Terry Scott

Life and career

Scott was born and brought up in Watford, Hertfordshire and educated at Watford Field Junior School and Watford Grammar School for Boys. He was the youngest of three children, and the only surviving son after his brother Aubrey died when Scott was six. After National Service in the Navy at the end of World War II, he briefly studied accounting. Spells on the radio on shows like Workers Playtime were followed by appearances on TV and he got an opportunity in farce when he joined the Whitehall Theatre Company. With Bill Maynard he appeared at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Skegness, Lincolnshire and partnered him in the TV series Great Scott, It's Maynard!. During the early 1960s, he became well known to television audiences for his role alongside Hugh Lloyd in Hugh and I. They both appeared as Ugly Sisters in pantomime at The London Palladium and Scott reappeared in that same role with Julian Orchard in later years. Scott later appeared with Lloyd as gnomes in the 1969 sitcom The Gnomes of Dulwich.

Scott's novelty record "My Brother" (written by Mitch Murray, released 1962 on Parlophone) was based on a schoolboy character (he dressed in the uniform to sing it on TV) and it received regular airplay on BBC Radio (in particular Ed Stewart's Saturday and Sunday morning programme Junior Choice) for many years. In the 1970s, he had a memorable role in TV commercials for a chocolate coated caramel bar called Curly Wurly, in which he again appeared dressed as a schoolboy, complete with short trousers and cap.This performance he also repeated more than once on BBC TVs long running variety show The Good Old Days. Scott had played a small role in the very first of the Carry On films series of films, Carry On Sergeant in 1958. In 1968 he returned to the series with a role in Carry On Up the Khyber (1968), playing main roles in six of the later films.

Scott is best remembered for starring alongside June Whitfield in several series of the comedy Happy Ever After and its successor, Terry and June. They had first worked together making a series of the sketch show Scott On (1968). They also featured in supporting roles together in the film version of Bless This House. From 1981 to 1992, Scott was the voice of Penfold the hamster in the animated series Danger Mouse.

Scott suffered from ill health for many years. In 1979, he had a life-saving operation after a haemorrhage. He also suffered from creeping paralysis and had to wear a neck brace, even on television. When Terry and June ended in 1987, Scott suffered a nervous breakdown. The attack was in part brought on by his public confession that he had had a series of affairs since his marriage to dancer Margaret Peden in 1957. The couple had four daughters: Sarah, Nicola, Lindsay and Sally.

Scott was also diagnosed with cancer in 1987. He died at the family home in Witley near Godalming in Surrey, on 26 July 1994, aged 67 from the cancer he had suffered for seven years .

He said of his last illness: "I know it would be better to give up the booze, fags and birds, but life would be so boring, wouldn't it?".

Discography