Norman Vaughan

Legendary host of 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium'

Norman Vaughan, comedian, actor and television presenter: born Liverpool 10 April 1923; twice married (one son); died London 17 May 2002.

When the comedian Norman Vaughan stepped into Bruce Forsyth's shoes as compère of the hugely popular ITV variety show Sunday Night at the London Palladium in 1962, it turned him into a star.

The programme, launched in ITV's opening week in September 1955, with Tommy Trinder as its host, was still the highlight of weekend viewing seven years later and Vaughan quickly established a rapport with the theatre's live audience and television viewers through his comic patter and the catchphrases "Swinging" and "Dodgy", accompanied by the appropriate thumbs-up or thumbs-down sign, to denote good or bad news.

The programme – broadcast live – was a television institution, regularly attracting 20 million viewers to its showcase for national and international talent, as well as regular items such as the high-kicking Tiller Girls, the American parlour game "Beat the Clock" for married couples, and a revolving-stage finale featuring the stars. Vaughan's three years as host remained the most successful of his career.

"I was paralysed with nerves," the comedian recalled of his first shows, "but overnight I was a personality. Taxi drivers would stick their thumbs up and say 'Swinging' or 'Dodgy'." Another spin-off from the show's popularity was Vaughan's Top Forty hit single "Swinging in the Rain" (1962).

Born in Liverpool in 1923, Vaughan left school at the age of 14 and made his stage début in a revue with a boys' troupe in Leigh, Lancashire, wearing red jackets and jodhpurs and singing "D'ye Ken John Peel". A year later, he formed a dance trio called the Dancing Aces and toured with it until he was called up to join the Army during the Second World War.

Serving as a sergeant in Italy and the Middle East, Vaughan performed in troop shows alongside Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan, who were later to form the Goons. In 1951, he was on the same bill as Secombe in British variety theatres and, when ITV started in 1955, the pair appeared regularly in Saturday Showtime and the commercial channel's first sketch-based comedy series, The Harry Secombe Show.

Having performed in Australia earlier that year, Vaughan returned to Britain where he continued in summer seasons. By the end of the decade he was compèring the touring Cliff Richard Show (1959-60).

A part in Terry Scott's BBC television sitcom Scott Free (1957) failed to bring Vaughan the wider popularity for which he hoped. The pair played two out-of-work actors, Terry and Norman, sent by a desperate theatrical agent to the fictional, sleepy seaside resort of Bogmouth to become entertainment officers for the summer season.

The break Vaughan had been looking for finally arrived when he was asked to host Sunday Night at the London Palladium (1962-65), which the impresario Val Parnell had brought to television after running the capital's famous variety theatre. Such was the programme's pulling power that a Woking vicar was reported to have brought his church's evensong service forward half- an-hour to allow his congregation to return home in time to watch it.

Vaughan's own catchphrases followed those of Tommy Trinder ("You lucky people") and Bruce Forsyth ("I'm in charge"), and helped to keep the show among the most watched on television, as well as establishing him as one of its legendary compères. But he was not exempt from the nightmares experienced by many presenters during those days of live television, one week dropping a rifle and nearly breaking his toe.

During 1963, Vaughan also hosted another variety show series Sunday Night at the Prince of Wales. On leaving the Palladium show in 1965, after more than 100 programmes featuring stars such as Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, he put a new catchprase into viewers' mouths with the slogan "Roses grow on you" when, that year, he made a commercial for Cadbury's Roses chocolates.

In 1967, Vaughan topped the bill with Bruce Forsyth and his own successor, Jimmy Tarbuck – the other compères turned into stars – when the final Sunday Night at the London Palladium was broadcast, with Bob Monkhouse as host. (A short-lived 1970s revival, presented by Jim Dale, then Ted Rogers, failed to recapture the old magic.)

However, Vaughan found that the show did not subsequently bring him the same level of television success experienced by Forsyth and Tarbuck. Although he landed the BBC sketch-based series The Norman Vaughan Show (1966), written by Eric Merriman and Barry Took, he switched to acting on stage.

In 1972, he was back on television when he took over from Monkhouse as host of the crossbow-shooting game show The Golden Shot, although he left after one series. Perhaps influenced by The Golden Shot, Vaughan later co-devised, with Andrew Wood, the darts quiz show Bullseye (1981-93), hosted by Jim Bowen. In each programme, three pairs of contestants had to combine their general-knowledge and darts-throwing skills in an attempt to win prizes, as well as money for charity.

Continuing his acting career, the comedian appeared on stage in In Order of Appearance at the Chichester Festival Theatre (1977), tours of Calamity Jane (with Barbara Windsor, 1979) and Strippers (1986), the farces A Bedful of Foreigners (1980) and No Sex, Please – We're British (1988), and many pantomimes. For many years, he was a regular guest on television variety and quiz shows.

Cinema audiences saw him in You Must Be Joking! (1965), the director Michael Winner's British Army comedy, and he provided the voice of a television commentator in Doctor in Clover (1966), played a stage comedian in the soft-porn film Come Play With Me (1977) and acted himself in both the sex comedy Twinky (1969) and in Hear My Song (1991), about a Liverpool pub owner's fictional attempt to find the real-life Irish tenor Josef Locke.

Anthony Hayward