This Is Your Life: Gorden Kaye

Gorden KAYE (1941-2017)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Gorden Kaye, actor, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews during the curtain call of the stage version of the BBC television sitcom 'Allo 'Allo at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, from where the programme was then recorded.

Gorden, who was born in Huddersfield and worked as a sales clerk in a local mill, first started acting with his local amateur dramatics group. He later volunteered with hospital radio, and worked with Bradford Playhouse, before gaining his first professional acting contract at the age of 27 with the Octagon Theatre in Bolton.

His big break came in 1969 with an 8 month stint in ITV's long-running soap opera Coronation Street. In 1982 he was cast as French cafe owner Rene Artois in the BBC television sitcom 'Allo 'Allo - a role that made him a household name.

"Oh I don't believe it! Oh god! You buggers - you knew about this! I think my car is double parked!"

programme details...

Edition No: 708
Subject No: 703
Broadcast date: Wed 5 Nov 1986
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Mon 3 Nov 1986
Repeated: Wed 17 Feb 1988 7.00pm
Venue: Prince of Wales Theatre
Series: 27
Edition: 4
Code name: Romeo

on the guest list...

Carmen Silvera
Vicki Michelle
Arthur Bostrom
Richard Marner
Kim Hartman
Guy Siner
Richard Gibson
Sam Kelly
Jack Haig
Kirsten Cooke
John Louis Mansi
Hilary Minster
Nicholas Frankau
John D Collins
Francesca Gonshaw
Rose Hill
Jeremy Lloyd
David Croft
Dolly - cousin
Nora - cousin
Alec - Nora's husband
Marjorie - aunt
David Coldwell
Laurie Stead
David Whiteley
Barry Lockwood
Brian Lawton
Mark Wynter
Susan Maughan
Jess Conrad
Frank Ifield
James Grout
Gillian Raine
Kate Williams
Peter Davison - via telephone
Christopher Timothy
Margaret - cousin
Jean - cousin
Russell - cousin
Mollie Sugden
Les Dennis

production team...

Researchers: David N Mason, Christine Fanthome
Writer: Roy Bottomley
Directors: Terry Yarwood, Michael D Kent
Associate Producer: Brian Klein
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

the sitcom stars

Screenshots of Gorden Kaye This Is Your Life

Gorden Kaye recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, Rene and Me...

One of my most wonderful experiences was being chosen as a subject of This Is Your Life. It was a very special day, and I only wish my parents had lived to share it with me.

I am inclined to kid myself that I'm terribly on the ball and see things coming a mile off. But Eamonn Andrews and his team from Thames TV got me cold. Targets of This Is Your Life are always being asked if they had any idea what was about to happen – the inference is: surely you must have had a suspicion. Well, I can assure you I did not have a clue.

Eamonn made his hit at the Prince of Wales Theatre just as the first West End run of 'Allo 'Allo was beginning there in 1986. A message went up on the stage door notice board that Thames TV wanted to record clips from the show for a programme about comedy in the theatre and on television – about the things which make people laugh. We were told we would be a small part of an hour-long documentary to be called It's a Funny Business.

I arrived at the theatre – as I always do – at about 6.15pm, so that I could park my car and have plenty of time to relax before curtain up. Sam Kelly, Captain Geering on stage then and for the first three TV series, always used to get in early too, and when I popped my head in his dressing room to say hello he said he was going for a bowl of soup at a little cafe called the Stockpot. So I joined him, and as we walked past the back of the theatre there was the Thames TV van. I just remarked: 'Oh yes, they are doing those inserts tonight, aren't they?' and thought no more of it. Now Thames is quite a small outfit where everybody knows everybody else. There are only about four Thames crews, and it was quite possible that I might pop my nose into the van to pass the time of day. So would you believe that there were actually captions in the van saying It's a Funny Business, and various bits of highly visible evidence which would instantly copper-bottom cover their story – just in case.

Completely unawares I went on stage and played Rene, and of course at the end of the show, when we were all bowing and waving and bowing some more, the curtain didn't come down. I'm thinking, 'Come on, we're finished now, we've got a packed house and it's been great but let's not hang about, let's not make a meal of it, let's get home.' Suddenly a great roar goes up from the audience. I look to the left and there is this figure trotting along dressed in an airman's hat and a flying jacket and clutching a microphone. It is Eamonn Andrews.

I remember very clearly and instantly thinking that he must be doing Jack Haig's life – because Jack must have been in the business more than sixty years. And then I thought, 'No, if they were doing Jack's life I would have known about it.' By the time the obvious explanation began to dawn upon my numbed senses Eamonn was right there in front of me and I was completely flummoxed.

They actually did the show there and then, at 10.30 at night in the Prince of Wales Theatre – which was a first, apparently. They usually whisk you off to the studio or somewhere, where everything is all set up. But they decided to try and do it the other way around, and they had brought a special audience of 150 of my friends and family to the Prince of Wales. Then there was this wonderful moment when they told the theatre audience that if anybody would like to stay they would be welcome and Thames would be very grateful, but of course some would have buses and trains to catch and would have to go, and would they please leave right away. The show would be starting in twenty minutes. To everyone's astonishment only about forty out of twelve hundred people left. That meant the invited audience couldn't find anywhere to sit. There were people standing at the back of the theatre. It was bloody marvellous.

I went upstairs to my dressing room and there was my agent, who was positively gloating, and all these wicked folk who had known all along, looking smug. And there was a bottle of champagne waiting for me. I was allowed to change into my clean white shirt and freshen up a bit, and Eamonn talked to me for just about the full twenty minutes before the show and completely relaxed me. He really was a fabulous man. I remember me prattling on about taking the show to New Zealand the following year when I would be able to see all my relatives over there whom I had never met, and you might have thought, knowing the format of the programme, that I could have had just a fleeting idea that the New Zealand relatives might be brought over. I promise you it never entered my head – not even, particularly not, in fact, when Eamonn showed filmed footage of them in New Zealand. Then they walked on stage and it was a great moment.

My mother's elder brother John married a girl from Stoke-on-Trent and emigrated to New Zealand in 1911. It must have been one hell of a brave thing to do to take off in those days to the other side of the world to start a new life for yourself. It took weeks to get there by sea, and they would have known little of the country that was to be their new home – there was no television beaming into their front rooms to show them what it looked like. And in the days before air travel and the telephone made it smaller, our planet was a big and mysterious place. But Uncle John, just twenty-three years old, and his young bride settled down well and had five children, three sons and two daughters.

One of the sons died very young, but three of my first cousins, all in their seventies, are still alive – Jean, Margaret and Russell. They were all brought to England for This is Your Life, two of them with their spouses. I now have a family of forty in New Zealand, and it was on This Is Your Life that I first met any of them.

Apparently when the Thames researchers telephoned my seventy-six-year-old cousin Jean to invite her over she didn't believe a word of it. A voice said: 'Are you Mrs Jean Sullivan? We believe you are Gorden Kaye's cousin, and this is Thames TV and we are going to do a This Is Your Life on him in London and we'd like you to come.'

Jean was convinced it was a hoax and replied in direct fashion: 'Oh, get away. Who is this?'

But it happened. It was quite a night. My relatives joined with the celebrity guests like Joss Conrad, Frank Ifield, Susan Maughan and Christopher Timothy – who brought a piglet in memory of my guest appearance on All Creatures Great and Small when I played a pig farmer who couldn't bear to kill his favourite pig.

The real star of the show, however, was my beloved Auntie Marjorie, my mother's younger sister, who sadly died about a year later. Auntie Marjorie was a cracker. Frank Ifield appeared to fall in love with her. It was actually one of the biggest surprises of all having Auntie Marjorie there and looking so perfectly at home, because she was getting very frail and had hardly been out anywhere for ages. In fact the last outing had been not long before, when we had taken the show to the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, and she had been brought by car to see us. Apparently the Thames people were already up north researching and were terrified that I might bump into them. They visited Auntie Marjorie four or five times and she put them right on a number of things. She always was the family chronicler. And I might have guessed she would not have missed This Is Your Life as long as she could draw breath. It certainly would not have been the same without her.

She tricked me rotten over the weekend when she came down to London to rehearse and go through everything with Thames. I always used to phone her on Saturdays or Sundays, so she called me first with some cock-and-bull story about how she wouldn't be in because she was going off with my cousins, Nora and Alec, who were going to take her for a run in the country. Dumbly, it never struck me that was not very likely as it was November and the weather was sure to be foul in Yorkshire. Anyway, down to London she came and took it all with the greatest of ease, saying her piece on television with no trouble at all, not fluffing a single line. And, of course, when she got back to her little mill cottage in the village of Kirkheaton outside Huddersfield she was an eighty-five-year-old TV star, which she absolutely revelled in.

There was one rather disconcerting thing about it all. The show was recorded on Monday, 3 November and broadcast on Wednesday, 5 November 1986. And on 5 November 1987 Eamonn died. Exactly a year later. Slightly creepy, really.

I had the greatest possible admiration for Eamonn. I had appeared on one This Is Your Life before my own – for Rodney Bewes – and it was then that I first realised what a top-to-toe professional Eamonn was. Michael Aspel is absolutely first-rate, of course, and did a superb job of following somebody almost impossible to follow, but I think he would be the first to admit that Eamonn was extra-special.

He had a way of making it look so easy. He would appear to be quite ordinary and putting no effort into anything – and yet all the time people would be counting him down into film. There is so much to think about in that show, because usually it is done straight through in one take and it has to work like clockwork. I thought it was just miraculous that he could maintain his rather man-in-the-street attitude while all this was going on. And also to his credit I believe the pleasure he appeared to take in other people's enjoyment was absolutely genuine and not put on at all.

I remember when he was walking me to my dressing room before my own show that I said to him: 'What a way to earn a living, scaring the pants off people.' Now Eamonn never forgot anything – not even a flip remark made to him at a time like that. When he sent me the famous big red This Is Your Life book he had written in the front: 'What do you mean, scaring the pants off people? All very best wishes, Eamonn Andrews.' I treasure it.

Scriptwriter Roy Bottomley recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, This Is Your Life: The Story of Television's Famous Big Red Book...

It was the opening night of the stage version of the hit television series 'Allo, 'Allo when actress Kirsten Cooke, in her French Resistance beret and trenchcoat, whispered to Eamonn Andrews, 'Listen vaire carefully. I will say this only once. You must move in five seconds or all will be lost.'

Eamonn sprinted to the stage of the Prince of Wales Theatre - to become the last customer of the evening at the Cafe Rene, and surprise Rene himself, that marvellous comedy actor Gorden Kaye.

He put up no resistance and we recorded the programme onstage, in the cafe set, with the whole cast of the long-running show.

Rene's 'wife' Edith, actress Carmen Silvera, sat next to him, as the audience heard how the Huddersfield-born actor reached TV stardom after playing Elsie Tanner's accident-prone nephew Bernard in Coronation Street for eight months in 1969. From Born and Bred came Kate Williams, Gillian Raine and James Grout, and from All Creatures Great and Small, in which Gorden had made a guest appearance, Christopher Timothy.

Series 27 subjects