This article is more than 22 years oldObituaryJoe Baker
This article is more than 22 years oldStand-up who was so bad he often joined in the booingThe career of the comedian Joe Baker, who has died of heart failure aged 72, began with Gracie Fields at the Empire Theatre in Southampton in 1928, delivered British television success in the mid-1960s, and concluded in the Californian television and film industry.
His British celebrity began on ITV in shows like Josephine Douglas's Fire Crackers (1964) with Alfred Marks. In 1965 he had his own Joe Baker Show with Gerald Harper, and two years later starred in Baker's Half Dozen.
He also played a Jeeves-type butler in My Man Joe (1967) and a washing machine repairman for lucrative Bold detergent commercials, and produced a comedy album, Dial Joe Baker (1965).
He established his style in the 1950s, and attributed his success to guts and stamina as much as talent. He was, he joked, the kind of one-man show that often closed in the middle of the first night. "Sometimes," he observed, "I was so bad that I joined in the booing."
Times were often hard for him and his wife Ann Lloyd - Nurse Beattie in the early hospital soap, Emergency Ward 10 - but they gravitated to the stuff of mid-1960s London show business success; a flat near Marble Arch, two cars and holidays in the Canary Islands.
Baker's father was a music-hall comic. At 11 weeks, he was carried on stage at the Empire by Gracie Fields and at 14 made his debut at Collins' music hall in Islington, north London. He made funny noises, and did impersonations - of nearly famous people, such as Bing Crosby's hairdresser, Louis Armstrong's uncle - and died the death.
After two years' army national service in the early 1950s, and after considering becoming an agent, he formed a double act with Jack Douglas and had five years of modest success in the declining music halls. He also resorted to labouring, selling ice cream and cleaning. His first movie appearance was in a 1959 musical short, Girls of the Latin Quarter; a Jimmy Edwards farce, Nearly a Nasty Accident, followed in 1961. Then came television.
But in the 1970s, Baker emigrated to the US - he had starred in the ABC Comedy Hour in 1972 - and he was to feature in a string of television shows. His film work included Warren Beatty's Bugsy (1991), Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Dumb And Dumber (1994) and a voice-over on the Disney cartoon Pocahontas (1995).
His last movie was an independent, Art House (1998). He likened his Californian existence to being on holiday 52 weeks a year, but it made him little more than a vague memory in the land of his birth. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Joe Baker, comedian and actor, born December 14 1928; died May 17 2001
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