Norman Wisdom

Sir Norman Wisdom OBE (born 4 February 1915) is a retired English comedian, singer, songwriter, actor and musician.

Norman Wisdom was born in the Marylebone district of London. His parents were Frederick, a chauffeur, and Maud Wisdom (née Targett), a dressmaker who often worked for West End theatres. The couple married in Marylebone in 1912.Norman Wisdom’s elder brother, Fred, was born in 1913. The family resided at 91 Fernhead Road, London W9, where they slept in one room.

At the outbreak of World War II Wisdom was sent to work in a communications centre in a command bunker in London where he connected telephone calls from war leaders to the prime minister. He met Winston Churchill on several occasions when asked for updates on incoming calls. He then joined the Royal Corps of Signals and performed a similar function with a military unit based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

After a charity concert at the Cheltenham Town Hall, actor Rex Harrison came backstage and urged him to become a professional entertainer. Leaving the Army in 1946, Wisdom made his debut as a professional entertainer at the age of 31, and his rise to the top was phenomenally fast.

Initially the straight man to the magician David Nixon, he had adopted the suit that would remain his trademark; tweed flat cap askew, with peak turned up; a suit at least two sizes too tight; a crumpled collar and a mangled tie. This character known as “the Gump” was to dominate Wisdom’s film career. A West End star within two years, he made his TV debut the same year and was soon commanding enormous audiences. Charlie Chaplin called Wisdom his “favourite clown”.

Norman singing ‘Give Me a Night in June’ from the film
Follow a Star (1959)

Wisdom made a series of low-budget star-vehicle comedies for the Rank Organisation, beginning with Trouble in Store in 1953. This film earned him a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Film in 1954. Their cheerful, unpretentious appeal make them the direct descendants of the films made a generation earlier by George Formby. Never highly thought of by the critics, they were very popular with domestic audiences and Wisdom’s films were among Britain’s biggest box office successes of their day, and were successful in some unlikely overseas markets, helping Rank stay afloat financially when their more expensive film projects were unsuccessful.

Classic Norman Wisdom from ‘The Early Bird’ (1965)

The films usually involved the Gump character—Norman Pitkin—in some manual occupation, in which he is barely competent and in a junior position to a straight man, often played by Edward Chapman—Mr Grimsdale. They benefited from Wisdom’s capacity for physical slapstick comedy and his skill at creating a sense of the character’s helplessness. The series often contained a romantic subplot; the Gump’s inevitable awkwardness with women is a characteristic shared with the earlier Formby vehicles.

Norman Wisdom singing “I Like to Put on Records’
from the film ‘Trouble in Store’ (1957)

Despite a move to filming in colour, by the mid-1960s Wisdom’s commercial film appeal was in eclipse. The obvious incongruity of a fifty-year old man playing the Prime Minister’s grandson in Press for Time (1966) counted against him; Wisdom’s age was inaccurately reported for many years.

Wisdom married his second wife Freda Isobel Simpson, a dancer in October 1947; they had two children: Nicholas (born 1953) and Jacqueline (born 1954). The couple divorced in 1968, and Wisdom was granted full custody of the children. Freda Wisdom died in Brighton in 1992.

Wisdom is a lifelong supporter and a former board member of football team Brighton and Hove Albion F.C.. He enjoys golf and is a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats. Popular in the Isle of Man, he lived for 27 years in a house in Andreas named Ballylough (Manx for “House of Laughs”).

A lover of cars, he owned a 1987 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit and a Jaguar S-Type, until his age and failing mental health meant he failed a Department of Transport fitness to drive test, and they were sold in September 2005. A supporter of various charities including Mencap, in 2005 Wisdom starred in a video for the Manx girl group Twisted Angels for their single LA, in support of local charity Project 21.

In mid-2006, after he suffered an irregular heart rhythm, Wisdom was flown by helicopter to hospital in Liverpool and after a few days was fitted with a heart pacemaker.

In August 2007, newspapers of the Daily Mail group and the Isle of Man Newspapers reported that Sir Norman was in the Abbotswood nursing home in Ballasalla, where he had been resident from 12 July 2007. On the release of Expresso to DVD in the same month, BBC News confirmed that Wisdom lived in a care home, due to him suffering from vascular dementia.

Norman Wisdom in his care home

It was also reported that his children had secured full power of attorney over his affairs, and having sold off his flat in Epsom, Surrey, were now in the process of selling his Isle of Man home to raise money to fund his longer term care. In an exclusive interview on 27 August 2007 with the News of the World, journalists were given access to Wisdom’s room at the home.

He claimed to be happy and content in a routine which his family and carers considered kept him safe in spite of the memory losses associated with his condition. On 16 January 2008, BBC2 aired Wonderland: The Secret Life Of Norman Wisdom Aged 92 and 3/4, a documentary highlighting the dilemma of coping with an aging parent. In a spoken trailer on BBC Radio 5 Live for the programme and in later publicity interviews undertaken by his family, it was stated that Wisdom’s memory loss is now so severe that he no longer recognises himself in his own films.

Norman Wisdom was my childhood and I would run for miles home when one of his films was on TV. A kind and gentle funny man from a lost era of Innocence. God bless you Norman!