Johnny Speight

Johnny Speight
Born (1920-06-02)2 June 1920
Canning Town, Greater London, England, UK
Died 5 July 1998(1998-07-05) (aged 78)
Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Occupation Scriptwriter
Nationality British
Period 1955–98
Genre Television
Notable works Till Death Us Do Part (1965–75)
Curry & Chips (1969)
In Sickness and in Health (1985–92)

Johnny Speight (2 June 1920 – 5 July 1998) was a British television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.

He emerged in the mid-1950s. He wrote for radio comics Frankie Howerd, Vic Oliver, Arthur Askey, and Cyril Fletcher. For television he wrote for Morecambe & Wise, and Peter Sellers, as well as The Arthur Haynes Show.[1] Later, he began to write Till Death Us Do Part, which included his most famous creation, the controversial bigot Alf Garnett. His shows often explored the themes of racism and sexism through satire.

Life and career

John Speight was born at 57 Chester Rd Canning Town,[2] West Ham, Essex (now Greater London), and began contributing scripts to comedy shows in 1955, starting with Great Scott - It's Maynard!. He later contributed to Sykes And A... (1960–65), which starred Eric Sykes, Hattie Jacques and Richard Wattis. Speight was one of many writing talents on that series which also included the star Sykes, John Antrobus and Spike Milligan. He created the iconic working class tramp figure played by Arthur Haynes in the latter's long-running and top-rating ATV comedy series. Haynes died in 1966.[3]

In 1965, Speight wrote a BBC TV pilot which became the 1966 series Till Death Us Do Part featuring Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett, a reactionary Conservative-voting working class man with a chip on his shoulder and an angry word on everything. Garnett became one of the most memorable characters in British TV history, despite being such an appalling figure. The 1971 US sitcom All in the Family was based on this series. It was during the production of Till Death Us Do Part that a BBC bureaucrat, according to legend, attempted to talk Speight into ameliorating his script by bargaining the number of occurrences of "damn", "bloody" and other words held to be offensive. The incident became the basis for a satirical sketch performed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, with Cook as the bureaucrat and Moore as a scriptwriter named "Johnny".

Speight's later series Curry and Chips (1969), was a more controversial sitcom from LWT for the ITV channel, soon cancelled on the instructions of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. His next comedy was For Richer...For Poorer (1975), a one-off pilot which featured Harry H. Corbett as a left-wing answer to Alf Garnett. After a brief return of Till Death Us Do Part on ITV in 1981 as Till Death..., Alf Garnett returned with a vengeance on the BBC's In Sickness and in Health which ran from 1985 to 1992.

He was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in May 1970 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Death

In 1998, Speight died of pancreatic cancer, aged 78 at his home in Chorleywood.[4] LWT put forward a series of specials featuring Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett, giving his thoughts on a variety of subjects. The programmes were originally shelved by ITV controller David Liddiment.

TV writing credits

References

  1. ↑ Dust jacket, For Richer, For Poorer, Johnny Speight; ISBN 0-563-36269-3
  2. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Speight, Johnny (1920-1998)". Screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Profile, screenonline.org.uk; accessed 26 December 2014.
  4. ↑ Johnny Speight, the writer who created Alf Garnett, dies of cancer aged 78 Retrieved 2016-10-29.

External links


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