‘What a swankpot!’ Sir Norman Wisdom pseudo-modestly pseudo-rebukes himself after listing some of the trophies in a display cabinet at home on the Isle of Man. ‘But why not?’ he asks, almost disarmingly. ‘I did get ’em, didn’t I?’ This is ventriloquial star-speak by William Hall, an expert writer-with, whose credits include biographies of Michael Caine, James Dean, Frankie Howerd, Larry Adler and Dick Emery.
Wisdom’s cabinet contains a British Academy Award, seven trophies for Britain’s Top Comedian, seven engraved silver spoons from John Paddy Carstairs, one for each Norman Wisdom film he directed, emblems of the Golden Flame from Argentina and the Lifetime Achievement Award from his fellow British comics. Is Little Norm proud? Cor, not ‘arf! as Hall sometimes has him write, though Wisdom says he has learned to talk posh.
If you want to read about showbiz celebrities, you usually have to choose between biographies that are scandalously gossipy and autobiographies in which ghostly professionals conceal the warts with Max Factor Pancake.
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