The BBC Told Frankie Howerd to Improve or Get Out. He Improved | Parkinson on BBC

By The Michael Parkinson Channel

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Frankie Howerd wanted to be a straight actor. He was thirteen, very nervous and very shy, and a nice notice in the local paper after a church dramatics society play convinced him he had a future on the stage. He then auditioned for RADA. They said no. In this conversation with Michael Parkinson, he talks about the army teaching him to be less shy, about singing Three Little Fishes at a YMCA concert and slowly discovering he could make people laugh, and about taking well-known jokes from Sid Field and Max Miller and burying them under so many detours and false starts that nobody recognised them. That, he says, is how his style began. Then came the BBC letter. Three months into his radio career, they wrote to tell him that if he did not improve, they would have to let him go. He realised in a blinding flash what was wrong. He had been pulling funny faces on the radio. Nobody could see them. He learned to be funny with his voice instead. They kept him on. Legendary talk show host Sir M

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