For those of you who don’t know, Orville was the neon-green
baby duckling puppet worked by Harris from 1978 until the ventriloquist’s
untimely death in April 2015. Born in Bristol (the duck, not Harris: the vent
act was inspired by some green material he found backstage at a Black and White
Minstrels gig in Bristol, which he passed on to his mother), Harris had already
received a level of fame on stage and on TV with his orang-utan puppet Cuddles.
By the time of Orville’s birth, Harris was already 30 and
had been working on stage since he was a teenager, winning a children’s talent
show in Rhyl in 1961 before appearing in a production of Babes in the Wood In
Chester in January 1962 and in pantomime, as the Timmy the Cat in Puss In
Boots, later that same year. In 1963 he made his stage debut as a ventriloquist,
appearing with his dummy Charlie Chat on stage in Kent during the finals of a
talent competition hosted by Weekend magazine. He came second: the cash
prize of £50 was presented to him by Bristol-born pianist Russ Conway.
Harris made his first TV appearance in 1965, on the
television series Let's Laugh, and became a popular act on television
variety shows. Following a spell as the host of The Black and White Minstrel
Show, he also appeared several times on BBC TV's long-running show The
Good Old Days. In the early 1980s, Keith, Cuddles and Orville had their own
show, Cuddles and Company, which became the Keith Harris Show.
By the time Harris hit his third decade, he boasted a
collection of well over 100 dolls, all designed by him and made by his mother,
Lila, a former wardrobe mistress. As well as Cuddles and Orville, Keith’s
characters included a Pakistani snake, a 10ft tall brontosaurus and a Chinese
mouse. ‘My parent's home in Chester is like a zoo,’ he told The Stage. ‘but
they remain as enthusiastic as me when it comes to creating new dolls. At times
it's almost an obsession, but I have always held the view that originality
counts for a lot in show business.’
The end of the television show coincided with a period of
depression: Harris drank heavily and was arrested for drunk driving. Then his
third marriage collapsed and the clubs he had invested in in Blackpool and
Portugal failed, leading him to declare bankruptcy twice. However, like a
number of ‘has beens’ of the period, the nostalgia boom was good to him: his
career recovered and he began performing in clubs, in pantomimes and at holiday
camps, in what The Stage called ‘a new era of knowing post-modern irony’.
Harris made guest appearances in a number of television
shows during the 2000s including Harry Hill, Never Mind the Buzzcocks,
Little Britain, Al Murray's Happy Hour, and The Weakest Link. In
2002, he was the subject of a Louis Theroux documentary When Louis Met...
Keith Harris. He and Orville won the Channel 5 reality TV show The Farm
in 2005, and that same year he featured in Peter Kay and Tony Christie’s (Is
This the Way to) Amarillo video. His cult status was confirmed with
appearances in Ashes to Ashes and Shameless and his adult show, Duck
Off, was a huge hit with students.
In 2013 Harris had his spleen removed and underwent a course
of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer. Although he subsequently went
back to work, the cancer returned in 2014 and he died on 28 April 2015, at the
age of 67 at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.
I’ve been playing a fair old but from At the End of the
Rainbow on The World’s Worst Records radio Show recently. In case
you missed it, here are a couple of cuts for you: the pair’s cover of the James
Taylor classic You’ve Got a Friend, and If Wishes Were Horses
Enjoy!
Download Friend HERE
Download Horses HERE
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