Harry Worth - Television Career

Television Career

Worth's first appearance was a five-minute standup on "Henry Hall's Guest Night" in 1955.

He is now best remembered for his 1960s series Here's Harry, later re-titled Harry Worth, which lasted for over 100 episodes. The opening titles of Harry Worth featured the comedian stopping in the street to perform an optical trick involving a shop window (raising one arm and one leg which were reflected in the window, thus giving the impression of levitation). Reproducing this effect was popularly known as "doing a Harry Worth". He also starred in Thirty Minutes Worth and My Name is Harry Worth.

The shop window sequence was filmed at St Ann's Square, Manchester, at Hector Powes tailors shop which is now a Starbucks coffee shop.

One famous comic sketch involved Worth and his family preparing for a royal visit to the area, during which the Queen was to visit his house. His fussing about the house drove his family mad. Just before the Queen was due to arrive, a beggar arrived at the door and kept coming back as an increasingly frustrated Worth tried to get him to go away. When a knock came on the door one more time Worth grabbed a bucket of filthy water and threw it out of the door at the caller, only to find that it wasn't the beggar but the Queen standing there, and he had just soaked her.

Another sketch involved Worth complaining to a policeman outside the Houses of Parliament that Big Ben clock was slow because Jimmy Young, the BBC Radio 2 presenter known for "always being right" had said that it was ten minutes past ten, while the clock said it was 10am. After pestering the policeman, Worth had the clock moved forward by ten minutes (the first time the timepiece had ever been adjusted). Just as the clock was changed, Young appeared on the radio to apologise that the studio clock was wrong by ten minutes. A mortified Worth was seen speeding away in his car, to furious shouts from the angry policeman.

Although never scripted, his catchphrase was generally known as "My Name Is Harry Worth. I don't know why - but, there it is!". One running joke in the television show involved references to Harry's never seen aunt known only as "Auntie", the popular nickname for the BBC itself. In one show, Harry commissioned a portrait of Auntie, only to receive a head-and-shoulders print of a woman with no face.

By the early-to-mid 1980s Worth was forced to retire early from his shows by health problems but he continued working in radio (and made TV guest appearances time-to-time for either interviews or pop-up guest appearances on some shows) until a few months before he died. Among the last regular appearances of his career were leading roles in the sitcoms How's Your Father? (Yorkshire TV 1979-81) and Oh Happy Band! (BBC TV 1980).