Charlie Drake R.I.P.

[Reza]

Charlie Drake
A brilliant physical comedian, he revelled in mayhem with outraged innocence
Stephen Dixon
Thursday December 28 2006
The Guardian (London)


He looked like a Botticelli cherub: tiny, mischievous and golden-haired. Charlie Drake, who has died aged 81, was a brilliant, child-like physical comedian with a keen intelligence informing the simple slapstick that made him one of Britain's top television stars in the 1960s.

Drake's innocent truculence, articulated in an outraged falsetto, invariably preceded scenes in which - as handyman or decorator - he wrecked everything in sight. Often he wrecked himself too. On several occasions, the 5ft 1in comedian was carried to hospital from a theatre or television studio after knocking himself unconscious in the cause of his very particular art - a demanding display of acrobatic skills that is nowadays rarely seen in British comedy.

At the height of his fame - from around 1955 to 1975 - he was among Britain's top comedians, conquering most facets of the business: variety, records, television and films. He was awarded the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1968 for a television show.

The high spot of his career was an excellent ITV series called The Worker (1965, 1969-70 and 1978). Each week, Charlie would report to the Labour Exchange to be greeted by long-suffering counter clerk Henry McGee as Mr Pugh (obituary, February 23 2006 - a wonderful foil for flak, and an actor Drake would later describe as "my closest friend").

"Good morning, Mr Poo," Charlie would trill.

"The name is Pugh," McGee always responded. "P-U-G-H."

"That's right," said Charlie. "P-U-G-H. Poo."

Mr Pugh (or Poo) despairingly sent Drake off to wildly unsuitable jobs and the result was inevitable - the demolition of a house, or a car, or a social occasion. "Hello, my darlings," Drake would simper ingratiatingly before the imp within him reduced everything to a shambles.

He was born Charles Springall in the Elephant and Castle area of London, the youngest of six children, into poverty. His mother, Violet, pawned the sheets and pillowcases on a Monday and retrieved them on the Friday, ensuring bed linen for the weekend.

Charlie contributed to the household's income by working in the mornings as a paper boy and in the evenings as a cat-meat seller. He got his first taste of showbusiness at eight, when he was employed at the old South London Palace for a week as part of the chorus supporting the elderly Harry Champion. Charlie was paid half-a-crown (12½p).

Back at school, Drake set his heart on a career in showbusiness. But before he had a chance, the war intervened: he joined the RAF and saw service in India. Like many comedians of his era, such as Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and Charlie Chester, he was able to subvert the military regime to his own ends and started producing and acting in entertainments for the troops.

After the war, Drake found that his RAF work counted for little in the era of austerity. He failed in six auditions for the Windmill Theatre (where Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers, among others, were miserably trying to catch the punters' attention between strippers) and went into the long slog of variety. In between theatre gigs he worked in a ball-bearing factory and as a cakemaker. Both jobs were remembered when he later devised his slapstick routine.

A break came when he met Jack Edwardes, a lugubrious 6ft 3in comic who had been specialising in pantomime dames. Edwardes's essential stillness suited Drake's whirlwind energy, and they teamed up as "Mick and Montmorency". It was an eyecatching act, and the pair soon became stars of their own shows from 1954 to 1958, first for BBC children's television, and then for ITV. In the style he would later refine, Drake, with the hulking Edwardes, played a boiler-suited, bowler-hatted workman, compliant but totally stupid. Comparisons with Laurel and Hardy were made at the time.

Drake jettisoned Edwardes and went on to solo TV fame for the BBC, starting with Drake's Progress (1957-58) and Drake in ... (1958-60), eventually attracting millions of viewers through The Charlie Drake Show (intermittently from 1958 to 1967) and The Worker. He recorded some hit records - Splish, Splash (1958) and My Boomerang Won't Come Back (1961), which went to the top of the charts - and moved into films: Sands of the Desert (1960) and Petticoat Pirates (1961) - neither very good. The Cracksman (1963), in which he played a dedicated and unjustly jailed locksmith, was much better, but Mr Ten Per Cent (1967) bombed and effectively ended his movie career.

Always cocksure and confident, when he appeared in panto at the London Palladium, Drake not only insisted on the star dressing room but demanded that it be redecorated and furnished to his own taste. One can appreciate how someone who battled his way out of poverty might be tempted to throw his weight around a little, but this attitude attracted a number of powerful theatrical enemies.

When his TV work started to falter a few years later, Drake went back to what was left of the vaudeville and pantomime circuit. There was trouble in 1974 at the Bradford Alhambra when he attempted to bring a local woman, not a member of Equity, into the show. After several rows with a defiant Drake, the union complained to the Provincial Managers' Association, and after a hearing he was fined £760 for putting the show in jeopardy. He refused to pay, and Equity suspended him from any provincial theatre for a year.

Almost all avenues of generating income were denied to him during this period, as he later recalled: "For a variety artiste, as I was then almost exclusively, money is made in the provincial theatres in summer seasons and pantomimes, with the occasional Sunday concert or similar venue for good measure. Every show in the West End is planned at least a year in advance, sometimes longer. The same applies in television, where the schedules are also made up at least a year ahead."

After the ban ended, Drake was still a draw, but the incident had coincided with a falling-off in his popularity, and his days as a top star were over. Facially, the innocent-looking little cherub had aged into a faintly malevolent goblin, and he was getting too old for the trademark violent slapstick stunts.

Drake moved with some distinction into straight drama in the 1980s, giving an award-winning performance as Davies in Pinter's The Caretaker in 1983. He also appeared on stage in Ubu Roi (1980) and As You Like It (1981), and made a memorable Smallweed, the villainous money-lender, in BBC2's 1985 serialisation of Bleak House.

Drake cheerfully admitted that he gambled away most of the fortune he had made in his heyday. In the late 1980s, after problems with the Inland Revenue, he said: "Now I live a very different life but I'm happy. I don't gamble any more. When you've gambled at the rate I did, there's not much of a thrill in having a fiver each way."

He continued to appear in smaller roles in stage productions and TV dramas. When he was in the notoriously smutty pantomime Sinderella on stage and film in the early 1990s, co-star Jim Davidson said of him: "Blimey, the whisky off his breath would knock you out!"

Drake was philosophical and good-humoured about his loss of star status, and happily worked at whatever came his way. In his day he had shone in almost every aspect of the entertainment world, and he knew that his well-deserved reputation as one of Britain's greatest knockabout comedians was secure. In 1995, he retired after suffering a stroke. Twice married, he is survived by three sons.

Charlie Drake (Charles Springall), comedian, born June 19 1925; died December 23 2006