JOHN JUNKINThe familiar face of dozens of films, TV plays, comedies and game shows, John Junkin died on 7 March, 2006, aged 76, from lung cancer, emphysema and asthma.He was also a prolific scriptwriter for many of Britain’s top comedians including Les Dawson, Bruce Forsyth, Jon Culshaw and Joe Pasquale.Starting off his working life as a schoolteacher he gradually turned his attentions to script writing and became a member of Associated London Scripts.Yet he was probably best known for his role in the cult radio show Hello Cheeky! which moved to a prime-time slot on ITV.John Francis Junkin was born on 29 January, 1930, in Ealing, West London. He began his working life as a schoolteacher but gradually turned his attentions to script writing, writing for comedians like Jimmy Logan and Ted Ray.He got into acting with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. He played the leading role in the original production of Sparrers Can’t Sing within two weeks of first meeting Ms Littlewood. He appeared with Rex Harrison in August for the People at the Royal Court in London.During the 1960s he was writing for some of the biggest names in UK comedy: Ronnie Barker, Marty Feldman and Morecambe and Wise. At the same time he appeared in several television shows including Z Cars, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, Emergency Ward 10 and alongside Tony Hancock in The Blackpool Show. He also starred in the Beatlemania film A Hard Day’s Night.His dulcet tones were the first voice of the test transmissions for Radio Caroline in March 1964. He was also an occasional guest on the radio show Just a Minute.In 1976 he was given equal billing alongside Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer in Hello Cheeky !. This cult radio show was moved to prime-time showing on ITV. The predictable sketches and puns did not bring the cast the acclaim they had hoped for and the show was moved to a late-night slot.Having starred in four series of his own show, Junkin, on ITV and appeared in other comedy greats like The Goodies, work dried up for him in the late 1980s.During a time when his radio and television work had ceased, he got up at 4.30 in the morning to submit jokes to a DJ in Newcastle. He made light of the breakdown of his marriage by joking “We became incompatible. I no longer had an income and she was no longer pattable.”Later television credits include Inspector Morse, Mr Bean, Coronation Street (as a short-lived boyfriend of Elsie Tanner) and as a regular quiz panellist on Crosswits. One of his last acting television roles was as Ernie in EastEnders.In October 1998 Mr Junkin’s obvious dislike of the way television was going was outlined in a letter from him to The Times which read: “May I confess to not being quite as upset as many people at the loss of first-class cricket by BBC Television, principally because it will give viewers a chance to see the three new series I have devised.“These consist of 26 programmes on gardening, 26 on travel and 26 on cooking, with a Christmas special in which a well-known gardener is invited to take a celebrity chef to some glamorous location and cook him.”His life and work was honoured at the British Academy Television Awards in 2006.
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