TV producer

Born: May 15, 1923;

Died: July 7, 2016

JIMMY Gilbert, who has died aged 93 after a long illness, was a television producer, writer, actor and Second World War pilot. It sounds such a hackneyed expression but it is difficult not to describe him as the Godfather of British Comedy. How can it not apply to the man behind the Frost Report, The Two Ronnies, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?

Cecil James Gilbert was born in Edinburgh knew from a fairly young age he wanted a career in entertainment. But he had no idea when he abandoned his first year at Edinburgh University in 1942 to become an RAF aviator that piloting Flying Fortresses would help propel him in the direction of a career in comedy.

On leaving the RAF, he went to study at RADA. “I was mad on cinema,” he once said. “But I didn’t want to be an actor. I wanted to be a film director. And so I met with my sister’s actress friend Everley Gregg for advice, at the Café Royal in London, where all the actors hung around. Then after lunch she stopped outside RADA, and said to me, ‘If you’re going to have the temerity to tell us what to do, you have to learn what we have to put up with from the likes of you’.”

In 1948, while at RADA the flying connection kicked in again when he was offered work at the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow. Producer John Casson came down looking for an assistant stage manager (at the time the Citz would only hire Scots). “Casson had been a pilot as well. I was quids-in,” said Gilbert.

At the Gorbals-based theatre, Jimmy Gilbert met a young man who was to become a great friend, inspiration and part of his future success.

“I had been playing piano in the empty pit, in November, and went in to the green room to warm my back at the radiator and this young man walked in,” Gilbert recalled. “I said ‘Hello!’ and he jumped out of his skin. But we became great friends. And it was obvious he was a very funny actor.”

The young man was Stanley Baxter. Together the pair helped return panto tradition to the theatre, their songs and sketches creating The Tintock Cup, which was so successful it ran until April.

Jimmy Gilbert knew his future was in producing/directing. “I was never a very good actor,” he admitted. “I could never lose myself in the role. Even my dad told me that.”

He and actress wife Fiona Clyne, who had also worked at the Citz, moved to Richmond and bought a house for £2,000. Gilbert soon achieved musical theatre success in Windsor with The World’s The Limit yet while he picked up small acting roles along the way, he needed the day job working in the local biscuit factory to pay the mortgage. (He had an arrangement with the foreman he could keep a suit in the factory in case he got a call from his agent to attend an audition.)

A year later however in 1956, Gilbert had no need for the biscuit factory suit. In the meantime he and Julian More had written a new musical, Grab Me A Gondola, that would transfer to the Lyric Theatre in the West End and run for almost two years.

But Gilbert’s sights were set on a career with the BBC as a trainee and thankfully, the executive carrying out the interviews was an ex-RAF pilot as well. And when the young producer/director was asked to pull together a review show he knew instinctively who he wanted. Gilbert called his chum Stanley Baxter and in 1959 On The Bright Side became a BAFTA winner which ran to two series and spun-off into a successful touring show.

Gilbert clearly had the golden touch and went on to work on The Frost Report with David Frost and was made Head of Comedy at the BBC in the early seventies. It was a time when creatives had power, and Gilbert proved his talent again and again creating The Two Ronnies and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?

He was a man who knew his own mind. When Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin writer David suggested Ronnie Barker for the lead, Gilbert replied “Excellent. Leonard Rossiter it is.”

Gilbert also developed Milo O’Shea and commissioned Fawlty Towers. “I said to John Cleese ‘Write what you want’ but when I read the script was surprised he’d chosen such a conventional backdrop. John said to me quite calmly, ‘I think it will work.’”

Jimmy Gilbert wasn’t too pleased however to be promoted to Head of Light Entertainment (“Too much of a desk job, too many meetings”) and moved to Thames Television where he worked with Benny Hill and continued to help create hits such as Fresh Fields.

What was his secret of success? “He was good at nurturing, and managing talent,” says his son, Colin. “He could read scripts and deal with the egos.”

What he was also very good at was never forgetting life’s priorities. “I have more memories of my dad doing things with me than memories of his work,” says Colin Gilbert. “He was a great family man. I remember Graham Chapman called him up once on a Sunday and getting short shrift, because he didn’t allow work to intrude into family time. And he loved watching rugby.”

Colin Gilbert went on to create the Comedy Unit production house, daughter Susan Gilmore is a successful actress and second daughter Julia Gilbert is a television writer and a lead writer on the likes of Holby City.

What is remarkable about Jimmy Gilbert is he managed to have so much success without ruffling feathers. He never had a bad word to say about anyone, he was circumspect and clever. When once asked about working with problematic actors he grinned and said “They were no more difficult than you would expect them to be.”

Stanley Baxter sums up his chum Jimmy Gilbert neatly. “He was very talented man with great ideas and a great encourager of talent. But more importantly, a very, very nice man indeed.”

He is survived by his wife and children.

BRIAN BEACOM