peak.
But in a career spanning six decades, there was so much more to him than that. He was, as comedian Rory Bremner said yesterday: “One of the finest (and tallest) writers of a great generation. Doyen, gentleman, giant in every sense.”
Born in Hackney, East London, in 1922, the son of an Orthodox Jewish tailor, Norden left school to work for the Hyams brothers cinema owners before being called up in 1941.
Serving in the Second World War as an RAF wireless operator with fellow comic Eric Sykes, he dodged guard duty by writing skits to entertain the troops.
Going with Sykes to a newly liberated camp in Germany one day to take lights for a show back at base, he was horrified to find emaciated inmates awaiting repatriation.
It was Bergen-belsen, whose evils were not yet widely known.
He and Eric dumped the lights and went straight to their own camp to bring back any spare food they could find.
In 1947 Norden met Frank
Muir and they teamed up on the radio show Take It From Here which ran from 1948 to 1960, before writing for TV shows including The Frost Report. They were awarded CBES in 1980.
Norden first appeared on TV in 1951 film Here’s Television alongside Sid James. He became a TV host in the 1970s on chat show Looks Familiar.
The idea for It’ll Be Alright On The Night came after he and LWT producer Paul Smith were laughing about the now-famous elephant scene on Blue Peter. They rang boss Michael Grade and within half an hour they had a show.
After leaving he worked to raise awareness of the degenerative eye condition macular disease, which he had. He spent his final weeks in hospital in North London, and is survived by wife Avril Rosen and children Nick and Maggie.
His family said in a statement: “A wonderful dad, a loving grandfather and great greatgrandfather – he gave his laughter-mongering to so many. He will be in our hearts forever.”