Bruce Forsyth born 22 February 1928

Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson CBE (22 February 1928 – 18 August 2017) was a British presenter and entertainer whose career spanned more than 70 years.

Bruce Joseph Forsyth Johnson was born in Edmonton, north London,, the youngest son of a garage owner, and was educated at the Latymer School. Aged 10 he was travelling two hours a day to attend tap-dancing lessons, and at 14 he left school to tour with a concert party. Billed as “Boy Bruce, The Mighty Atom”, he wore a sequin-covered suit and did an act as a bellboy who, having carried various bags onstage, opened them and played a ukulele, an accordion and did a tap routine.

After seven years of touring with variety acts, Forsyth got his break at the Windmill Theatre in 1947 where he was to remain for two years.  

In 1951, after two years’ National Service in the RAF, Forsyth gave himself five years to become famous. “I didn’t want to be a frustrated old pro,” he remembered. “Luckily I got the job at the Palladium with only a year of my five left.”  That was in 1955, when he took over from Tommy Trinder as compère of the hugely popular television variety show Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Forsyth was an even greater hit with audiences, who liked his somewhat badgering style. The show comprised comics, dancers, a big star and Beat The Clock, a game for members of the audience in which the competitors had to perform various absurd tasks while being heckled by the host.

                                

It was during these shows at the Palladium that Forsyth introduced three catchphrases that stayed with him throughout his career: “I’m in charge”; “Nice to see you – to see you nice”; and “Didn’t he do

Bruce with Sammy Davis Jr.

well?”

When Sunday Night at the London Palladium came to an end in 1965, Forsyth starred in his own television show, which in turn led to The Generation Game. During the making of the series he began to gain a reputation as something of a prima donna, one crew member complaining: “If somebody asks him something and he thinks it’s unimportant, we all suffer.”

As he hit his forties he also branched out into acting, turning up in a cluster of light musical films, notably Robert Wise’s Star!, about the actress Gertrude Lawrence, with Julie Andrews; the Anthony Newley vehicle Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969); and Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). 

Julie Andrews, Bruce Forsyth, Beryl Reid

He also appeared in The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), a quickly forgotten low-budget comedy directed by Graham Stark and featuring cameos from virtually every British comic performer of the era. 

In 1973, having divorced his first wife, Penny Calvert, he married Anthea Redfern, his “hostess” on The Generation Game, whom he met at a “Miss Lovely Legs contest. The marriage was dissolved in 1982. By this time, despite various setbacks, Forsyth was still showing the boundless energy that had made his previous game shows so engaging and successful. By 1983 he had his glamorous third wife – who was the same age as his daughter – and had begun to sport an ill-disguised toupee.

After several years of presenting Play Your Cards Right on ITV he returned for a third time to the United States in 1986 with another new game show, called Bruce Forsyth’s Hot Streak, but during

interviews to promote the show (which was soon taken off the air) he was confronted by the same tedious preoccupations: presenters were more interested in the age difference between him and his wife.

In his sixties, Forsyth appeared to go into overdrive, hosting, among other programmes, You Bet! for ITV (1988-90) and Bruce’s Price Is Right (ITV, 1995-2001), as well as a revived Generation Game on the BBC (1990-95). In 2000 he compèred Tonight at the London Palladium, based on the show’s original format.

In 1975 he was named the Variety Club Showbusiness Personality of the Year. He received a Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, and in 2013 was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the male television entertainer with the longest on-screen career, spanning 72 years.

He published an autobiography in 2001, followed in 2015 by Strictly Bruce, a further volume of memoirs.

He was appointed OBE in 1998, advanced to CBE in 2006, and knighted in 2011.

Forsyth presented Strictly Come Dancing well into his eighties; it was said that he kept fit thanks to a daily half-hour regime of Tibetan stretches and a flask of Complan which he kept backstage. In 2015 he underwent keyhole surgery after doctors discovered he had two aneurysms following a fall at his home.

After 2015, Forsyth made no further public appearances, as his health began to decline, with his wife commenting that he struggled to move easily following his surgery. On 26 February 2017, he was again admitted to hospital with a severe chest infection and spent five days in intensive care, before returning home on 3 March 2017. On 18 August 2017, Forsyth died of bronchial pneumonia at his Wentworth Estate home in Virginia Water, aged 89.

(Edited mainly from The Telegraph)