I began to be scared someone else would do better than me on stage, and my mother would clatter me.' 'She probably felt if she praised me I'd try less hard. But more than that, he feared his fiercely ambitious mother. Dressed in a sailor suit, his hair tonged in waves, he did impersonations of Laurel and Hardy, and Mae West.Īs his mother Bessie, a blacksmith's daughter, accompanied him on the piano, the boy belted out saucy music hall numbers with titles such as I'm One Of The Lads Of Valencia: 'You can't beat a Spaniard for kissing, Oh ladies, just think what you're missing!' He loved the applause - 'a hundred people shouting 'Bravo' and I'm beating the adults to the prizes'.
Stanley Baxter was a star on the Glasgow talent circuit aged six, in 1932. Anyone would be insane to choose to live such a very difficult life.' He adds, his voice dark: 'The truth is, I don't really want to be me.' 'There are many gay people these days who are fairly comfortable with their sexuality,' he says. But it would be wrong to imagine he has found peace. He's willing to let the world decide for itself. Stanley and Moira (left and right) on their honeymoon in London in 1952.
'I'm too afraid of what people will think of me,' he said. To pre-empt that, he agreed to let me tell his story. By 1999, he was fearful that an unauthorised biography might be commissioned against his wishes. When his friend Kenneth Williams's diaries were published posthumously in the early Nineties, he fought a legal battle to ensure nothing about his sex life was printed. Even though Moira was dead from an overdose by this time, he was sickened at the thought that his sexuality might become common knowledge. Baxter would tell the whole truth, on condition that it remained a secret. He first asked me to write his biography more than 20 years ago, but was emphatic that he did not want it to appear while he was alive. Of all those stories, it is hard to imagine anything more sad than this one. The showbiz world is rife with tales of heartbreak, loneliness, wasted talent and regrets. For decades he has hated to venture out: 'I didn't want to be seen as someone who was once Stanley Baxter,' he says. Today aged 94, he lives as he has for 25 years - a virtual recluse at his flat in Highgate Village, North London. Baxter himself often spoke of wanting to die. His wife Moira, from whom he was separated, was tormented by mental illness and had attempted suicide by cutting her wrists in the bath. He lived in dread of being exposed in the press as a gay man. What none but his closest friends realised was that Baxter was desperately unhappy, his personal life a battlefield. In a television era rich with comic talent, from Morecambe and Wise to Tommy Cooper, Dick Emery to Mike Yarwood, everyone agreed Stanley Baxter was king. Millions were scandalised - and breathless with laughter. With silk gloves up to his armpits and a tiara, he announced himself as the Duchess of Brendagh and delivered a Christmas message that talked of the Queen Mum as a priceless antique.
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His act was so daring that he was probably the first TV comedian to impersonate the Queen. He could sing, dance, deliver broad panto comedy and perform pinsharp impressions of any star, male or female. His sketch shows were months in the making and the talk of the nation - spectacular, controversial, unlike anything ever seen.īaxter staged full-scale MGM musicals and played every role. The most outrageously funny man on British television 50 years ago was Stanley Baxter. Stanley Baxter (pictured) was married for 46 years, but he reveals in his new autobiography beneath his cheerful exterior lies a man tortured by the fact he is gay