Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies

Glaswegian comic actor and impressionist Stanley Baxter has died at the age of 99.

Baxter was bold enough to mimic the Pope and even the Queen and sent up his native city with comic routines based on Glaswegian patois.

The Scot received several awards during his career, including a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards and two TV tribute programmes.

His friend and biographer Brian Beacom said the TV star died on Thursday in a north London care home for entertainment figures.

He had lived in the home, Denville Hall, since late 2023 and was a few months away from celebrating his 100th birthday.

Baxter's TV shows, in which he often appeared grotesquely in drag, attracted huge audiences and marked him out as one of the funniest, as well as sometimes one of the most controversial, comics of his generation.

Baxter was also popular on the Scottish pantomime circuit, until his retirement in 1991.

Although he did emerge occasionally and briefly from retirement, he largely disappeared from show business and from the public eye.

Baxter was married for 46 years. His wife, Moira died in 1997.

In 2020, he released a co-written biography, The Real Stanley Baxter, which revealed he was gay and had told his wife before they married.

Baxter was born on 24 May, 1926 and started his career as a child actor in the Scottish edition of BBC's Children's Hour.

During his National Service, he developed his skills in the Combined Services Entertainment Unit.

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He then returned to Glasgow, and later to London, where he launched a glittering career in television.

He made his debut in the BBC's Shop Window in 1952, followed by several guest appearances in variety shows.

But it was on the satirical BBC show On The Bright Side (1959) that he was handed his major TV break.

The Stanley Baxter Show (1963-1971) cemented his reputation and propelled him to television stardom.

Baxter also starred in various TV spectaculars, including Stanley Baxter's Christmas Box.

Among his most successful routines was Parliamo Glasgow, which was conceived as being written by a fictitious scholar visiting the city.

The sketch took the Glasgow patois and developed it to comic effect, such as "sanoffy cold day" for "It's an awfully cold day".

After his retirement, he appeared in 2004 in a series of three half-hour sitcoms for BBC Radio 4, entitled Stanley Baxter and Friends.

He also lent his voice to the animated children's film Arabian Knight and the television series Meeow.

Baxter appeared in a number of films, including Very Important Person (1961), in which he played a fiercely nationalistic Scot.

Other film appearances included Geordie (1955), The Fast Lady (1962) and And Father Came Too! (1963).

Baxter also gained an Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television Award from Bafta Scotland in a digital ceremony in 2020.

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