Norman Collier

Norman Collier (born 25 December 1925 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England) is a long-serving comedian. He is best known for his 'faulty microphone' routine and for his chicken impressions.

Career and reputation

Collier was born in Hull into the working-class family of Thomas and Mary (née Dowling) Collier on Christmas Day 1925 weighing 15 lb 4 oz.^[1] He grew up in the centre of Hull as the eldest of eight children.

He served as a gunner in World War II, and after demob found work as a labourer. In 1948, while visiting Hull's Perth Street West club, an act failed to turn up, and Collier volunteered to fill in. He felt natural on stage and started to work a few local clubs. While working at BP's chemical factory in Salt End, east of Hull, Collier started making his workmates laugh with improvised comic routines during breaks (and all too often outside them). Encouraged by his managers, he started to work the wider northern working club scene, becoming a full-time comic in 1962 and enjoying steady success through the 1960s.

He first came to national media attention after a successful appearance at the Royal Variety Command Performance in 1971. Though occasionally appearing on television thereafter, he made his main reputation on the northern club circuit, and was highly regarded by many fellow comics (notably Frank Carson, Les Dawson, and Little and Large, who were regular house guests). Jimmy Tarbuck dubbed him 'the comedian's comedian'^[1]

To casual television viewers, he is best known for two routines: one in the guise of a northern club compere whose microphone is working intermittently; another adopting the noises, gestures and movements of a chicken, using his outturned jacket to suggest the fowl's wings. ^[2] He was the originator of the 'club chairman' character later popularised by Colin Crompton in the ITV series Wheeltappers and Shunters Club.^[1] The 'soundbite' demands of television work have never reflected the detailed and large-scale routines that have characterised Collier's club work and which brought him enormous success through the 1970s and 1980s. (He was never a participant, for example, in the 1970s ITV series The Comedians.)

In 1970 he won an ITV series called Ace of Clubs, in which club entertainers were pitted against each other, performing their full routines in front of a panel of judges. Collier easily won the final by a unanimous decision of the panel.

Style

Collier's style is very much in the traditional northern-comic school, based on absurdist situational monologues rather than a 'series of jokes', and shows a notable influence of the 1950s star Al Read. Unlike some comedians of the 1970s, Collier did not rely on any racist material; however, his zany set-pieces have often drawn on northern working-class archetypes.

Norman Collier is married with three children, several grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. He lives in Welton, a village west of Hull. His autobiography, Just a job, was published in 2009.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Hull Daily Mail profile 13 Apr 2009: 'When being funny's just a job'
2. ^ Syd Little, Chris Gidney, Little by Little, page 43 (Canterbury Press, 2004). ISBN 1-85311-595-9
3. ^ http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Norman-Collier-s-autobiography-just-job/story-11963105-detail/story.html

External links

• Norman Collier at the Internet Movie Database

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Name	Collier, Norman
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Date of birth	25 December 1925
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