Derek Nimmo

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Image:All-Gas-and-Gaiters.jpg Image:Oh-Brother.jpg Image:Oh-Father.jpg

Derek Robert Nimmo (September 19, 1930 – February 24, 1999) was an English character actor. He was a legend of British comedy, who was particularly associated with upper-class "silly-ass" roles, and clerical roles.

He was born in Liverpool and began his stage career at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bolton, Lancashire. It was during this time that he made a cameo appearance in The Beatles' movie, A Hard Day's Night (in which Derek Nimmo appeared as "Leslie Jackson", a magician with doves).

He appeared in a number of British films and television series, as aristocrats, including starring roles in the television comedy series The World of Wooster (as "Bingo Little"), and in the comedy movie One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (as "Lord Southmere"), as well as appearing in the James Bond spoof film Casino Royale.

Derek Nimmo made his name as the Reverend Mervyn Noote in the British sitcom, All Gas and Gaiters (1966). At the time it was considered rather controversial because the main characters were senior churchmen (the Bishop, his chaplain Noote and the Archdeacon) who got into various scrapes as a result of their general incompetence. By the time the series finished, Nimmo was identified with the stereotype of a traditional British clergyman and he went on to play a bungling monk in another BBC clerical sitcom, Oh, Brother! and its sequel Oh Father!. Another clerical sitcom he appeared in a starring role as clergymen was Hell's Bells. He also appeared as the Reverend Jonathan Green in a television production of Cluedo. He became so well-known for his clerical parody that in one episode of the comedy television series The Goodies, "Wacky Wales", a "team of Derek Nimmos" played in a spoof "Ecclesistical Rugby Sevens" competition.

He appeared on stage in many West End plays and starred in the musical Charlie Girl, which contained a scene specially written to allow him to perform his party trick of wiggling his toes. He also became a regular panellist on the popular BBC radio show Just a Minute.

In February 1999, a few weeks after a fall at home had left him in a coma, Derek Nimmo died from pneumonia at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. He is buried in the churchyard at Easton Maudit, a small rural village in Northamptonshire where he owned a home (click on the title Image:NimmoGrave.JPG to see a photo of Derek Nimmo's grave).

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