Early Life
Worth was the youngest of eleven children of a miner. When he was only five months old his father died from injuries resulting from an industrial accident. He left school at 14 and was himself a miner for eight years before joining the RAF. As a teenager he was in the Tankersley Amateur Dramatic Society and taught himself ventriloquism, buying his first dummy in 1936. During World War Two, he performed in an RAF Variety show and had extra material written for him by the show's director, Wallie Okin. He toured for two years with Laurel and Hardy towards the end of their careers. Oliver Hardy persuaded him to drop the ventriloquist routine and concentrate on becoming a comedian which he then did. He did, however, continue to include the vent act in his cabaret act through his career, using much of the material that he'd used during the war. This included an appearance on the Royal Variety Show.
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