Terry Scott - Life and Career

Life and Career

Scott was born and raised in Watford and educated at Watford Field Junior School and Watford Grammar School for Boys. He was the youngest of his parents' three children, and the only surviving son after his brother Aubrey died when Scott was six. He studied accounting and served in the Navy during World War II. With Bill Maynard he appeared at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Skegness and partnered him in the TV series Great Scott, It's Maynard!. During the early 1960s, he became well known to television audiences for his role alongside Hugh Lloyd in Hugh and I. Scott later appeared with Lloyd as gnomes in the 1969 sitcom The Gnomes of Dulwich.

Scott is best remembered for starring alongside June Whitfield in several series of the comedy Happy Ever After and its successor, Terry and June. They also starred together in the film version of Bless This House.

Scott had played a small role in the very first of the Carry On series of films, Carry On Sergeant in 1958. In 1968 he returned to the series with a role in Carry On Up the Khyber (1968), playing main roles in six of the films.

In the 1970s, he had a memorable role in TV commercials for a chocolate coated caramel bar called Curly Wurly, in which he appeared dressed as a schoolboy, complete with short trousers and cap.

Scott's novelty record "My Brother" (written by Mitch Murray, released 1962 on PYE) was based on this schoolboy character (he dressed in the uniform to sing it on TV) and received regular airplay on BBC Radio (in particular Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart's Saturday and Sunday morning programme Junior Choice which was simultaneous broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and 2) for many years. Despite this, it failed to enter the charts. In the 1980s, Scott was the voice of Penfold the hamster in the animated series Danger Mouse.

Scott suffered from ill health for many years. In 1979, he had a life-saving operation after a haemorrhage. He also suffered from creeping paralysis and had to wear a neck brace, even on television. When Terry and June was axed in 1987, Scott suffered a nervous breakdown. The attack was in part brought on by his public confession that he had had a series of affairs since his marriage to dancer Margaret Pollen in 1957. The couple had four daughters: Sarah, Nicola, Lindsay and Sally.

Scott was also diagnosed with cancer in 1987. He died from the cancer he had for seven years at the family home in Witley near Godalming in Surrey, on 26 July 1994, aged 67.

Characteristically he said of his last illness: "I know it would be better to give up the booze, fags and birds, but life would be so boring wouldn't it."