Michael Crawford has been an actor for just over 50 years but had to wait a long time for his “overnight success”. It came in the 1970s knockabout TV comedy series Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em in which he played the gormless hero, Frank Spencer. He went on to play the Phantom in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London in 1986 and was in the audience in New York this month to see it become the longest running musical in Broadway history. He had apparently never seen the show all the way through before. He opened in another Lloyd Webber musical The Woman in White in 2004 but had to leave the show after three months because of ill-health. He is about to begin a concert tour of Australia and New Zealand next month. His autobiography Parcel Arrived Safely, Tied with String drew its intriguing title from the coded telegram used by his mother to announce his birth to her family. Michael Crawford is 64 today.
RGT
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Julian Barnes, writer, 60; Nina Bawden, novelist, 81; Sir Jonathan Clarke, president of the Law Society, 1980-81, 76; Bernard Dunstan, painter, 86; Richard Dunwoody, national hunt jockey, 1982-99, 42; Stefan Edberg, tennis player, 40; W. K. Goldsmith, company director, 68; William Hayden, chairman and chief executive of Jaguar, 1990-92, 77; Dame Patricia Hodgson, chief executive of the ITC, 2000-04, 59; Amanda Holden, musician and writer, 58; Sir Alex Jarratt, chairman of Smiths Industries, 1985-91, 82; Richard Lester, film director, 74; E. C. S. Macpherson, chief executive of the 3i Group, 1992-97, 64; Professor Christopher Marshall, cancer researcher, 57; David Newbigging, chairman of Friends Provident, 72; Dolly Parton, country music singer and actress, 60; Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1982-91, 86; Sir Simon Rattle, conductor, 51; Malcolm Reilly, rugby league coach, 58; the Duke of St Albans, chartered accountant, 67; Sir John Stanley, Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling, 64; Keith Topley, Senior Master of the Supreme Court (Queen’s Bench Division), 1990-96, 70; the Earl of Wemyss and March, president of the National Trust for Scotland, 1967-91, 94