NORMAN WISDOM: Sunday Night at the London Palladium, 1961

Edited from the Wikipedia entry on "Sunday Night at the London Palladium"...


Sunday Night at the London Palladium was a British television variety show made by ATV for the ITV network, originally running from 1955 to 1967, with a brief revival in 1973 and 1974. The London Palladium is an actual theatre in London's West End.

Perhaps the most famous episode of all took place during a strike by the British acting union Equity, who refused to allow any of its performers to appear that week. Exempt from this, host Bruce Forsyth and comedian Norman Wisdom appeared in the entire show, improvising wildly on the live broadcast December 3, 1961.

The format was revived in the 1980s as Live From Her Majesty's, Live from the Piccadilly and Live From the Palladium with comedian Jimmy Tarbuck once again doing the hosting duties. Live from Her Majesty's is however mainly remembered as being the show on which comedian Tommy Cooper suffered a fatal heart attack, collapsing midway through his act on the popular program.


From John Cooper...

There is certainly a notable routine with Norman Wisdom and Bruce Forsyth doing this on "Sunday Night at The London Palladium" when there was some sort of strike so that the pair had to perform the entire show with just the two of them LIVE.

The paper-hanging sequence they did on that occasion was adapted from the routine used (if not devised) by Naughton and Gold (i.e. Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold) of The Crazy Gang.