Name : John Inman
Show name: (Mr Humphries) WILBERFORCE CLAYBOURNE HUMPHRIES
Making music

A Record breaking box office figures are the norm for John who started his acting career at the age of 13.
His smash-hit BBC TV series ''Are You Being Served?'' is seen in tea countries. His award winning character is action to ''Mr. Humphries'' is based on his observations when he was a window dresser for a leading West End Store. A subject of ''This Is Your Life''. John - won the coveted Silver Heart Award of the Variety Club of Great Britain as BBC TV's Light Entertainment Personality of the Year. He was also voted Top Comedy Personality by TV Times readers.

WILBERFORCE CLAYBOURNE HUMPHRIES,
who's always keen to stress he has friends of all shapes, sizes and sexes, is senior assistant on Men swear With over ten years' service, he could easily have been pursuing a showbiz career: his dancing background includes being a Sunshine Babe at the age of eight, and an

instructor at Weston-super-Mare's Twinkle Toes Dance Salon.

With his mincing walk, effeminate demeanour and predilection for making lace mats, Mr Humphries, who's al50 a palmist, is a colourful character in the department. Single and still living with his elderly mother, who works part-time at a local sex cinema. He was originally refused a job at Grace Brothers until his mother came to the rescue, imploring Young Mr Grace to reconsider.

With a heart of gold, the altruistic Mr Humphries, who warms his slippers in the oven and attends choir practice on Thursdays, is a popular member of staf£ A visit to his local Woolworth's made John Inman realize just how popular Are You
Being Served~ had become. 'The first series had just been shown and I was at how you decorating my bathroom. I hadn't shaved for days, was wearing paint-splattered jeans and needed some taps. So I popped down to Woolies to buy some and was attacked by five ladies with prams! They were all shouting: "That's him from the shop!" It was scary; so after that I never went out without shaving and putting on my best suit.'

The offer to play Mr Humphries was perfectly timed because it meant John Inman didn't have to sign on at the labour exchange! 'I was in pinto at Coventry; playing an Ugly Sister in Cinderella, when a script arrived from David Croft. A little note stated he was doing this one-off Comedy Piz house,
and wanted me to play Mr Humphries, the second assistant in the men swear department. It was wonderftil because the pinto finished on Saturday, and rehearsals for the pilot started on the Monday. It was
· an actors dream because I didn't have to sign on.'

Although John, 62, felt Mr Humphries had little to do in the first episode, it didn't matter 'The attraction was that it meant a week's wages. There was no artistic attraction to the offer; I'd worked in a shop before and felt qualified to play the character I knew how to fold a shirt, enjoye4 looking smart, so everything seemed right.'
One event that sticks in John's memory is turning up for the rehearsal, and meeting the rest of the cast for the first time. 'I was the only person I'd never heard of!' laughs John. 'Everyone else was known on JY but I didn't find it daunting because

everybody was friendly and we got on like a house on fire - and still do.'
He's particularly close to Wendy Richard, who lives round the corner from him in London. She's a lovely person. I think her first words to me were: Ere, are you coming to the pub?" Which was music to my ears!'
John, who frequently received letters from women proposing marriage, still gets more letters from women than men. As the series progressed, Mr Humphries' popularity increased as far as the audience was concerned; but not everyone felt the same warmth towards the mummy's boy. John Inman was the target for various gay rights movements, unhappy about how he played the character.

On one occasion, he was doing a one-knighted near London when pickets arrived at the theatre. ~There was a handful of people telling everyone to boycott
my show, so I chatted with them and asked them to see the show, which they did. I never saw them again. It happened again outside a club in New Zealand, but we talked and smoothed things over.'
As John explains, Mr Humphries never claimed he was ~ay. ~I used to say to people, the day you see him do it over the counter you can complain, but his sexuality was never mentioned. He was an Auntie really, a little bit precious, lived with his mother and made a very nice Yorkshire Pudding.'

When it came to bringing the character alive, John, who's a bachelor, admits he didn't base Mr Humphries on anyone he'd encountered in his life, but confesses the mincing walk was taken from a colleague he'd met while working at Austin Reed before his acting career took off. 'The character as a whole wasn't influenced by any one person, but I remember a man from the cuff-link counter at Austin Reed who wore steel tips on his shoes. The shop had a marble floor in those days and you could hear him coming a mile off, so I copied his
walk. But he wasn't really based on anybody because Mr Humphries developed with the series.'
Born in Preston, John moved to Blackpool when he was twelve. His mother ran a boarding house in the town, while his father owned a hairdressing business. John always wanted to work on the stage and his parents paid for him to attend elocution lessons in the local church hall.

His acting debut took place on Blackpool's South Pier, aged thirteen: I played a lad called
Tony in a stage version of Freda~ earning five pounds in the process.'
Upon leaving school he worked in a gents outfitters in Blackpool, before joining Austin Reed and moving to Manchester. After a spell in London he left to become a scenic artist at a theatre in Crewe I did it so I could earn my Equity card, and then moved on to become a stage manager.

Whenever John was out of work, he supplemented his income by working for various shops, and it was one Christmas - while he was demonstrating a plastic toy in a store's toy department -that he received a message to call David Croft. A friend of mine came to the store and told me I had to phone David because he wanted me to appear
one of his shows. I was so excited at the prospect I didn't bother returning to the shop after lunch.'
David gave John his screen debut in a no spelling role as a worker in a sherbet factory Although he appeared in other television productions - including Grace and Favour,; Blanket Blank Celebrity Squares as eries of Odd Man Out playing Neville Surdiffe, a fish and chip shop owner, and ITv's Take A Letter; Mr Jones in 1981, playing Graham Jones, a secretary - most of his career has been spent on the stage.

It's in pinto that John, whose favourite hobby is work, feels most at h9me, and every Christmas he is in demand. ~I'm happy on the stage, ~t's my first lo
But the time spent in Are You Being Served? was the happiest period in his life. 'I desperately tried remembering it, because I kmew that such a happy successful time probably wouldn't happen again, John admits. ~Such moments can be forgotten quickly, especially when you're leading a busy life, so I purposely made myself slow down a bit to remember those wonderful times.'