A Very Funny Nice British Legend

British comedy legend Eric Sykes

"Daddy, did you see in the paper today that Eric Sykes died?" "Oh, no!  I was just thinking about him."  My family has a special place in our hearts for Eric Sykes, one of England's most loved comic actors, "the gentleman of comedy" as they call him there.  Maybe you saw him as Muggle Frank Bryce in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," or in that creepy, cool Nicole Kidman movie, "The Others."  His career spanned stage, screen, and radio.  In the late '60s, he starred in one of my dad's plays, "The Button."  During the run, my dad spent many weeks in England and they became close friends.  "I was just thinking about the time Eric helped me find an oversized coat for one of the actors.  The coat needed to be big, because the character who wears it hides a gun in the sleeve.   Eric took me to Burberry, the finest coat maker in London, and we told them exactly what we needed.  An oversized coat.  They made the coat, and it was perfectly proportioned, and not at all what I asked for.  I was so mad.  I said, 'What happened?' They said, 'We're Burberry.  We'd never sell a coat that didn't fit properly.'  So after all that, Eric took me around London and we finally found a store that sold used clothes and that's how we found the coat that was oversized."  

Fast forward to 1977-78, when I lived in England as an exchange student, and Eric Sykes starred in a long-running sitcom.  Back then I was the SJA:  Short Jewish Anglophile.  My dad said, "You have to call up Eric Sykes."  Such an obedient child, I did as I was told, even though I really didn't know a thing about Eric Sykes.  It's not as if I could Google him.  All I knew was my parents adored him and his wife Edith and he was famous.  "He's like the Johnny Carson of England," my dad said.  So I called him, and thank God I did, because I had the best time ever.  He took me to lunch in London and told me charming stories about other Brits he'd worked with, like Peter Sellers and Spike Millgan.  He invited me to stay at his house in Surrey, too.  When I told my British flatmates that I was taking the train up to London, to spend the weekend at Eric Syke's house, they thought I was "taking the piss out of them."  No one rang up Eric Sykes and just like that, got invited to his house!  No one went to see his show taped in front of a live audience, and got introduced! "We have someone very important in the audience today," Eric Sykes announced.  "She's the daughter of a fine American comedy writer named Ben Starr.  Carol Starr, please stand up."  No one but me, of course.