Scottish comedian whose spectacular sketch shows on television made him a household name
The Scottish comedian and impressionist Stanley Baxter, who has died aged 99, was one of the great superstars of British television in the 1970s, with a series of big-budget shows that almost matched the scale of Hollywood epics, and in which he brilliantly impersonated international celebrities of the day, often female ones.
His mastery of the nuances of dialect and the speech patterns of humbler folk was also uncanny: in one famous sketch based on BBC TV’s Nationwide, the presenter introduced newsflashes from regional studios: Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast and London. Each reporter spoke unintelligible gibberish, yet each was impeccably accurate phonetically.
For the BBC (1963-1972, then 1985-86) and LWT (1975-1982) Baxter created extravagant and expensive productions that, along with those of Morecambe and Wise, became staples of Christmas and New Year television, attracting huge viewing figures. In spite of this, the shows were discontinued by both broadcasters because of the vast budgets involved. His nemesis in both cases was the TV executive John Birt who, having moved between BBC and ITV, told him: “It’s not that we don’t like your work. It just all costs so much.” Baxter, always reluctant to compromise, went into semi-retirement in 1991. Even at the height of his fame he had been a curiously remote figure, seemingly awkward as “himself” in interviews, and retreating from public view once a series was over.
