Quoting the funny Sir Norman Wisdom :

“As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes . . . and I can't remember the other two.”

Sir Norman Wisdom, OBE . . . born February 4, 1915 . . . is an English comedian, singer and actor.

Norman J Wisdom was born in the London district of Marylebone to Frederick and Maud Wisdom (nee Targett), who married in Marylebone in 1912. His father was a chauffeur and his mother a dressmaker. After a difficult and poverty-stricken childhood he joined the 10th Hussars and began to develop his talents as a musician and stage entertainer. Wisdom’s mother left when he was nine, and he and his brother were left in the charge of their father. Wisdom ran away from home when he was 11, but returned to become an errand boy with a grocery store on leaving school at 13. Later he was a coal-miner, a waiter, a pageboy and a cabin-boy, before joining the army and seeing service in India. Leaving in 1946, he made his debut as an entertainer at the advanced age of 31 - but his rise to the top was phenomenally fast. A West End star within two years, he made his TV debut the same year and was soon commanding enormous audiences. By this time, he had adopted the suit that would remain his trademark - tweed cap askew with peak turned up, too-tight jacket, barely-better trousers, crumpled collar and tie awry. The character known as "the Gump" was to dominate Wisdom's film career.

In 1966, Wisdom went to America to star on Broadway in the James Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn musical comedy Walking Happy. His highly-acclaimed performance was Tony nominated. He also completed his first American film as a vaudeville comic in The Night They Raided Minsky's. Any opportunities which might have opened up by this Stateside success were cut short when he had to return to London owing to a family crisis. His subsequent career was largely confined to television and he toured the world with his successful cabaret act.

He won critical acclaim in 1981 for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the play Going Gently. On 11 February 1987 Norman Wisdom was the subject of Thames Television's This Is Your Life for the second time.

He became prominent again in the 1990s, helped by the young comedian Lee Evans, whose act was heavily influenced by Wisdom's work. The highpoint of this new popularity was the knighthood he received in 1999 from Queen Elizabeth II. Also in the 1990s he appeared in the recurring role of Billy Ingleton in the long-running BBC comedy Last Of The Summer Wine. The role was originally a one-off appearance, but proved so popular that he returned as the character on a number of occasions.

In 2004 he made a cameo appearance in Coronation Street playing fitness fanatic pensioner Ernie Crabbe.

After he was knighted, true to his accident-prone persona, he couldn't resist pretending to trip off the platform on his way out.

- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photo credit: www.normanwisdom.co.uk

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