IT'LL BE ALL DEAD ON THE NIGHT
11/50
19th September 2018
Only 14 people had been picked on all three Crowdsourced lists to date, and that number dwindles with the death of Denis Norden. Norden got his break in the 1940s writing comedy routines for other performers, and it was during this time he met Frank Muir. Together, they formed first a writing/performing partnership and also a friendship which lasted fifty years until Muirs death in 1998. They were the nucleus of early BBC radio comedy series My Word, a pioneer in the word of improv comedy: an example of the sort of malaprop that show relied on was "Infamy infamy, they'll all got it in for me". Shame no one ran with that one. In later years, Denis Norden became host of perennial favourite collection of TV goofs, bloopers and fluffs It'll Be Alright on the Night, which began in 1977 and is still running. Once asked if he'd thought that show would have lasted 30 years at the time, he quipped: "I didn't think I'd last 30 years at that time!" A reassuringly consistent figure on TV, whose autobiography is refreshingly lacking in rancour (and indeed, biography!), Norden worked into his late 80s, and has died aged 96.