Denis Norden

All you want to know about Denis Norden

Denis Norden
Born Denis Mostyn Norden
6 February 1922 (1922-02-06) (age 86)
Hackney, London, United Kingdom
Occupation Television presenter, comedy writer
Spouse(s) Avril Rosen (1943- )

Denis Mostyn Norden (born 6th February 1922 in Hackney, London) is an English comedy writer and television presenter.

Contents

Early life and career

Norden was born in Hackney, North London, and educated at the City of London School where he was a contemporary of Kingsley Amis. He "was considered to have a fine academic brain" and was well regarded by his peers.[1]

Upon leaving school he worked as a stagehand, moved into cinema management by the age of 17 and organised variety shows. His writing career began in the RAF during World War II for troop shows, following which he wrote material for comedian Dick Bentley, before meeting Frank Muir, who wrote for Jimmy Edwards, in 1947.

Their first joint venture was the radio show Take It From Here, which they scripted from 1948 to 1959. They went on to write many successful radio and television scripts, including Whacko (1956-60) and three series of Faces of Jim (1961-63), both as vehicles for Jimmy Edwards. They also wrote the famous radio sketch Balham - Gateway to the South for Peter Sellers. In 1964, their writing partnership broke up, as Muir moved into management with the BBC. Over the next several years, Norden, who had long had a fascination with Hollywood, wrote the scripts for several films, including Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom. While no longer writing with Muir, they continued as something of a double act, and were regular participants in panel shows such as My Word! (1956-90) and My Music (1966-93), first on radio then TV. Norden also hosted an ITV nostalgia quiz, Looks Familiar.

Norden also has a link to the James Bond movie series. In 1965, Norden wrote, narrated and starred in a short featurette jointly made by the Bond producers and The Ford Motor Company. The colour short, entitled "A Child's Guide To Blowing Up A Motor Car", went behind the scenes of an exploding car stunt being filmed for Thunderball. The story of the short is that Norden is taking a young relative on a day out to a movie set. He meets several stars and production team members, but not Sean Connery. Lost for many years, it is now available on the 'Ultimate Edition' DVD of Thunderball, as released in late 2006.[2]

ITV presenter

Norden was also later well-known to television audiences for his ITV shows: Looks Familiar, It'll be Alright on the Night and Denis Norden's Laughter File.

It'll be Alright on the Night, first broadcast in 1977, consisted of out-takes from film and television linked by witty comments. Much of the material from the early episodes was used on Dick Clark's "Bloopers" specials which aired on NBC a few years later. A couple of mid-1980s editions featured several home video clips: with the increasing private ownership of domestic camcorders were spun-off into the long-running You've Been Framed (1990-).

Denis Norden's Laughter File, first broadcast in 1991, showed spoof adverts, real foreign adverts, practical jokes, live television mistakes, and other various 'oddities', which Norden said, "tickled our fancies, just when they needed tickling". These items included virtually everything discovered during research for material suitable for Alright on the Night that was not eligible for that show.

Retirement and legacy

He announced his retirement from his two ongoing ITV shows It'll be Alright on the Night and Denis Norden's Laughter File, on 21st April 2006.

A special show was recorded on 14th May 2006 as a 'farewell tour' to all his shows over the years, called All the Best from Denis Norden, which was shown on 2nd January 2007. As the show's closing credits were shown, the studio audience gave Norden a standing ovation, which was followed by his placing his trademark clipboard on his desk, which the camera then zoomed in on to as the credits ended. He has since been succeeded on It'll Be Alright on the Night by Griff Rhys-Jones, as that show resumed in September 2008.

For years he was resistant to producing an autobiography, claiming that much of his life and career had already been well covered by Frank Muir's A Kentish Lad and a book called The Bits Frank Left Out would be too brief.[3] However, in October 2008, he released a series of autobiographical sketches entitled Clips from a Life.

He continues to make occasional television and radio appearances, and contributed to a BBC Four season about the history of satire. On 2 October 2008, he appeared as a guest on The One Show to talk about his life and career as well as his book.

He and his wife Avril have a son, Nick, an architect, and a daughter, Maggie, a radio presenter and lecturer at the London College of Fashion.

References

  1. ^ Jonathan Cecil. "Review of Frank Muir's A Kentish Lad". The Spectator. Retrieved on 2008-09-26.
  2. ^ "A Child's Guide To Blowing Up A Motor Car". imdb.com.
  3. ^ "Laughter Files - Denis Norden". The Stage.

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Norden"

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