Syd Walker | |
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Born | Sydney Kirkman 22 March 1886 Salford, Lancashire, England |
Died | 13 January 1945 58) | (aged
Occupation(s) | Comedian, actor |
Spouse | Lily (Lydia) Louie Margaret Kirkman |
Children | Pete Walker |
Syd Walker (born Sydney Kirkman; 22 March 1886 – 13 January 1945) was a British actor and comedian.
Born in Salford, Lancashire, he started his career in music halls, both as a solo performer and in double acts. He was also a member of Fred Karno's comedy troupe. [1] After some years performing with Karno, and after losing his Lancashire accent, he became a regular on BBC radio's Band Waggon (1938–1939) as Mr. Walker, a philosophical rag-and-bone man with the popular catch phrase: "What would you do, chums?" [2] [3] He later had his own show, Mr Walker Wants to Know. [1]
He fell ill with appendicitis while playing in pantomime in Croydon, and died in Hove, Sussex, in 1945 at the age of 58. [1]
His son is the film director Pete Walker. [4]
Frederick John Westcott, best known by his stage name Fred Karno, was an English theatre impresario of the British music hall. As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in-the-face gag. During the 1890s, in order to circumvent stage censorship, Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue.
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What Would You Do, Chums? is a 1939 British comedy film directed by John Baxter and starring Syd Walker, Jean Gillie, Cyril Chamberlain and Peter Gawthorne. It was made at Elstree Studios. The film's title was the popular catchphrase of comedian Syd Walker in BBC radio's Band Waggon series.
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Frank Thewlis was a British Methodist minister beginning in 1941 and an international conference speaker in the 1950s–1980s. He was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire. As superintendent of the Brighton Dome Mission Circuit in Brighton between 1967 and 1975, Thewlis preached weekly at the large Brighton Dome Concert Hall in East Sussex, the largest Methodist congregation at the time in the United Kingdom. He was also a frequent guest on "Pause for thought", a religious segment heard on the long-running BBC Radio 2 programme, The Radio 2 Breakfast Show. During a career in the ministry spanning five decades, he preached at the three largest Methodist congregations in the United Kingdom.