He is, perhaps, a little neglected now, but in the 1960s Harry Worth, born on this day in 1917, was a major TV comic with a genial, bumbling persona, forever inspiring irritation in petty officialdom. Less Hancock, you could say, than a voluble Tati: at least, like that French master, Worth never seemed actively to cause trouble even though it happened around him anyway, in Worth's case when his convoluted explanations tied listeners into knots, trying to follow a logic comprehensible to no one but the mild and agreeable man himself. (Arthur Haynes was perhaps more closely linked to Hancock, and has been described as ITV's answer to Hancock, though Haynes's tramp character was several notches down from Hancock's TV persona socially.)
There is a DVD set available (above) which contains all the surviving episodes of his longrunning 1960s BBC sitcom Here's Harry, and they repay watching today, notable as they are for their restraint. At least one slapstick opportunity takes place offscreen, and despite severe provocation characters at the receiving end of Worth's reasoning rarely give way to cartoonlike rage; most of the fun, in fact, is in our anticipation of their struggle to retain their composure when increasingly entangled in Harry's brand of logic. You could say his is a kind of mirror image of Hancock's world, where Galton and Simpson have said that in order to remain sympathetic Hancock's character needed to be provoked by the pomposity or unreasonableness of those around him otherwise he risked looking like a buffoon (a point which, as they said with some bemusement, Hancock's later writers didn't always grasp). In Here's Harry, by contrast, everyone around him is reasonable - but such is the warmth and innocence of Worth's own character you somehow can't really blame him for the ensuing confusion.
And there is yet another example of the way that Here's Harry acts as a kind of mirror image of the Hancock programme. Closeups are of the supporting cast as much as the lead, so that we are able to savour each stage of the mounting exasperation which invariably attends any attempt to engage with Harry's thought processes. Supporting actors are of a high calibre: Jack Woolgar and Reginald Marsh, for example. In one scene where Harry is explaining something to a gardening expert it cuts away about five times to a close up of the latter's face. And although the playing is restrained you still get enough information to guess at the victim's slowly simmering annoyance in a way which would not be possible on radio without extra dialogue.
When he left the BBC for ITV, in addition to a sketch show he starred in a sitcom called My Name Is Harry Worth, along much the same lines as Here's Harry, though with a kindly landlady rather than an auntie to look after him. It's agreeable enough but not with the same verve and invention of the BBC work. The opening sequence, however, seems to me to be misjudged: Worth, on the high street, declares to all and sundry: "My name is Harry Worth!", whereupon every last pedestrian, adults and children alike, scoots off in a panic. I suppose it sets up the character for those not familiar with him but surely an awareness of Harry's unique talent for confusion ought to steal up on individuals as they come into contact with him? This mass exodus is immediately followed by the series' wistful theme tune, as though the makers can't quite make up their minds about the mood. Far better, surely, that famous opening to the BBC show: the shop window starfish trick suggests a childlike persona which the viewer can't help but warm to.
If you are looking for a biography of Harry Worth there is a tantalisingly short book by Roy Baines - less than eighty pages. If you can find a copy, however, there is an earlier book, named after the BBC series, which not only includes five scripts but quite a detailed account of the making of the series. I don't suppose, at this late stage, that there is likely to be a fuller biography, though maybe it doesn't matter too much. Enough BBC TV and radio episodes of his work survive to give a sense of his quality.
