This Is Your Life: Ronnie Dukes

Ronnie DUKES (?-1981)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Ronnie Dukes, entertainer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Thames Television's Euston Road Studios, having been led to believe he was there to be interviewed by Mary Parkinson.

Ronnie, who was born in Rotherham to professional entertainers, trained as a dancer in his youth and entered dance competitions across the north of England as a teenager. After leaving school at 14, he became a professional entertainer with a touring act called The Dead End Kids.

Following his national service, he returned to show business, developing his cabaret act in the working men's clubs of the South Yorkshire area with his wife, singer Ricky Lee, and his piano-playing mother-in-law, Violet, who was the butt of many of his jokes. His appearances on the ITV variety show The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club led to a headlining making spot on the 1975 Royal Variety Performance.

"Where's Mary Parkinson?"

programme details...

Edition No: 415
Subject No: 412
Broadcast live: Wed 12 Nov 1975
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Venue: Euston Road Studios
Series: 16
Edition: 1
Code name: Duchess

on the guest list...

Ricky Lee - wife
Kenneth Earle
Dean - son
Perry - son
Violet - mother-in-law
Tom - father-in-law
Ray Wafer
Peter Parkinson
Pete Middleton
Cathy Wiley
Nelly Machin
Rita Hudson
Roy Bakewell
Jimmy Patton
Brian Patton
Nick Cravat
Colin Crompton
Norman Collier
Mike Yarwood
Larry Grayson
David Nixon
Peters and Lee
Bob Monkhouse
Ken Dodd
Jolie - daughter

production team...

Researcher: Maurice Leonard
Writers: Tom Brennand, Roy Bottomley
Director: Royston Mayoh
Executive Producer: Jack Andrews
Producer: Jack Crawshaw

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

That's Entertainment

there's no business like it

Screenshots of Ronnie Dukes This Is Your Life

The Times 13 November 1975

This Is Your Life

Thames

Alan Coren

Dear God, shall England never be free of the threat that stalks her streets? Last night, in a new wave of Irish terror, an innocent English tap dancer was hijacked from his legitimate business, held captive in a tiny, windowless room and subjected to as devilish and sophisticated a course of torture as it lies within man's ingenuity to conceive.

For Eamonn Andrews is no ordinary kidnapper: long years at his grisly trade have honed his techniques to a fine and terrible edge. Amateurs may use brute force and primitive threat to reduce their victims, but Andrews, chuckling disarmingly the while, is able to destroy a man simply by dredging up an old schoolmate who will not only hurl himself upon the captive (who has no idea why this stranger is crushing his head in a manic embrace) but, having thrown himself aside, proceed to describe to the man's loved ones the occasion upon which he got his leg stuck in a cistern or threw up over the headmaster's parrot. Throughout these fearful reminiscences, the captive must smile and nod, and slap shoulders and in no way betray his feeling that he would prefer to be laying about him with a blunt instrument.

He will also be forced to sit and applaud a monitor upon which those unable to be with him to embarrass him personally may do so from the safety of what usually turns out to be their dressing room, thus enabling us to see that they are in regular work. Last night kidnapee, Mr Ronnie Dukes, was visited by the screened heads of Larry Grayson, Ken Dodd, David Nixon and Bob Monkhouse, and it is to his eternal credit that he took it like a man, and did not crack until Eamonn, in a diabolical flourish produced Mr Duke's four-year-old daughter. It was at this point that the victim finally broke down and wept, and if you have any human decency, you will have done the same.

A morally cleansing evening, though, for all of us who watched the siege in distant helplessness. Because Mr Dukes has just, we were told, become famous. It was good to have the price of fame so clearly ticketed, both as a warning to Mr Dukes and a consolation to the rest of us.

Series 16 subjects