Keith Harris: Children's entertainer whose act with his dummies Orville and Cuddles was one of the last triumphs of the variety age

When he landed his own show he honoured the promise he had made to performers he had met on the circuit - "If I get my own show, I'll have you on it" - which led to TV breaks for Brian Conley and Bobby Davro

Harris with Orville: he always looked delighted, if slightly surprised, at being a celebrity

His smiling gaze forever darting from the stuffed duck in his arms to the audience, Keith Harris, the children's entertainer who has died of cancer, always looked delighted, if slightly surprised, at being a celebrity. He was a peddler of saccharine innocence, his routine usually involving a song, a story and the lightest of jokes. His fame came in the final days of variety, an age before Xboxes and X-Factor.

In the early 1980s he shared a television schedule with rambunctious American imports like Airwolf and Dukes of Hazzard, yet he still found a home with his mawkish act, reaching the peak of his fame with The Keith Harris Show (1983-86) and practically becoming part of the furniture through guest appearances on the likes of Crackerjack and Blankety Blank.

His partner in nursery rhyme, Orville, the least-menacing ventriloquist's doll in entertainment history, was a huge, gormless, falsetto-voiced green duckling sporting a nappy fastened by a giant safety pin. Harris's other sidekick, Cuddles, a hectoring orange monkey with a blue face and a saucer-eyed stare, was less cuddly but proved equally popular.

As well as well over 100 television appearances, Harris wrote and directed 17 pantomimes and holds the record for the longest run of Aladdin, in which he spent 22 weeks at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham in 1981. He performed at five Royal Command performances, and at the third birthday parties of Princes William and Harry.

Keith Shenton Harris was born in Lyndhurst, Hampshire in 1947. His father had left the army armed with a good singing voice, and landed a part in the musical No, No Nanette, where he met his future wife, who was a dancer and wardrobe mistress. Harris's schooldays were unhappy; his school was tough ("the headmaster ended up in prison"), his dyslexia misunderstood. His fascination for the stage comforted him though, and from the age of six he appeared on stage, sitting on his father's knee playing a dummy called Isaiah.

It was a topsy-turvy way to learn the craft of ventriloquism, but it worked. His father retired when Harris was 14, by which time he was ready to try out a solo act, with a dummy called Charlie Chat. Over the next few years he went through a whole circus of sidekicks while touring Northern clubs, some a clear product of their times, such as a gay rabbit and an Indian snake wearing a fez. He then decided to create a softer character, and Orville was born.

Harris designed the doll himself, but was disappointed by the final result when it arrived in his dressing room while he was performing in a Christmas show in Bristol. He was startled by the effect it had on the women in the company, though, and so premiered it the following evening on BBC1's music-hall celebration The Good Old Days. Immediately the telephone started ringing, and Harris and Orville were soon household names .

When he landed his own show he honoured the promise he had made to other performers he had met on the club circuit: "if I get my own show, I'll have you on it", which led to television breaks for, among others, Brian Conley and Bobby Davro. In 1983 "Orville's Song" reached No 4 in the charts and sold 400,000 copies.

When the tide turned against variety he became a regular at Butlin's. He hit upon the idea of making his second slot each night an adult-orientated one, which neatly coincided with the children who had watched him in his heyday reaching student age, so he then toured student unions with "Duck Off", starring potty-mouthed incarnations of Orville and Cuddles.

Despite a struggle with alcoholism and depression, a number of failed marriages and near-bankruptcy, when Harris was the subject of the Louis Theroux documentary When Louis Met Keith Harris and Orville in Panto in 2002, he came across as optimistic and rather sensitive; inevitably a little bitter at how television had turned its back on him, but blessed with a sweetly protective wife and parents.

The programme, in fact, led to something of an ironic rebirth, and further appearances followed, ranging from the deliberately anachronistic, such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks, to his winning the reality show The Farm and adding local colour to an episode of Ashes to Ashes, as well as starring in Peter Kay's nostalgia-strewn video for Tony Christie's "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo" in 2005. He drew the line, however, at appearing in Extras. "Ricky Gervais wanted me to be a racist bigot ... I read the script and thought, this isn't clever writing, it's pure filth. I turned it down. I'm not desperate". The part went to Keith Chegwin.

He blamed his dyslexia for not having read his contracts properly and as a result "having made £7m in my career and lost it". He always hoped for a sincere return to television, and mooted an unlikely idea which said everything about how the world had changed: "a show where Cuddles, Orville and I teach children manners".

Keith Shenton Harris, entertainer: born Lyndhurst, Hampshire 21 September 1947; married four times (three children); died Blackpool 28 April 2015.