Norman Wisdom - biography

“In fact, one was so booked out we went from March and were to go till November, but the pantomime was booked so they transferred the show to the Prince of Wales Theatre because it was so packed out, and it ran on from there.”

“At my age, the radiation will probably do me good.”

“I was born in London, and went to school in Scotland - I used to be dead tired when I got home at night.”

“I’ve got one idea I want to do for a film and you know I just enjoy myself doing bits and pieces.”

“I’ve always had a sense of humour, and I still do, so I just want to go on performing as long as I can.  It’s as simple as that.”

“I’m still constantly thinking of ideas.  I don’t feel 90.  I think I’m about 12.”

“I’ve an idea for doing a Situation Comedy myself but its always difficult to get people to listen to you because they like to put their own ideas forward.”

“Such is life and life is such and after all it isn’t much.  First a cradle.  Then a hearse.  It might have been better, but it could have been worse.”

“As you get older three things happen.  The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.”

“I was in the band as a boy and was taught music and learned to compose.”

“I don’t know nothing about communism.  But I know the Albanians loved me.  Same reason as anyone else loves me.  Because I made them laugh.”

“I owe everything to the army.”

“I’ve been extremely lucky having been in the army when I was a boy of fourteen.”

“But no, I’ve just been very lucky.  But I’ve worked hard, and the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get.”

“All my boyhood, all I ever wanted was to be loved.”

“I do play drums when I’m on tour.”

“I like consistency.  If you’ve had a childhood like mine, you want some things you can rely on to stay the same.”

“I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano.”

“I used to first go on to entertain an audience.  But now I go, and this is really true - I go on to have fun with a crowd of my chums.”

“I was born in very sorry circumstances.”

“I’ve done seven shows at the Palladium - long running shows I’m talking about.”

“Of course I’ve done musicals here in London.”

“Well if I was going to describe my audience, it’s going to take longer than you’d ever expect, hundreds of years in fact, because there’s many of them, all over the world.”

“You know I’ve got a chum, a smashing mate, he’s got a dog with no legs, and he calls it a cigarette.  It’s true, yeah, because at nighttime he has to take it out for a drag.”

Norman Wisdom has appeared in the following films:
A Date with a Dream (1948)
Trouble in Store (1953)
One Good Turn (1955)
Man of the Moment (1955)
Up in the World (1956)
Just My Luck (1957)
The Square Peg (1959)
Follow a Star (1959)
There Was a Crooked Man (1960)
The Bulldog Breed (1960)
The Girl on the Boat (1961)
On the Beat (1962)
A Stitch in Time (1963)
The Early Bird (1965)
The Sandwich Man (1966)
Press for Time (1966)
The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968)
What’s Good for the Goose (1969)
Double X: The Name of the Game (1992)
Five Children and It (2004)
Expresso (2007)


Norman Wisdom contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Follow a Star (1959)
The Square Peg (1959)
The Bulldog Breed (1960)
On the Beat (1962)
A Stitch in Time (1963)
The Early Bird (1965)
Press for Time (1966)
What’s Good for the Goose (1969)