NICHOLAS PARSONS

(10 October 1923 - 28 January 2020)

What most people don’t realise about Nicholas Parsons, who has died aged 96 after a short illness, is that before he was a radio and television presenter he was an actor on stage, in films and on television. Although he always wanted to be an actor, his parents apprenticed him to an engineering firm in Glasgow, followed by study at Glasgow University. He qualified as a mechanical engineer but never graduated. Illness prevented him from joining the Merchant Navy in World War II so, after the war he became an actor in London in The Hasty Heart and Arsenic and Old Lace, followed by rep at Bromley, Windsor and Maidstone. He had been discovered by impresario Carroll Levis and appeared on his radio show. Parsons also did a stint as a stand-up comedian at the Windmill Theatre and later appeared in Boeing-Boeing, was the Narrator in the first London production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods and took part in the 21st anniversary production of The Rocky Horror Show. On television early on he was the voice of Tex Tucker in Gerry Anderson’s puppet series Four Feather Falls. Later he played stooge on comedian Arthur Haynes’ TV show for ten years, with Haynes always referring to Parsons as ‘Nicholarse’. He also worked with Benny Hill and other TV included The Very Merry Widow, The Ugliest Girl In Town, Kappatoo, The Comic Strip, Doctor Who, Cluedo and the children’s shows Bodger and Badger and The Wotnots. From 1971 he was the presenter on Anglia TV’s quiz show Sale of the Century for the next twelve years. However, before that he became (unwillingly, at first) the chairman of the BBC radio programme Just a Minute in 1967, a job he kept for some fifty-two years, with nary a break, missing just a couple of recordings due to ill-health. The show was transferred to television for a while but it was not a long-runner on the box.

That leaves the films that Parsons made. Although he was on TV from 1953, he had made his cinema debut in Master of Bankdam in 1947, playing Edgar Hoylehouse in a saga about a Yorkshire mill family. He then had small parts in many 1950s films, including To Dorothy a Son with Shelley Winters, Simon and Laura with Peter Finch and Kay Kendall, An Alligator Named Daisy and Eyewitness, both with Donald Sinden, The Long Arm with Jack Hawkins, Brothers in Law with Richard Attenborough, Happy Is the Bride with Ian Carmichael, Too Many Crooks and Carlton-Browne of the F.O. both with Terry-Thomas, Upstairs and Downstairs with Michael Craig, Let’s Get Married with Anthony Newley, and then Doctor in Love, Carry on Regardless, Murder Ahoy!, Every Day’s a Holiday and The Wrong Box. He made a few more films until 1976 and his last cinema appearance was as himself in Lady Godiva in 2008. Nicholas Parsons was first married to the actress Denise Bryer and they have two children. Following their divorce in 1989 he married Ann Reynolds in 1995. He was appointed OBE in 2004 and CBE in 2014, for his children’s charity work.

MICHAEL DARVELL