#Gorden Kaye

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[teratomat]

Happy Birthday, dear Colonel.

[achillean-archives]

"Ironically, Kaye would sometimes lament that he himself was ‘no oil painting’, which explained, he said, why he didn’t have a partner: ‘I wouldn’t want somebody to be with me just because they wanted to be with Gorden Kaye the actor. I do believe in love, but it’s only happened to me three times . . . which is two times too many.’

He was born Gordon Kaye (the spelling ‘Gorden’ came much later) in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in 1941, the only child of working-class parents who regarded him as their little miracle: his mother was 42 when he was born. His father, Harold, was an engineer, and an air raid warden.

A sensitive boy, he worried that his parents were so much older than other children’s. ‘I was sure that I would come home and find them dead,’ he admitted.

When he was three, he crept downstairs when his parents were having a Christmas party. He watched his mother, Gracie, talking and smoking a cigarette. When she put it down in an ashtray, young Gorden picked it up and took a drag.

Whether red-hot ash flew up from the tip, or he accidentally poked himself with the burning end, he was never sure. All he could remember was throwing himself on the floor, screaming and howling, and an agonising pain in his left eye. Next morning, the pupil was swollen, and he could barely see out of it. He later regained about 20 per cent of his vision in that eye, but for the rest of his life it stared off to the side.

At 16, he took a job as a salesman at a textiles firm, for £4 7s 6d a week. But he wanted to work in showbiz, and volunteered on Huddersfield’s hospital radio, playing rock ’n’ roll.  When The Beatles performed at the town’s cinema in 1963, Gorden interviewed them. His instinctive humour brought out the best in the Fab Four, who showered him with silly jokes.

At 22, Kaye was engaged to be married, but he had known since his teens that he was gay. That was why he had proposed to his girlfriend: ‘I thought that’s how you made the feelings go away.’

But they did not go away and, feeling increasingly lonely, he sought out a pen-friend through the small ads. A sailor called Peter in the New Zealand merchant navy got in touch, and they exchanged long, confessional messages, recorded on cassettes.

When Peter visited Britain, Gorden took him to meet his parents. Afterwards, his mother guessed there was ‘something going on’ and though Gorden denied it at first, he eventually told her the truth.

‘Don’t tell your dad,’ she warned. ‘It’ll kill him.’ He never said anything to his father and, for a long time, thought if his secret was exposed he would have to kill himself.

He threw himself into amateur dramatics. Playwright Alan Ayckbourn, then a BBC radio producer, urged him to turn professional. He applied for a job with a Bolton repertory company: the audition was so successful that the director fell off his chair laughing and had to be helped up. But the company wanted him for character work, and his first role was as an 80-year-old man. 

Bit parts on TV followed, and then he was cast as Elsie Tanner’s nephew, Bernard, in Coronation Street. By now his name was ‘Gorden’, thanks to a spelling error by the actors’ union, Equity. Before he could correct it, he was taken to hospital with kidney stones. 

The registrar misspelled his name, too, so the clipboard at the end of his bed also said ‘Gorden’. ‘I took that as an omen,’ he said. ‘Or possibly an emon.’ Those sorts of mangled vowels were the mainstay of his role as Rene.

At the outset in 1982, the show by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft was accused of mocking the heroes of the French Resistance. In fact, it was a send-up of BBC television wartime dramas such as Secret Army and Colditz. The show became hugely popular. 

But in 1989, warned that a Sunday tabloid was about to reveal his sexuality, Gorden decided to come out as gay: ‘I was born this way and I’ve never pretended to be anything other than what I am.’

He was terrified of the public response but, when the news broke, he was in panto at the London Palladium, and got a standing ovation.

Other reaction was less kind. One MP, Geoffrey Dickens, demanded the BBC sack him, for impersonating a ladies’ man on prime-time TV. 

‘That was a horrible time,’ Gorden remembered. 

‘It was a bit like the Nuremberg trials. I don’t care what my greengrocer does in bed and I don’t see why the public should have to know what I do. But of all the letters I got from the public, only two of them were nasty.’

Worse was to come. During a storm in January 1990, part of a wooden advertising hoarding was blown through his car windscreen and a piece of wood nearly 11in long was embedded in his skull. 

The injury left scars mental and physical from which he never fully recovered. He returned to record a final season of ’Allo ’Allo!, but rarely worked on TV again after that. The shock of the accident left him nervous and irritable, and clumsier than ever. ‘If I try to open a packet of biscuits,’ he admitted, ‘I spill them. And then I shout at them.’

He involved himself with charity work with the Grand Order of Water Rats, which supported entertainers and their families in hard times, and was proud to be elected Chief Rat in 1999. 

But he took little joy in life, and said he didn’t want to live into old age. Invitations were declined on the excuse that he was expecting to go to a funeral — his own.

But he never regretted a day of his time on ’Allo ’Allo! If his ability to make people laugh was a gift from God, as he believed, then Rene was his greatest stroke of luck — one other actors would kill to have, ‘and might probably put ground glass in my Diet Coke,’ he laughed.

‘I loved playing Rene. ’Allo ’Allo! enabled me to work with some of the finest comic performers in Britain. We did it for ten years . . . and even Hitler only managed six.’ " Source:

"Retired college lecturer Raymond, 86, said Gorden, who grew up in Moldgreen , had become isolated and very lonely - despite being loved by millions of fans.

“He had no brothers or sisters, just a few cousins. He never married and was a lone survivor till the end.

"It was just a case of surviving and he was very lonely. That is all very sad.”

Raymond praised his famous relative as “a brilliant actor, a comic genius, who brought a lot of joy to many people. He is still making people laugh today.”

Kaye was best known for his role as Rene Artois in the 1980s BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo! which made light of the Nazi occupation of France.

BAFTA nominated, he also appeared in Last of the Summer Wine, Are You Being Served?, Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Raymond added: “He always appreciated his fans saying ‘They’re my bread and butter’ and he always stopped to sign autographs in the street.”

Gorden, an only child, had described himself as a “shy, gay and overweight boy.”

[...]

Raymond, a father of two, said many of Gorden’s friends from London rarely visited him once he was in a care home.

He said: “Just one or two but not recently, they just seemed to forget about him.

“Me and my wife went up when we could but we’re too old to drive and it’s difficult by train and taxi.”

Raymond told how the teetotal star, who cheated death in a horrific car crash in 1990, “smoked a bit but never touched alcohol.”

He added: “I like to remember sitting and talking to him and what a brilliant actor he was.

“Allo ‘Allo was his best role. He was in 84 episodes which have been shown across the world.

[...]

Raymond fondly recalls being invited to screenings with Sheila: “We were in the audience a lot at one time. He did he make us laugh.

“He may have been forgotten by his acting friends but he’ll never be forgotten by us, his family, and his legions of fans." " Source:

[little-candy-store-of-horrors]

Gay cognac

[extraordinarymen2]

Gorden Kaye is so gorgeous and sexy 😍

[chieftyphoonchaos]

She does have your eyes.....

You said you'd be on the pill and I shouldn't use a condom.

🤣😂😝😛😅

[musicaltrashfromusa]

Hey is anyone a fan of allo allo? If so and you want a discord to chill with other fans, here is the link!!

[manitat]

1986: D. Džejson i G. Kej

[mariocki]

Villains: Sand Dancer (1.6, LWT, 1972)

"It all happened in the spur of the moment. We went to Brixton for the appeal, y'know... And I heard we were gonna be sprung. The others had plans, see. Well, it's worth it for them, they've still got their whack. Hey, thirty-thousand quid, you should've seen what that looked like! I used to sit in me room and just... open the case up, sit and stare at it. Stacks and stacks of bloody fivers. It looked that new though, I used to have to go and wash me hands afore I'd dare touch it. Funny, really. I never quite felt it belonged to me, y'know? Anyway, the law broke in, grabbed me, and grabbed the money. I thought at first, well, I'll serve me time, y'know, keep out of trouble and try and get all the remission I can. But there we were: in the middle of this bloody tunnel, free, and I thought to hell with it - I'll come and see you."

[starbug]

Family Fortunes: Christmas Special  December 27th, 1991  The Upstarts: Adam Woodyatt, Kellie Bright, Edward Fidoe, Dawn Acton, Rachael Lindsay  The Push-Starts: Gorden Kaye, Lynne Perrie, Buster Merryfield, June Whitfield, Paul Shane 

[makeitquietly]

’Allo ’Allo’s Herr Flick is in a particularly foul mood.

[teratomat]

You bear a most remarkably close resemblance to René. 

[achillean-archives]

The Dutch Star Con 4 Q & A Allo Allo: Gorden Kaye and Guy Siner (2008)/ The Return of 'Allo 'Allo (2007)

[magicalquote]

René Artois: Shut up, you old bat.

[extraordinarymen2]

Gorden Kaye, dream of my adolescence, shirtless in „Allo, allo“: anyone know, from which episode these are? Please help! 🙏

[miholjskoljeto]

Think of the life I would have to lead, blowing up bridges and trains, dodging bullets, sleeping in hedges, living in ditches. This is no life for a coward. Especially one with a good business.

R.I.P.  Gorden Kaye ( 7 April 1941- 23 January 2017)