Harry Worth

At 71 years old, Harry Worth physical status not available right now. We will update Harry Worth's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Worth's first television appearance was a five-minute standup on Henry Hall's Guest Night in 1955. He became well known to the public and even appeared at the London Palladium, after which he took the show to Manchester, the main place for variety in those days, for eight weeks. In 1960, the television programme The Trouble With Harry was broadcast. John Ammonds and Worth wrote the pilot script in three to four weeks. A series of six programmes was commissioned, and was written by Vince Powell, Ronnie Taylor and Frank Roscoe.

He made this style his own by creating a character with whom the public could connect. He once said, "If Harry (the character) ever looked directly at the camera, or the audience, it would all be over". The character was Harry and everyone saw Harry as Harry.

He is now best remembered for his 1960s series Here's Harry, later re-titled Harry Worth, which ran for 10 years and over 100 episodes (the longest running British sitcom of the time, and still one of only a handful to run for over 100 episodes). The opening titles of Harry Worth featured Worth stopping in the street to perform an optical trick involving a shop window: raising one arm and one leg which were reflected in the window, thus giving the impression of levitation. Reproducing this effect was popularly known as "doing a Harry Worth". The shop window sequence first used in Here's Harry was filmed at St Ann's Square, Manchester, at Hector Powes tailor's shop. The idea for this was suggested by Vince Powell, who had done it himself as a child.

One famous comic sketch involved Worth and his family preparing for a royal visit to the area, during which the Queen was to visit his house. His fussing about the house drove his family mad. Just before the Queen was due to arrive, a beggar arrived at the door and kept coming back as an increasingly frustrated Worth tried to get him to go away. When a knock came on the door one more time Worth grabbed a bucket of filthy water and threw it out of the door at the caller, only to find that it was not the beggar but the Queen standing there, and he had just soaked her. Another sketch involved Worth complaining to a policeman outside the Houses of Parliament that Big Ben clock was slow because Jimmy Young, the BBC Radio 2 presenter known for "always being right" had said that it was ten minutes past ten, while the clock said it was 10 am. After pestering the policeman, Worth had the clock moved forward by ten minutes. Just as the clock was changed, Young appeared on the radio to apologise that the studio clock was wrong by ten minutes. A mortified Worth was seen speeding away in his car, to furious shouts from the angry policeman.

Following the assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, the BBC screened Here's Harry as part of its regular programming, a decision which led to the broadcaster receiving complaints through over 2,000 phone calls and 500 letters and telegrams.

Although never scripted, his catchphrase was generally known as "My name is Harry Worth. I don't know why – but, there it is!" It was really invented by impressionists of the day to give a common ground tag line to work with. One running joke in the television show involved references to Harry's never seen aunt known only as "Auntie", the popular nickname for the BBC itself. In one show, Harry commissioned a portrait of Auntie, only to receive a head-and-shoulders print of a woman with no face. He was the subject of This Is Your Life in October 1963 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Manchester's Gaumont cinema.

By the early to mid-1980s Worth was forced by health problems to retire early from his shows, but he continued working in radio (and made television guest appearances from time to time for either interviews or pop-up guest appearances on some shows) until a few months before he died. Among the last regular appearances of his career were leading roles in the sitcoms How's Your Father? (Yorkshire TV 1979–81) and Oh Happy Band! (BBC TV 1980).

Worth's last TV appearance was on Comic Relief in 1989 where he appeared with Melvyn Hayes in the BT Tower taking donation calls.

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