Tony Capstick born 27 July 1944

Tony Capstick (27 July 1944 – 23 October 2003) was an English comedian, actor, musician and broadcaster whose abundant star quality was undermined by the personal frailties that drove him to alcoholism, repeated brushes with the law and, ultimately, professional ruin.

Joseph Antony Capstick was born the first son of Joe Capstick, a wireless operator in the RAF, and his wife, June, née Duncan. Brought up by his mother and grandmother after his parents divorced, Capstick was an undistinguished pupil of Mexborough Grammar School, and took jobs on the railway and in an abattoir before establishing himself as a musician.

As an accomplished guitarist and banjo-player with a decent voice, he quickly made a name on the folk club circuit from the mid-1960s. This was a time when most parts of Britain seemed to be producing folk singers who were, in fact, better as comedians: Connolly from the Clyde; Jasper Carrott from Birmingham; Max Boyce in South Wales; Fred Wedlock from Somerset; and Mick Elliott up in the North-East.

Capstick thrived on radio, starting a connection with the BBC's Sheffield station in the early 1970s, which was to last more than 30 years. Thanks to spirited station managers like Phil Sidey in Leeds, this often disdained arm of the BBC used its position, away from the controllers' gaze, to produce some wonderfully subversive radio.

A regular performer on the folk circuit, he recorded many albums. The first was for the Newcastle based record label Rubber Records (His Round with Hedgehog Pie, Punch and Judy Man, Tony Capstick Does a Turn, Songs of Ewan MacColl with Dick Gaughan and Dave Burland and There Was This Bloke with Mike Harding, Derek Brimstone and Bill Barclay).

                                

There was, however, only one spell of real fame. A spoof of the Hovis bread advertisement in 1981, set to the Carlton Main and Frickley Colliery Band's arrangement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, and called Capstick Comes Home, was a minor comic masterpiece. The record began life, unpromisingly, as a Radio 
Sheffield promotional single. Capstick's producer John Leonard belatedly realised that a flip side was needed for the station's theme tune, The Sheffield Grinder, and suggested the Hovis parody.

Although already part of Capstick's folk club routine, it ran to only 20 seconds. Sitting in Leonard's car on the way to the studios, Capstick wrote the rest on the back of a cigarette packet. The track was recorded in a single take and soon displaced the original A-side. Listeners were entranced by Capstick's satire on Northern working-class life. The record reached number three in the hit 

parade in 1981. As a comedian he had an eight-part television series, Capstick's Capers, on Channel 4 in 1983. Capstick was also a prolific bit-part actor, with a career including minor roles in the soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street. In the latter he played the recurring character of the brewer Harvey Nuttall.

His folk-singing in clubs and on south Yorkshire radio, and writing a local newspaper column were all ephemeral, and when, in 1995, his 28-year marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Carol, collapsed, his drinking became worse.

Soon after, he married Gillian, a supermarket worker 18 years younger than himself. They made a base at Hoober, close to one of a collection of eccentric follies on the former estate of the Earls of Wentworth; an aspect of south Yorkshire that much appealed to Capstick, who enjoyed rural stately homes.

Meanwhile, he clung to his afternoon radio show, supported by a cast of loyal friends, who found the drunken Capstick worth 
tolerating for spells of the brilliant original. This applied to 

listeners too and his unpredictable goings-on retained a sort of Sheffield cult status. But in January, after a disastrous move to a morning slot, he was sacked by the station for failing to meet standards and "letting listeners down", after which his drinking worsened and his health declined following the latest in a string of drink driving offences.

He continued to write a regular column in a local weekly newspaper, the Rotherham Advertiser. Capstick was an author, with Paul Donoghue, of a book on the Appleby Horse Fair. On 23 October 2003, Capstick was found dead at his cottage in Hoober, near Wentworth, South Yorkshire.

Outside Sheffield, he is perhaps better known as one of the policemen in the long-running British sitcom, Last of the Summer Wine, where he played the role until his death, with his final appearance on the show broadcast in April 2004. Despite his many appearances in comic roles, he sadly never fulfilled a potential that had Billy Connolly once refer to him as “the funniest man he had ever met.”

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Guardian & The Telegraph)