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Post by Wynn Chester on Jul 18, 2021 14:54:20 GMT
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Post by Arch Stanton on Jul 18, 2021 15:11:58 GMT
I remember The Zodiac Game on telly and him being one of those royal variety performance type comedians/compères/presenters.
RIP Tom.
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Post by jno on Jul 18, 2021 16:16:50 GMT
I'll name that tune in one.
Tom O'Connor, one of the best presenters on British TV during the 80s, if not the best.
RIP
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Post by ltd on Jul 18, 2021 18:37:11 GMT
Always seemed an amiable sort of chap, pretty decent comic timing as I remember. Surprised he wasn't on TV more.
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Post by steve99 on Jul 18, 2021 22:42:22 GMT
Sorry to hear this news. Tom looked a bit frail when he spoke to a TV journalist after attending Ken Dodd's funeral and I see he'd been unwell for some time. I read Tom's autobiography a few years ago and it made me realise how much tenacity the old school entertainers needed. Tom was a schoolteacher by day and played the clubs at night as he tried to establish a career in showbusiness, and although he made a decision early in his career not to tell blue jokes, this didn't prevent him from playing some rough places as he paid his dues in the clubs.
In his book, Tom recalled one club (which he didn't name) where he thought a guy in the front row had fallen asleep while he was doing his act. The bloke had presumably gone to the club that night for a few beers and some laughs but he didn't make it in any sense to the end of Tom's routine. The bloke's demise wasn't due to natural causes and Tom must have been glad to have reached the big time when he thought of that incident in his later career.
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Post by yorkshirebilly on Jul 19, 2021 10:28:38 GMT
Sorry to hear this news. Tom looked a bit frail when he spoke to a TV journalist after attending Ken Dodd's funeral and I see he'd been unwell for some time. I read Tom's autobiography a few years ago and it made me realise how much tenacity the old school entertainers needed. Tom was a schoolteacher by day and played the clubs at night as he tried to establish a career in showbusiness, and although he made a decision early in his career not to tell blue jokes, this didn't prevent him from playing some rough places as he paid his dues in the clubs. In his book, Tom recalled one club (which he didn't name) where he thought a guy in the front row had fallen asleep while he was doing his act. The bloke had presumably gone to the club that night for a few beers and some laughs but he didn't make it in any sense to the end of Tom's routine. The bloke's demise wasn't due to natural causes and Tom must have been glad to have reached the big time when he thought of that incident in his later career. We go on a cruise most winters. Tom O'Connor was apparently booked on the "cruise circuit" quite a bit. People were posting tributes on a cruise forum yesterday and recounted that he was on a ship that was due to call at Iceland but couldn't when the big volcano erupted about 10 years ago. It was planned that Tom would leave the ship at Reykjavik and another comedian would join. But that couldn't happen, so Tom stayed on and ended up doing a performance every night of the whole cruise which must have been tiring for him. Shame we never got to see him. He was "safer" than many comedians who seem to rely on offending sections of the audience/population-in-general to get laughs. Tom was inoffensive and yet funny, from what I remember of seeing him on TV.
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Post by bodiesstuntdouble on Jul 19, 2021 15:29:08 GMT
Another big name in the Entertainment industry from my formative years gone - always enjoyed him hosting Name That Tune (and Benny Hill's spoof too) and he was a decent (and "family friendly") stand up comic too.
RIP Sir
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