This Is Your Life: Harry Worth

Harry WORTH (1917-1989)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Harry Worth, comedian and actor, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Manchester's Gaumont cinema, having been led to believe he was there for a film premiere.

Harry, who was born near Barnsley, began his working life as a miner but developed a taste for show business while serving with the RAF during the Second World War. His early act involved ventriloquism, which he had taught himself as a teenager from a borrowed book.

After the war, Harry toured his variety act extensively for many years before breaking into radio with his own show, Thirty Minutes Worth. In 1960, he starred in his own television series, The Trouble With Harry, and later in Here's Harry, which was re-titled Harry Worth and became one of the longest-running British sitcoms of all time.

programme details...

Edition No: 232
Subject No: 233
Broadcast date: Thu 7 Nov 1963
Broadcast time: 8.35-9.00pm
Recorded: Mon 28 Oct 1963
Venue: BBC Studios, Manchester
Series: 9
Edition: 6

on the guest list...

Norman Vaughan
Albert Bruck
Conrad Vince
Gladys Morgan
Frank Laurie
Joan Hollman
Bert Hollman
John Ammonds
Edwin Apps
Sheila Buxton
Kathleen - wife
Jobyna - daughter
Suzy - dog
family members - in audience
Elsie Stratford
Edmund Hoole
Wharncliffe Silkstone Colliery Band
Harry Secombe

production team...

Researcher: Nickola Sterne
Writer: Nickola Sterne
Director: Michael Goodwin
Producer: Vere Lorrimer
Executive Producer: T Leslie Jackson

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

with thanks to Jo Batchelor, Joan Laurie and Geoff Bowden, editor of The Call Boy, the official magazine of The British Music Hall Society, for their contributions to this page

related pages...

It's a Funny Old Life

it's all about the comedy

The Big Red Book

the programme's icon

Harry Secombe

Interviews

Jo Batchelor, daughter of Harry Worth, recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in an exclusive interview recorded in April 2013

Harry Worth This Is Your Life Big Red Book

Photographs of Harry Worth This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Harry Worth's big red book

Edwin Apps recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, Pursued by Bishops...

The BBC rang me to say that it was planning to make Harry the subject of This Is Your Life, the popular programme with Eamonn Andrews, in which well-known people were taken by surprise when they were having a haircut, or doing the Christmas shopping.

Suddenly Eamonn would appear with a large book under his arm and, pointing to it, would say; "So-and-so: this is your Life!" then the scene would cut to studio, where Eamonn would read out the life, producing from behind a curtain forgotten friends and relatives - sometimes flown in from half way across the world and not always, it must be said, warmly welcomed by the subject.

I had, of course, been involved in a small way in Vera Lynn's This Is Your Life the evening I first met Jimmy Edwards, and later Jimmy himself had been the subject of the programme. He had not enjoyed the experience, as he told me the following morning at rehearsal. Jimmy came from a large family and the BBC had mustered all of them behind the curtain, "A worse dressed bunch you never saw," he said, adding that afterwards the BBC had provided nothing more than a bottle of Seagars gin to entertain them, so he had had to take them all out to dinner which cost him a fortune.

Now the BBC wanted me to appear from behind the curtain to surprise Harry and tell the story of how he had bought a new car, an Austin Princess, and invited me to drive back to London with him after the show. How coming into the London suburbs at two o'clock in the morning, we had had a puncture and Harry, not knowing where anything was, started to read the Instruction Book so that the situation began to resemble more and more a scene from the show, with me getting more and more confused.

At the time I was working on Galton and Simpson's film, "The Bargee", which was directed by Duncan Wood, who had produced "Hancock's Half Hour" (we had regularly lunched together at Oddie's club during the "Whack O" years. As he was a BBC producer, the BBC booker told me to explain the problem to him and ask if I could leave early, adding, "You'll have no trouble with Duncan, he'll understand immediately". The problem was that this was Duncan's first film and he was under far more pressure than usual, so when I asked if I could have a word with him, he said "Not now, later”; I made several attempts to speak to him during the morning, but each time he brushed me aside. He was not in the canteen at lunch-time, and when we started shooting in the afternoon I made a couple more attempts to speak to him, without success. Finally I went up to him and said, "Duncan, I must speak to you" He turned on me angrily and said, "Look, Edwin, you are doing it perfectly, please stop worrying me" and began to walk away. I shouted after him, "The BBC wants me to be in Harry Worth's This Is Your Life in Manchester this evening!" Duncan stopped dead, "But why didn't you say so?" "I've been trying to all day". He was very apologetic and arranged for a taxi and I got to the airport just in time. Harry's wife was on the plane looking very worried. She said the BBC had insisted she did not tell Harry about the programme and she did not know how he would take it.

In the end all was well, there were a lot of people who had known him, including the old Pit Manager who had employed him when he was a miner. Afterwards he and I flew back to London with Eamonn Andrews. The plane was empty except for one other person whom Eamonn knew and invited to join us. He turned out to be the representative of a Pools company, whose job it was to take the cheques to the big winners. The flight passed very quickly as we sat drinking the bottle of Irish whiskey that Eamonn had thoughtfully brought with him, while we listened to stories of the unexpected reactions people had to winning large sums of money, including the family who barred the door and refused to let him in, shouting through the letter box, "Go away, we don't want it!"

Series 9 subjects