Slapstick comedian Charlie Drake dies aged 81
By Press Association. 24/12/2006
Comedian Charlie Drake has died at the age of 81 following a long illness caused by two strokes. Drake worked into his seventies before a stroke forced him to retire.
Drake starred in a string of hit TV shows and films during the 1960s and 1970s and had a pop hit with the comic song My Boomerang Won't Come Back.
He died in his sleep yesterday at Brindsworth House, Twickenham, the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Home where he had lived for about two years.
Twice-married Drake leaves three sons, Christopher, Stephen and Paul.
Mr Laurie Mansfield, his agent, said: "It is the end of an era, of those comics and comedians that dominated our lives through the 60s and 70s. "Charlie Drake perhaps was the last of the great slapstick comedians, who combined both verbal humour with knockabout comedy. "His timing was acknowledged by everybody as being the very very best and his passing is a great personal loss for me. He was a great great comic talent."
Asked about his personal qualities, he said: "He was probably the most stubborn man I ever met. He knew what he wanted and would not accept compromise on getting what he wanted."
Mr Mansfield told how Drake once walked out of America's Ed Sullivan Show and never worked in the country again, because producers would not allow him to do a routine the way he wanted. "He was really on the way to making himself a name in America. They wouldn't let him do the slapstick scene in the way he wanted to do it."
Drake was born on June 19, 1925 in Elephant and Castle, south London, the son of a newspaper seller.
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