Frank Muir
Frank Herbert Muir
Birth and early life
Muir was the second son of steam tug engineer Charles James Muir (1888–1934), originally from New Zealand, and his wife Margaret, daughter of ship's carpenter Harry Harding. Harry Harding had died young at sea; his widow, Elizabeth Jane (née Cowie) subsequently married Frank Herbert Webber, a former lighthouse inspector and licensee of the Derby Arms Hotel and pub at Ramsgate, Kent. The pub was operated by his widow for 22 years after Webber's death.[1][2] Muir was born in the pub,[3] and spent part of his childhood in Leyton, London. Charles Muir left his seafaring occupation after marrying, and took up unskilled work such as extending Ramsgate's railway and loading stores onto naval vessels; he finally took a job with a firm at Leyton, supervising their machinery, and died of pneumonia when Frank Muir was a schoolboy. Margaret Muir ran a small sweet-shop across the road from the Derby Arms.[4]
His aunt was
Early career
Muir joined the
Muir, as a photographic technician, was posted to Iceland, which was then a Danish possession under British occupation, and while there, he did some work for the forces radio station. Also while stationed in Iceland – as he described in his memoirs A Kentish Lad – Muir suffered a medical condition which required the surgical removal of one testicle.
Writing for radio
Upon his return to civilian life, he began to write scripts for
Muir and Norden continued to write for Edwards when he began to work for BBC television with the school comedy series
The pair were invited to appear on a new humorous literary radio quiz, My Word!. In the final round Muir and Norden each told a story to "explain" the origin of a well-known phrase. An early example took the quotation "Dead! And never called me mother!" from a stage adaptation of East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood, which became the exclamation of a youth coming out of a public telephone box which he had discovered to be out of order. In early broadcasts of My Word! the phrases were provided by the quizmaster, but in later series Muir and Norden chose their own in advance of each programme and their stories became longer and more convoluted. This became a popular segment of the quiz, and Muir and Norden later compiled five volumes of books containing some of the My Word! stories.
Frank Muir was also, like Norden, a contestant on the My Word! spinoff,
Later career
In 1954 Muir founded an amateur dramatic society, Thorpe Players,
In 1976 Muir wrote The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, which is a collection of anecdotes and quotations collected under various subjects including "Music", "Education", "Literature", "Theatre", "Art" and "Food and Drink". (In the United States, this book is titled "An Irreverent Social History of Almost Everything.") A similar format to The Frank Muir Book was used in his BBC radio series Frank Muir Goes Into..., in which Alfred Marks read the quotations, linked verbally by Muir. He published books based on these series. His The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose, which again uses a similar format with more scholarly aspirations, was published in 1990.
Muir was appointed
Personal life and death
In 1949 Muir married Polly McIrvine (d. 2004). They had two children: Jamie (born 1952), a TV producer, and Sally (born 1954), a successful painter who also co-founded the Muir and Osborne knitwear design company, and is married to the journalist and author Geoffrey Wheatcroft.[15][16]
Muir died in Thorpe, Surrey, on 2 January 1998[17] aged 77. In November 1998, ten months after his death, he and Denis Norden were joint recipients of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Writer of the Year Award.[18] Muir's widow, Polly, died in Surrey on 27 October 2004, aged 79.
Bibliography
- Christmas Customs and Traditions (1975)
- The Frank Muir Book: An Irreverent Companion to Social History (1976); US title, ''An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything
- A Book at Bathtime (1982); US title, An Irreverent and Almost Complete Social History of the Bathroom
- The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose from William Caxton to P. G. Wodehouse: A Conducted Tour (1990), compiled and edited by Muir
- The Walpole Orange: A Romance (1993) – OCLC 30156859
- Christmas Customs & Traditions (1975)
- A Kentish Lad: The Autobiography of Frank Muir (1997)
- Series
- What-a-Mess series, illustrated by Joseph Wright – children's books; adapted as animated TV series 1979, 1996
- My Word! Stories series, by Muir and Denis Norden – story collections
References
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/69233. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Muir, Frank A Kentish Lad. Corgi Books, 1998, p. 15
- ^ "Shepherd Neame". Archived from the original on 3 June 2007.
- ^ Muir, Frank A Kentish Lad. Corgi Books, 1998, p. 17
- ^ Muir, Frank A Kentish Lad. Corgi Books, 1998, p. 16
- ^ "Stained Glass Windows". Christchurch Nurses Memorial Chapel. Archived from the original on 13 March 2016.
- ^ Muir, Frank A Kentish Lad. Corgi Books, 1998, p. 58
- ISBN 978-0552-7602-94.
- ISBN 0-552-14137-2.
- ^ "Thorpe Players". www.thorpeplayers.co.uk.
- ISBN 978-1-84854-195-5.
- ^ Classic British Adverts from the 1970s Part 4/10. Event occurs at 4:45. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021 – via Youtube.
- ^ UK: "No. 48212". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 1980. p. 9.
- ^ Spectator review of A Kentish Lad by Jonathan Cecil
- ^ "MUIR - Deaths Announcements - Telegraph Announcements". announcements.telegraph.co.uk.
- ^ Fox, Genevieve (12 February 2023). "'They save us': Sally Muir on the art of drawing rescue dogs". The Observer. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
- ^ Took, Barry; Vosburgh, Dick (3 January 1998). "Obituary: Frank Muir". The Independent. Retrieved 12 May 2009.
- ^ "The UK Comedy Guide". Chortle. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
External links
- Frank Muir at Library of Congress, with 26 library catalogue records