News Town mourns loss of actor
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Tony Melody, the popular actor whose parents once ran a pub in Goole, has died aged 85.
Tony was a television favourite having appeared in dozens of programmes over the past half century, finding fame as a comedy actor.
He was born in London in 1922 where his father was in the Horse Guards but his family soon moved to Goole and his parents became the landlords of The Railway pub in Albert Street. Tony took up singing to his mother's piano accompaniment at the pub and his career blossomed from there.
After leaving school he completed National Service in the RAF but then followed his theatrical ambitions and became a stand-up comedian - starring on one of Ralph Reader's Gang Shows, which performed for British troops stationed in different countries.
After the war in 1946 he applied unsuccessfully for an audition with BBC radio but then later secured a season as a comedy singer at the Windmill Theatre in London.
After this he returned to Yorkshire, where he began semi-professional employment, combining his entertainment work in local clubs with a day job making packaging machinery at a factory in Leeds.
Tony's breakthrough came in The Clitheroe Kid, a BBC radio comedy where he played the part of Mr Higginbottom for 15 years.
During the 1950s he was regularly on radio and some of his earliest television appearances included Just Jimmy in 1964-68, a televised version of the Clitheroe Kid.
His long, hangdog face earned him comedy cameos in a variety of programmes, including Steptoe and Son as a milkman teaching a young Harold Steptoe how to dance. He also appeared in Emmerdale and Coronation Street several times, Last of the Summer Wine, Casualty and Where the Heart Is.
He was a devout Catholic and a shy man who very rarely gave interviews. He avoided the London showbusiness scene saying that he couldn't stand "the trains, the noise and the hassle" and that his home was up North.
Tony had lived in Bispham, Skegness for more than 40 years, the home town of his second wife, Margaret. He died on June 26.
Tony is survived by his second wife and three sons and a daughter from his first marriage.
Published on 31st July 2008 in News.
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