Frank Muir
Encyclopedia
Frank Herbert Muir was an English
comedy
writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. His writing and performing partnership with Denis Norden
endured for most of their careers. Together they wrote BBC radio's Take It From Here
for over 10 years, and then appeared on BBC radio quizzes My Word!
and My Music for another 35. Muir became Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC in the 1960s, and was then London Weekend Television
's founding Head of Entertainment. His many writing credits include editorship of The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose.
, Kent
, he spent part of his childhood in Leyton
, London E10. In later years, whenever his dignified speech patterns caused listeners to assume that he had received a public-school
education, Muir would demur: "I was educated in E10, not Eton
." He attended Leyton County High School for Boys
, though prior to this he was a pupil at Chatham House Grammar School
, in Ramsgate
, Kent
, whose notable alumni include former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath
.
Muir stood 6 in 4 in (1.93 m) tall.
during World War II
and became a photographic technician, being posted to Iceland
. While there he became involved with the forces radio station. Also while stationed in Iceland — as he describes in his memoirs A Kentish Lad — Muir suffered a spontaneous medical condition requiring the surgical removal of one testicle.
. When Edwards teamed up with Dick Bentley
on BBC Radio
, Muir formed a partnership with Denis Norden
, Bentley's writer, which was to last for most of his career. The vehicle created for Bentley and Edwards, Take It From Here
, was written by Muir and Norden from 1948 until 1959; a last series in 1960 used other writers. For TIFH, as it became known, they created "The Glums", a deliberately awful family, which was the show's most popular segment. For TIFH, Muir and Norden wrote the phase, "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me", later used by Kenneth Williams
in Carry on Cleo
. In his autobiography A Kentish Lad Muir expressed disappointment that he and Norden were never credited for it.
In 1949, Muir married Polly McIrvine. They had two children, Jamie (born 1952), a TV producer, and Sally (born 1954), who co-founded the Muir and Osborne knitwear design company, and is married to the journalist and author Geoffrey Wheatcroft
.
Muir and Norden continued to write for Edwards when he began to work for BBC television with the school comedy series Whack-O
, and in the anthology series Faces of Jim
. With Norden, in 1962, he was responsible for the television adaptation of Henry Cecil's
comic novel Brothers in Law
, which starred a young Richard Briers
.
The pair were invited to appear on a new humorous literary radio quiz, My Word!
. In the final round Muir and Norden each told a story to "explain" the origin of a well-known phrase. An early example took the quotation "Dead! And never called me mother!" from a stage adaptation of East Lynne
by Mrs Henry Wood, which became the exclamation of a youth coming out of a public telephone box
which he had discovered to be out of order. In early broadcasts of My Word! the phrases were provided by the quizmaster, but in later series Muir and Norden chose their own in advance of each programme and their stories became longer and more convoluted. This became a popular segment of the quiz, and Muir and Norden later compiled several volumes of books containing some of the My Word! stories.
Frank Muir was also, like Norden, a contestant on the My Word! spinoff, My Music. As a television personality, Muir's unofficial trademark was a crisply knotted pink bow tie.
where he lived for many years. He was a writer and presenter on many shows, including the 1960s satire
programmes That Was The Week That Was
and The Frost Report
. He was well known to television
audiences as a team captain on the long-running BBC2
series Call My Bluff and did voice-overs for advertisements, including Cadbury's Fruit & Nut chocolate ("Everyone's a Fruit and Nut case"), Batchelors
' Savoury Rice ("Every grain will drive them insane!"), a coffee advert in which he used the phrase "impending doom", and Unigate
milk Humphreys
.
In the 1960s Muir was Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC and in 1969 joined London Weekend Television
as Head of Entertainment.
His pets, which prompted many an anecdote on My Word!, included Afghan hounds
and Burmese cat
s. The hounds were also the inspiration for a series of picture books about an accident-prone Afghan puppy called "What-a-Mess
".
In 1976 Muir wrote The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, which is a collection of anecdotes and quotations collected under various subjects including "Music", "Education", "Literature", "Theatre", "Art" and "Food and Drink". (In the United States, this book is titled "An Irreverent Social History of Almost Everything.") For example, "Show me the man who has enjoyed his schooldays and I will show you a bully and a bore" Robert Morley
. "Education, n, That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Ambrose Bierce
, The Devil's Dictionary
. The quotes are interspersed with linking comments by Muir.
A similar format to The Frank Muir Book was used in his BBC radio series Frank Muir Goes Into..., in which Alfred Marks
read the quotations, linked verbally by Muir. Muir published books based on these series. Muir's magnum opus, The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose, which again uses a similar format with more scholarly aspirations, was published in 1990.
In 1992, for Channel 4
, he was host of TV Heaven
, a season of evenings dedicated to television programmes from individual years.
In 1997, Muir published a well-received autobiography, A Kentish Lad. BBC Radio declined to serialize it as a reading.
Muir died in Surrey
, on 2 January 1998 aged 77. His wife, Polly died in Surrey on 27 October 2004, aged 79.
In November 1998, ten months after his death, he and Denis Norden were joint recipients of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Writer of the Year Award.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. His writing and performing partnership with Denis Norden
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden CBE is a former English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during World War II. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It from Here with Frank Muir...
endured for most of their careers. Together they wrote BBC radio's Take It From Here
Take It From Here
Take It From Here was a British radio comedy programme broadcast by the BBC between 1948 and 1960. It was written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, and starred Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and Joy Nichols...
for over 10 years, and then appeared on BBC radio quizzes My Word!
My Word!
My Word! was a long-running radio panel game broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service and Radio 4 . It was created by Edward J. Mason and Tony Shryane, and featured comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, famous in Britain for the series Take It From Here...
and My Music for another 35. Muir became Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC in the 1960s, and was then London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
's founding Head of Entertainment. His many writing credits include editorship of The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose.
Birth and early life
Born and brought up in his grandmother's pub, The Derby Arms in RamsgateRamsgate
Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century and is a member of the ancient confederation of Cinque Ports. It has a population of around 40,000. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline and its main...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, he spent part of his childhood in Leyton
Leyton
Leyton is an area of north-east London and part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, located north east of Charing Cross. It borders Walthamstow and Leytonstone; Stratford in Newham; and Homerton and Lower Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney....
, London E10. In later years, whenever his dignified speech patterns caused listeners to assume that he had received a public-school
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
education, Muir would demur: "I was educated in E10, not Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
." He attended Leyton County High School for Boys
Leyton Sixth Form College
Leyton Sixth Form College is a mixed, 16-18 Sixth Form college on Essex Road in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.-Admissions:The school holds 1950 students. The college is situated close to the Greenwich Meridian, about 300 metres south of the A104, and west of the Whipps Cross University...
, though prior to this he was a pupil at Chatham House Grammar School
Chatham House Grammar School
Chatham House Grammar School, often abbreviated to "Chatham House" is a grammar school in Ramsgate, Kent, England, founded in 1797 as a private boy's boarding school by William Humble, under the name Humbles Boys' School...
, in Ramsgate
Ramsgate
Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century and is a member of the ancient confederation of Cinque Ports. It has a population of around 40,000. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline and its main...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, whose notable alumni include former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
.
Muir stood 6 in 4 in (1.93 m) tall.
Early career
Frank Muir joined the Royal Air ForceRoyal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and became a photographic technician, being posted to Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
. While there he became involved with the forces radio station. Also while stationed in Iceland — as he describes in his memoirs A Kentish Lad — Muir suffered a spontaneous medical condition requiring the surgical removal of one testicle.
Writing for radio
Upon his return to civilian life, he began to write scripts for Jimmy EdwardsJimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards DFC was an English comedic script writer and comedy actor on both radio and television, best known as Pa Glum in Take It From Here and as the headmaster 'Professor' James Edwards in Whack-O!-Biography:...
. When Edwards teamed up with Dick Bentley
Dick Bentley
Charles Walter "Dick" Bentley , born in Melbourne, Australia, was a comedian and actor. He starred with Jimmy Edwards in Take It From Here for BBC Radio....
on BBC Radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
, Muir formed a partnership with Denis Norden
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden CBE is a former English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during World War II. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It from Here with Frank Muir...
, Bentley's writer, which was to last for most of his career. The vehicle created for Bentley and Edwards, Take It From Here
Take It From Here
Take It From Here was a British radio comedy programme broadcast by the BBC between 1948 and 1960. It was written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, and starred Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and Joy Nichols...
, was written by Muir and Norden from 1948 until 1959; a last series in 1960 used other writers. For TIFH, as it became known, they created "The Glums", a deliberately awful family, which was the show's most popular segment. For TIFH, Muir and Norden wrote the phase, "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me", later used by Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Charles Williams was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows, and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.-Life and career:Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February...
in Carry on Cleo
Carry On Cleo
Carry On Cleo is the tenth film in the Carry On film series and was released in 1964. The website ICONS.a portrait of England cites the Carry On films as iconic of British cinema, and describes Carry On Cleo as "perhaps the best". Regulars Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles...
. In his autobiography A Kentish Lad Muir expressed disappointment that he and Norden were never credited for it.
In 1949, Muir married Polly McIrvine. They had two children, Jamie (born 1952), a TV producer, and Sally (born 1954), who co-founded the Muir and Osborne knitwear design company, and is married to the journalist and author Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Geoffrey Albert Wheatcroft is a British journalist and writer.- Education :He was educated at University College School, London, and at New College Oxford, where he read Modern History.- Publishing and journalism :...
.
Muir and Norden continued to write for Edwards when he began to work for BBC television with the school comedy series Whack-O
Whack-O
Whack-O! was a British sitcom TV series starring Jimmy Edwards. Broadcast 1956 to 1960 and 1971 to 1972.The series ran on the BBC from 1956 to 1960 and from 1971 to 1972...
, and in the anthology series Faces of Jim
Faces of Jim
Faces of Jim was a black-and-white British comedy television series starring Jimmy Edwards, June Whitfield and Ronnie Barker, with each episode being an individual half-hour sitcom. The first series aired as The Seven Faces of Jim, the second as Six More Faces of Jim and the third series as More...
. With Norden, in 1962, he was responsible for the television adaptation of Henry Cecil's
Henry Cecil Leon
Henry Cecil Leon , who wrote under the pen-names Henry Cecil and Clifford Maxwell, was a judge and a writer of fiction about the British legal system. He was born near London in 1902 and was called to the Bar in 1923. Later in 1949 he was appointed a County Court Judge, a position he held until 1967...
comic novel Brothers in Law
Brothers in Law (TV series)
Brothers in Law is a British television series inspired by the 1955 comedy novel Brothers in Law by Henry Cecil Leon. It first aired on the BBC in thirteen half-hour episodes between 17 April and 10 July 1962 and followed the trials of an idealistic young lawyer entering the legal profession...
, which starred a young Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
.
The pair were invited to appear on a new humorous literary radio quiz, My Word!
My Word!
My Word! was a long-running radio panel game broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service and Radio 4 . It was created by Edward J. Mason and Tony Shryane, and featured comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, famous in Britain for the series Take It From Here...
. In the final round Muir and Norden each told a story to "explain" the origin of a well-known phrase. An early example took the quotation "Dead! And never called me mother!" from a stage adaptation of East Lynne
East Lynne
East Lynne is an English sensation novel of 1861 by Ellen Wood. East Lynne was a Victorian bestseller. It is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot, centering on infidelity and double identities...
by Mrs Henry Wood, which became the exclamation of a youth coming out of a public telephone box
Telephone booth
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box or telephone box is a small structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience. In the USA, Canada and Australia, "telephone booth" is used, while in the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth it is a "telephone...
which he had discovered to be out of order. In early broadcasts of My Word! the phrases were provided by the quizmaster, but in later series Muir and Norden chose their own in advance of each programme and their stories became longer and more convoluted. This became a popular segment of the quiz, and Muir and Norden later compiled several volumes of books containing some of the My Word! stories.
Frank Muir was also, like Norden, a contestant on the My Word! spinoff, My Music. As a television personality, Muir's unofficial trademark was a crisply knotted pink bow tie.
Later career
In 1954 Muir founded an amateur dramatic society, "Thorpe Players", in the village of Thorpe, SurreyThorpe, Surrey
Thorpe is a village in Surrey, England, located between Egham and Chertsey. It lies just inside the circle of the western part of the M25, near the M3. Neighbouring villages include Virginia Water, Wentworth, Laleham and Lyne...
where he lived for many years. He was a writer and presenter on many shows, including the 1960s satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
programmes That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
and The Frost Report
The Frost Report
The Frost Report was a satirical television show hosted by David Frost. It ran for 29 episodes from 1966 to 1967. It is most notable for introducing John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett to television and also launching the careers of several comedians and performers.The main cast were...
. He was well known to television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
audiences as a team captain on the long-running BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
series Call My Bluff and did voice-overs for advertisements, including Cadbury's Fruit & Nut chocolate ("Everyone's a Fruit and Nut case"), Batchelors
Batchelors
For unrelated subjects with similar spelling see Bachelor.Batchelors is a brand of predominantly dried food products. It was formerly a Company founded in 1895 in Sheffield, England. The company now makes instant soup, in particular Cup A Soup and noodle products such as Super Noodles. The company...
' Savoury Rice ("Every grain will drive them insane!"), a coffee advert in which he used the phrase "impending doom", and Unigate
Unigate
Uniq plc is a British food manufacturer. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.-History:...
milk Humphreys
Humphreys (Unigate)
The British milk company Unigate produced a series of TV advertisements in the 1970s featuring characters called the Humphreys. The Humphreys were milk thieves whose only visible presence was a red and white striped straw with which to suck up the milk...
.
In the 1960s Muir was Assistant Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC and in 1969 joined London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
as Head of Entertainment.
His pets, which prompted many an anecdote on My Word!, included Afghan hounds
Afghan Hound
The Afghan Hound is one of the oldest sighthound dog breeds. Distinguished by its thick, fine, silky coat and its tail with a ring curl at the end, the breed acquired its unique features in the cold mountains of Afghanistan, where it was originally used to hunt hares and gazelles by coursing them....
and Burmese cat
Burmese (cat)
The Burmese is a breed of domesticated cats split into two subgroups: the American Burmese and the British Burmese . Most modern Burmese are descendants of one female cat called Wong Mau, which was brought from Burma to America in 1930...
s. The hounds were also the inspiration for a series of picture books about an accident-prone Afghan puppy called "What-a-Mess
What-a-Mess
What-a-Mess is a series of children's books written by British comedy writer Frank Muir and illustrated by Joseph Wright. It was later made into an animated series in the UK in 1990 and again in 1995 by DiC Entertainment and aired on ABC in the United States...
".
In 1976 Muir wrote The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, which is a collection of anecdotes and quotations collected under various subjects including "Music", "Education", "Literature", "Theatre", "Art" and "Food and Drink". (In the United States, this book is titled "An Irreverent Social History of Almost Everything.") For example, "Show me the man who has enjoyed his schooldays and I will show you a bully and a bore" Robert Morley
Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...
. "Education, n, That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
, The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical "reference" book written by Ambrose Bierce. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak, as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as The...
. The quotes are interspersed with linking comments by Muir.
A similar format to The Frank Muir Book was used in his BBC radio series Frank Muir Goes Into..., in which Alfred Marks
Alfred Marks
Alfred Edward Marks OBE was a comic actor and comedian.-Biography:Marks was born as Ruchel Kutchinsky in Holborn, London. He left Bell Lane School at 14 and started in entertainment at the Windmill Theatre. He then served in the RAF as a Flight Sergeant in the Middle East where he arranged...
read the quotations, linked verbally by Muir. Muir published books based on these series. Muir's magnum opus, The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose, which again uses a similar format with more scholarly aspirations, was published in 1990.
In 1992, for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, he was host of TV Heaven
TV Heaven
TV Heaven is a series of 13 theme nights shown on Channel 4 in early 1992, celebrating the best of archive British television. Each programme focused on a particular year....
, a season of evenings dedicated to television programmes from individual years.
In 1997, Muir published a well-received autobiography, A Kentish Lad. BBC Radio declined to serialize it as a reading.
Muir died in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, on 2 January 1998 aged 77. His wife, Polly died in Surrey on 27 October 2004, aged 79.
In November 1998, ten months after his death, he and Denis Norden were joint recipients of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Writer of the Year Award.