Born: 10 December, 1941, in Ilford, Essex.
Died: 31 August, 2008, in Epping Forest, Essex, aged 66.
THE fact that Ken Campbell's final performance was in Scotland, at the Edinburgh Fringe just days ago, is possi
bly irrelevant in the great scheme of things. Or maybe not. You'd have to ask him. In which case you'd need a ticket to the one-man comedy show he is probably putting on outside or, hopefully, inside the Pearly Gates.
Ken Campbell not only performed a one-man stand-up show for much of his life. He was a one-man show, offstage as much as on. He was a comic, an actor, a writer, a director, an experimenter and a pro, but most of all an "impro" – one of those rare geniuses who could improvise his way out of anything and turn it into art. His sudden death on Monday at the age of 66 sent shock waves through the comedy community.
The fact that Campbell was once turned down for the TV role of Dr Who perhaps says it all. Apparently he looked too eccentric.
Campbell had been coming to the Edinburgh Festival for years. Just last week he appeared as a special guest in the Fringe production of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical at the Musical Theatre in George Square, featuring the troupe the Sticking Place.
Critics were asked to write their reviews in advance, inventing absurd ideas that Campbell and the troupe were allowed to see just before the show. The players then performed, spontaneously, what they perceived the critics had written about. Campbell had the advantage that "Absurd" could have been his middle name.
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an Essex boy, born and bred. He was born in 1941 to an Irish immigrant Liverpudlian, Colin Campbell, and a local lass, Elsie Handley. At the age of 17, he said, he realised he was not, nor wanted to be, a normal human being, and decided an acting career was the obvious choice (he said he'd been acting in the bathtub since he was three, using the bathroom tiles as his audience).
He landed a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and his first job was as a straight man to a leading comedian of the time, Dick Emery. It seems, though, that he was too funny to be a straight man and he was soon forced to start looking for other work.
He started to write plays – Recollections of a Furtive Nudist was his first. He called it the first of his "Bald Trilogy", not because he was thinning on top, but because the well-known playwright David Hare had a trilogy running at the same time at the National Theatre.
Then, seeking audiences with a greater sense of humour, Campbell decided to ramble north.
He launched The Ken Campbell Roadshow in 1971, performing spontaneous (nowadays it might be called "alternative") comedy in pubs and clubs with the help of actor friends including Bob Hoskins and Sylvester McCoy (later to become the seventh Dr Who instead of Campbell).
Comedians including John Cleese and Bill Nighy said the Roadshow inspired them. Another budding comedian, Chris Langham, joined Campbell in forming the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, where Campbell met his future wife, the actress Prunella Gee, as well as later-to-be famous actors such as Jim Broadbent.
Another big-name actor, Trevor Nunn, who was director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), was not amused when a statement appeared claiming the RSC was changing its name to the Royal Dickens Company as a result of its successful presentation of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. Several well-known actors reportedly expressed a keen interest in the new company after reading the statement signed "Love, Trev".
Nunn called in the police before Campbell admitted writing the statement on RSC notepaper, though the two men later made up.
In later years, Campbell's face, though not his name, became nationally known for his appearances in TV comedies and dramas, notably as Alf Garnett's neighbour Fred in In Sickness and in Health, and in movies such as A Fish Called Wanda, in which Cleese insisted his friend was cast.
A lifelong fan of science fiction and the paranormal, Campbell also presented several TV shows, including Brainspotting, Reality on the Rocks and Six Experiments that Changed the World.
Although Ken Campbell and Prunella Gee were divorced, she always said she recognised his comic genius and they remained best friends.
He is survived by Ms Gee, their daughter, Daisy, and two grandchildren.
PHIL DAVISON
The full article contains 764 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
