A History Of Liverpool Thespians - Tony Booth

 

Anthony George Booth was born on the 9th of October 1931 at 15 Ferndale Road, Crosby, Liverpool into a working class family. His mother Vera (née Thompson) was a Roman Catholic of Irish descent, and his father George was a merchant seaman during World War II and a Catholic convert. They owned their terraced house and Tony attended St Edmund's RC Infants School but when aged about ten, he came down with scarlet fever and, as happened in those days, was sent to an isolation hospital, where his mother could only look at him through a window. He later passed his Eleven-plus exam and attended St Mary's College, Crosby where he was awarded a bursary to cover the cost of his books. His hopes of going to university were dashed when he had to leave school and get a job after his father was badly injured in an industrial accident. At fifteen he began working as a cabin boy on the Cunard transatlantic route but was fired for missing the boat. He then worked as a clerk in a docklands warehouse and at the United States Consulate in Liverpool, before being called up for National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals. Here he fell into acting largely by accident as he conducted a prolonged flirtation with a colonel's wife. As she was heavily into amateur dramatics, he decided that this was the way in and entertained his fellow conscripts in amateur productions. 

Gale Howard found herself playing romantic leads on a repertory tour of Wales opposite Tony and it was on this tour that their daughter was conceived. Tony and Gale were married in Marylebone Registry Office in London, a decent six months before Cherie was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1954. Sadly, the strain of living in shabby digs, short of money and work, and with a small baby in tow, proved too much and when their baby was six weeks old, they left her in the care of Tony's parents in Liverpool to go off to the big city to seek their fortune, returning to visit Crosby as work allowed. It was in late 1956 that Tony found the beginnings of fame, if not of fortune, with the play 'No Time for Sergeant's. The play ran for eighteen months in the West End, and by the time their second daughter Lyndsey was born, they were settled in a large Victorian house in Stoke Newington, north London. With work sporadic they returned to Crosby but Tony was spending less and less time at home as he worked in various theaters around the north where he played opposite Pat Phoenix, then an unknown actress called Patricia Dean. He left Gale in 1961 for Julia Allan, with whom he had two daughters Jenia and Bronwen and spent five years in repertory theatre, before he appeared in films and television during the 1960s.

With Una Stubbs, Warren Mitchell and Dandy Nichols

His big break came in 1965 when he was cast as Mike Rawlins, the 'Scouse git' son-in-law of Alf Garnett in the BBC's 'Till Death Us Do Part', originally a one-off 'Comedy Playhouse'. It was after a Labour rally at Wembley that he had met Johnny Speight, who told him of his plans for 'Till Death Us Do Part' and asked him to play the cockney son-in-law of Alf. It was Tony who suggested he change the character to a Liverpudlian, which he did. The sitcom ran for a decade, and made him a household name. His left-wing character would often clash with his right-wing father-in-law over the elder's racist and anti-socialist views. However he opted not to follow his fellow co-stars for the sitcom's sequel, 'In Sickness & In Health'. He did though go on to appear in many popular TV shows, including the soaps 'Coronation Street', 'EastEnders' and 'Emmerdale'. His other high-profile regular role was on the big screen, when he played Sidney Noggett, the more worldly partner of Robin Askwith's gauche Timmy Lea in the inexplicably popular series of bawdy sex comedies in the 1970s that began with 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner'. He also played roles in over twenty films, including 'The L-Shaped Room' (1962), 'Corruption' (1968), 'The Girl with a Pistol' (1968), 'Brannigan' (1975), 'Priest' (1994) and 'Owd Bob' (1997).

Tony nearly burned to death in November 1979 when, during a drunken attempt to get into his locked flat, he fell into a drum of paraffin. He spent six months in hospital and needed 26 skin graft operations. Shortly after his discharge from hospital, he went to visit an 'old flame', the 'Coronation Street' actress Pat Phoenix. She took him in and nursed him back to full health, and they lived together for six years. Phoenix's own health subsequently declined, and the pair married a few days before her death from lung cancer in 1986. From 1985 to 1986, he appeared as pub landlord Ted Pilkington in the short-lived ITV soap 'Albion Market' and starred in the short film 'The Duke' (1998). In 2001 he appeared in several episodes of 'Family Affairs' and as a tramp in both 'EastEnders' and 'Emmerdale'.
With his third wife, Nancy Jaeger, he had a daughter, Joanna and also had five other daughters with partners he did not marry. Besides the two daughters with with Julia Allen, he had a daughter, Lucy Thomas in 1967 after a brief relationship with Ann Gannon, who worked in radio sales, and which did not become known publicly until 2002. His relationship with Pamela Smith, which began in the 1960s, lasted 13 years; the couple had Booth's other two daughters, Emma and Lauren Booth, a broadcaster and journalist. He divorced Nancy Jaeger in 1996 and married Stephanie Buckley in 1998.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2004, he suffered a stroke in 2010. Tony Booth died on the 25th of September 2017 at home, aged 85, survived by Stephanie and his eight daughters.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/08/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians.html