A Tribute to
Diana Darvey

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A spell as a Redcoat followed before Darvey toured Sweden and Spain with a London ballet troupe. She enjoyed Sweden, but fell in love with Spain and proved a hit with audiences. When the tour ended, she settled there and topped the bill in revista under the great Spanish impresario Colsada.

The following decade, she starred in Spanish musical theatre before being spotted by Hill in the early seventies while he was holidaying in Madrid.

She spent four happy and successful years on his show, and in addition to having her own special spots, which she arranged, choreographed and designed the clothes for, she was equally happy in songs and sketches with Hill.

Apparently, she once ran a pub in Bodicote, Oxfordshire (apparently within the last years of her life). At the time of her 1974-75 TBHS appearances, she was represented by Hill's agent, Richard Stone; by the time of her final appearance in 1977, she was represented by an agency called Al Heath International. For a time in the early '80's, she and her then-husband, Terry Gittings, were based in Miami Beach, Florida, where, buoyed by the success of TBHS in America, they had a joint cabaret act. I hereby quote an article from The British Tourist (a South Florida publication), first published in its July 1982 issue (page 14):

BENNY HILL TO CABARET

Glamorous Londoner Diana Darvey is well known to millions not only in Britain but here in the U.S.A. too. She is appearing every day on American television in one of the most popular TV series here ever - the Benny Hill show.

Now Diana has made Miami Beach her new home and with husband Terry Gittings, also from England, she is planning to augment her TV success with live cabaret entertainment this summer for visitors and residents in South Florida.

Diana spent the winter entertaining aboard a Caribbean cruise liner operating out of Miami. Terry is a former drummer with Georgie Fame who has performed around the world.

From now on they intend to do cabaret together on terra firma. Diana is a singer-comedienne and her live show with Terry is an hour-long cabaret with everything from sketches to song and dance.

"We've appeared all over Europe, Japan, the Far East and Australia, so we know our routine appeals to international audiences," says Terry.

Diana Darvey Obituary

Recently, I was emailed an obituary on the late Diana Darvey from Bob Jackson. This was posted in one of the Yahoo Groups by the webmaster of SueUpton.net, Erik Larsen. The article was originally published in "The Independant".

Head Line Obituary: Diana Darvey
Sub-Heading
Publication Independent Date 27/05/2000
Byline Denis Gifford Source QUARK
Page nos. 7 Edition FOREIGN
Section Obituaries Supplement Review
Picture Storyno Picture Caption Darvey: `sexy knockout'
Copyright Flagno Copyright Info
Legal Warning Legal Warning Info

THE SEVENTIES were the great years for Thames Television, the greatest of all the ITV production companies, and their greatest star was Benny Hill. His 60-minute specials were the best-written, best-produced and funniest programmes of the week, the month, even the year. And, what's more, they highlighted the prettiest girls.

But prettier than all of his Hill's Angels moulded into one was Diana Darvey, for besides beauty she had enormous talent. Dennis Kirkland, who rose from floor manager on the television show Looks Familiar to be Hill's producer and co-writer, remembers Darvey as the lady who would burst Benny's balloons at a single glance. "She was beautiful, an absolute sexy knock-out on the TV screen," he recalls, "but - off- screen - she was totally the unsexiest girl you've ever seen in your life."

This contradiction in off- and on-screen personality I can vouch for. Darvey was an unexpected added attraction to one of my panel game shows, Quick on the Draw. This series was unique in that it starred cartoonists who drew the answers to comedy questions posed and drawn by the chairman, Bob Monkhouse. Newspaper cartoonists like Bill Tidy, veteran comic artists like Ern Shaw, and strip artists like Frank Bellamy were among those who drew funny cartoon answers alongside such show- business stars as Spike Milligan and Jimmy Jewel, showing off hitherto-unsuspected artistic talents.

Monkhouse, a former comic artist, was the perfect host, and it was he, along with the producer, David Clark, who added Diana Darvey to my format which, I must admit, was otherwise a somewhat sexless affair. Her weekly hostessing of Quick on the Draw brought her regularly in front of a new public, alongside her starrier appearances in The Benny Hill Show, which began in early 1974.

It was in fact Benny Hill who discovered her and brought her back home to Britain. He was taking one of his frequent holidays abroad, when he saw her singing in a revue in Madrid. Immediately attracted by her beauty of face, figure and voice, he was amazed to discover that she was an English girl born and bred.

Diana Darvey was the daughter of a beautiful mother, Pamela Cooper, one of the much admired Windmill Girls. Born Diana Roloff in 1945 in Cheadle, Cheshire, she grew up and was educated in Bristol. Her father died when she was only two years old, and when she entered show business she took on the surname Darvey, from her mother's second husband. This was later changed to Darvey.

Her first stage appearance came in 1962, as a dancing girl in a pantomime staged in Bath. The following year she became a Butlin's Redcoat, and then she joined a London ballet troupe. This took her out of the country, first to Sweden, then to Spain. When an opportunity to settle and work there came she leapt at it. A famous Spanish impresario, Colsada, saw her and made her the star of his revue. Openings in the Spanish musical theatre followed where, in time, she was spotted by the holidaymaking Hill. Delighted to return to her homeland, she dazzled the producers at Thames, who sought to use her to the full.

Apart from her regular appearances on Quick on the Draw, she was popped into the sitcom series . . . And Mother Makes Five, starring Wendy Craig and Richard Coleman, and turned up in the cast of Carry On Behind (1975), outshining in her beauty the likes of Elke Sommer, Liz Fraser and Adrienne Posta.

But it was in the Hill shows that she truly shone, both as a participant in his sketches and, especially, as a singing star. The climax to her long run of solo spots was a five-minute sequence of her own devising in which she sang a skilful continuity of five different songs in three languages, Spanish, French and English. She appeared in five different costumes, all of which she designed herself. Nothing sexier had ever been seen on a British television screen. "She designed her dresses with splits from thigh to elbow," sighed Kirkland. "You don't see girls like that these days."

Diana Magdalene Roloff (Diana Darvey), actress: born Cheadle, Cheshire 21 April 1945; married first Terry Gittings (marriage dissolved), second 1995 Ralph Barker; died Redhill, Surrey 11 April 2000.
Denis Gifford died c18 May 2000

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