Dick Emery - Personal Life

Personal Life

Dick Emery had a very difficult childhood initially, however, following the departure of his father, Laurie Howe, when he was aged 8, things settled down. He was devoted to his mother for most of his life and helped support her once he was able to work. This devotion could and did cause problems in his first marriages.

He was very keen on 'long legs and blondes' and was often in the newspapers with beautiful women, and was in six long term relationships, marrying the first five. He also had numerous affairs throughout his life.

He married Joan (sometimes known as Zelda) Sainsbury at the beginning of the Second World War and had one son, Gilbert Richard. After the failure of that marriage, he later met Irene (Pip) Ansell but the marriage barely lasted 6 months. While working in summer season in 1950 at the Winter Gardens in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight he met Iris Margaret Tully who was also in the show. At the end of the season, they returned to London and set up home together in Iris's flat in Shaftesbury Avenue. Iris changed her name to Emery by deed poll until 1955, when a year after she had given birth to his second son, Nicholas William, she married Emery in 1955.

This marriage was rocky as Emery had several affairs while away on tour. He met the woman who became his fourth wife, Victoria Chambers, in the mid-1950s. He was torn between the two women and in late 1958 left Iris and moved to Thames Ditton in Surrey to set up home.

In 1960, however, he returned to Iris and his son and moved them to Thames Ditton. He could never settle, though, and in 1962 he left Iris for Victoria. Iris divorced him in 1964. By this time, he had set up home in Esher. Vickie bore him a son Michael and a daughter Eliza. His last wife was Josephine Blake to whom he was still married at the time of his death but had left her to live with Fay Hillier, a showgirl, 30 years younger than him.

Outside of show business, he enjoyed aviation holding a pilot's licence from 1961 onwards, fast cars (it was a family joke that he changed cars when the ashtrays were full), motorbiking, scale model model-making (he was chairman of the Airfix Modellers' Club) and wrote a review feature for Meccano Magazine during 1971.

He died in Denmark Hill, London from heart failure and respiratory failure at the age of 67.

While the public took him to heart (voting him BBC TV Personality of the Year in 1972) Emery suffered from severe stage fright and low self-esteem. He underwent analysis, hypnosis and sedatives to try to cure these problems. He told Roy Kinnear: "I don't just envy the confidence that other comics seem to have, I resent it. I hate them for it, just like my dad did. If there's such a thing as a chip off the old block, it's on my shoulder."

He is survived by his four children, Gilbert, Nicholas, Michael and Eliza.

The Dick Emery Show was re-aired in the UK on (the now defunct) Granada Plus, ITV4 and UKTV Drama. The show is now being screened on the G.O.L.D. comedy channel, but only in small snips lasting around 5 to 15 minutes.