Cyril Fletcher

Cyril Fletcher (25 June 1913 – 2 January 2005) was an English comedian, broadcaster, pantomime impressario, actor, gardener and businessman. His catchphrase was 'Pin back your lugholes'. He was best known for his "Odd Odes", which later formed a section of the television show That's Life! a role he excelled in. So successful was he that he stayed on the show from 1973 to 1981. He only left then because Alan Hart, the Controller of BBC1, wanted him to be replaced, although Esther Rantzen, the producer and presenter who had hired him when they met on the Radio 4 programme Start the Week with Richard Baker, very much wanted him to stay. Besides reading humorous cuttings and reciting his Odd Odes on the programme, Fletcher also took a great interest in the campaigning consumer journalism, which was the basis of the programme. He also took part in films such as a lawn mower race in full racing driver costume.

He first began performing the Odd Odes in 1937, long before they first appeared on television (though he did appear on pre World War II television).

Fletcher came up with the idea when he was short of material for a radio show. The first, Odd Ode, was a comic, yet sentimental, reading of Edgar Wallace's war poem Dreamin' of Thee. Following this broadcast, he was given a regular programme on Radio Luxembourg; it was this show that brought him to national attention. He called himself "the odd oder".

He also appeared as a panellist on the popular panel show on BBC, What's My Line?, that ran from 1951 to 1963. He was the presenter of Central TV's Gardening Today for fourteen years, and Channel Television's Cyril Fletcher's TV Garden, which ran for 2 years from 1990 to 1992. He alleged defamation when Rowan Atkinson referred to him in a Not The Nine O’Clock News sketch as “a cross eyed baboon”. As a sufferer of crossed eyes, Fletcher considered litigation but over time they became friends.

Fletcher was born in Watford, the son of a solicitor, who was the Friern Barnet town clerk. Following schooling at Woodhouse School, North Finchley, where he first began to entertain by composing witty poems about his schoolmasters, he graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

A Freemason and a successful businessman, he believed it important to diversify in such a fickle business as show business. With his wife Betty Astell, who had been a famous beauty and very early film and television star, he ran a very successful company producing pantomimes in theatres around the country. He created a beautiful garden in his home near East Grinstead, Sussex including a rose garden and a white garden and with his great passion for horticulture presented many television gardening programmes. He founded Associated Speakers, an agency for after-dinner speakers, who represented The Duke of Bedford and Lord Longford, as well as himself.

Personal life

He and his wife Betty Astell were married on 18 May 1941 until his death on 2 January 2005, she died just under seven months later. The couple had a daughter, Jill Fletcher, an actress and comedian.

Selected filmography

• Yellow Canary (1943)
• Nicholas Nickleby (1947)
• A Piece of Cake (1948)