Merseyside Mirth Makers - Derek Nimmo

Derek Nimmo

Derek Robert Nimmo was born in the Mossley Hill area of Liverpool on the 19th of September 1930 and was educated at Booker Avenue Infants and Junior School as well as Quarry Bank High School, years before John Lennon attended it. Derek sang in St Barnabus church choir, as did Paul McCartney, and while running a Saturday-night dance in St Barnabus church hall in Penny Lane, Nimmo met his wife-to-be, Patricia Brown, when she tried to sell him tickets for an amateur play. "We had our first date in the shelter mentioned in the song ( Penny Lane )," he recalled. He had excelled at Drama in school and Patricia introduced him to a local theatre group, where he was spotted by a repetory company. and began his stage career at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bolton, Lancashire. In the 1960s, he came to the public attention in a long-running West End production of ‘Charlie Girl’. It was during this time that he made a cameo appearance in The Beatles first film ' A Hard Day's Night' (in which he appeared as "Leslie Jackson", a magician with doves).

With Bridget Armstrong, Ian Carmichael, Liz Fraser and Cecil Parker

 

Derek was an unlikely star, with a stutter endured since childhood and an upper class air. Yet it was these very factors which made him one of the great comic character actors and a natural for early television sitcoms.It was obvious early on that he had a talent for comedy. He exaggerated his gangly physique and the stammer he had had since a child to play comic authority figures.

He made his name in the 1960's television adaptation of P G Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and Blandings Castle novels and was particularly successful in his role as the Rev Mervyn Noote in the television comedy series All Gas and Gaiters.He also played a monk in Oh Brother!, a Roman Catholic priest in Oh Father! and an Anglican dean in Hell's Bells.

His natural monkish air almost landed him in trouble while filming at the Vatican for the BBC series 'Oh Brother!' in 1969. Dressed as Father Dominic, he was arrested on the steps of St Peter's Basilica by Vatican police after being seen with his arm around a mini-skirted girl by a shocked nun whilst posing for a picture request with an English tourist's daughter.
Actress June Whitfield said of : "He was always the first one with a friendly wave and a joke. He was also a very good actor and a very funny man."
He eventually became disillusioned with the changing tastes of television audiences and instead became an impresario, taking his own productions all over the world with a troupe of star performers. He also wrote many books about his two passions: theatre and wine. He was in high demand as an excellent after-dinner speaker and in 1990 won the Benedictine After Dinner Speaker Of The Year Award.

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