Hugh Lloyd

Jul 16 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS the only celebrity supporter of Chester City Football Club, perhaps explaining his wonderfully long, but crumpled, face, which suggested the pessimism of a down-trodden suburbanite in permanent expectation of rain, while clinging to the threads of middle-class respectability.

His own background was not so different. On Saturdays, his “Uncle” Harry, actually their next-door neighbour, lifted his false-teeth from a jar, because it was not considered proper to arrive naked-mouthed in the street. Together, they walked to Chester’s ground with their rattles and scarves.

This glum mood can be seen in the performances of Hugh Lloyd, a fine if under-rated sit-com actor. He was, forever, our garden gnome with the sorrowful eyes.

“Hugh has a deep, fundamental grasp of the human condition with its priceless self-importance, its futile struggle in an incomprehensible world,” noted his fellow Welshman, Sir Anthony Hopkins.

As a child in a double-fronted house in Chester, Lloyd attended the King’s School.

But his schooling was interrupted by an eccentric doctor, who thought that his hayfever would be cured by the removal of all his teeth. It wasn’t.

The boy had hoped to be a comedian from an early age, but his father, Robert Lewis Lloyd, the manager of a local tobacco and snuff mill, was against it.

So Lloyd had a spell as a journalist on the Chester Chronicle early in the war, having failed to enter his first choice of the Secret Service or the RAF because of the persistent hayfever.

However, he did entertain the troops with Mensa later in the war, leading to his showbiz career.

Although he trod the seaside piers, Lloyd also appeared with Tony Hancock on his radio and TV shows, including the Blood Donor.

He also co-starred with Hancock in the Punch and Judy Man film (1963).

In 1962, Lloyd had started his four-year run opposite Terry Scott in Hugh and I, which led to them both being cast as garden ornaments in The Gnomes of Dulwich (1969).

That was followed by Lollypop Loves Mr Mole, with Peggy Mount.

Lloyd, three times married, was loved by writers, actors and audiences. He settled in Sussex and was appointed OBE in 2006, having written his autobiography, Thank God For A Funny Face.

Hugh Lloyd, actor; born April 22, 1923, died July 14, 2008.