Peter Goodwright

A pioneer of impressionism in light entertainment from the late 1950s, Peter Goodwright later found wider fame as a stalwart of ITV’s Who Do You Do? in the 1970s.

By then, he was already an established mimic of note, having enjoyed radio success in the late 1950s in The Clitheroe Kid, with Morecambe and Wise in Laughter Incorporated, and memorably, impersonating Tony Hancock in the last ever episode of Hancock’s Half Hour in 1961.

His television breakthrough on the BBC’s What Makes a Star? quickly led to his own series, It’s Only Me, in 1960 when he also began a long association with Ken Dodd on radio, television and in summer seasons. It prompted the Haslington, Cheshire-born bank clerk to turn professional in what proved a shrewd choice.

By 1962, The Stage was declaring him “manifestly a star of tomorrow”, his popularity inked in by radio’s The Peter Goodwright Show the following year in which he played a happy-go-lucky bachelor flat sharing with Anton Rodgers.

Goodwright made his London Palladium debut in the Frankie Vaughan, Tommy Cooper and Cilla Black-starring 1964 revue, Startime.

Supporting the likes of homegrown stars Al Read, Harry Worth and Mike and Bernie Winters and the American celebrity Gene Pitney in summer seasons and on tours, Goodwright’s profile continued to grow over the next decade.

Maintaining a presence on television and radio, he was a regular, as Crumble the Butler, in the BBC children’s series Hope and Keen’s Crazy Bus in 1971, was seen in the Barry Cryer-hosted panel game Jokers Wild in 1972, and began a 12-year stint as a team captain of BBC Radio 2’s The Impressionists in 1974.

In the 1980s, Goodwright ventured into theatre, notably in Terence Dudley’s portrait of music hall stars Gert and Daisy on tour in 1985, in which he rose eloquently to the task of impersonating Arthur Askey, Max Miller, Winston Churchill and myriad other popular figures from the 1940s and before.

Goodwright proved himself an adept farceur alongside Les Dawson in Ray Cooney’s Run for Your Wife at the Blackpool Grand in 1987 and was pitch perfect in Philip Glassborow and Nick McIvor’s affectionate musical parody The Great Big Radio Show! at the Watermill Bagnor in 1993, and again at the Bridewell Theatre in 1997.

In 1989, he was seen in Harry Enfield’s television spoof Norbert Smith: A Life, in which he mimicked Will Hay in a sketch recalling the actor-comedian at his zany best.

On radio he continued to be a popular figure, supporting Jimmy Cricket in the early years of the 1990s, with a series of monologues by Marriott Edgar, previously popularised by Stanley Holloway, in 1991 and Peter Goodwright’s Radio Times in 1992. He was also heard alongside Paul Scofield and David Suchet in the 22-hour-long The Chronicles of Narnia, made for American audiences between 1999 and 2002 and broadcast in the UK under the banner of BBC Radio Theatre.

Donald Peter Goodwright was born on May 12, 1936, and died on November 2, aged 84. He is survived by his wife, Norma Boylin, and two children.