Derek Nimmo

Nimmo was born in Liverpool Lancashire1 and was educated at Booker Avenue Infants and Junior School as well as Quarry Bank High School and began his stage career at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bolton Lancashire12 It was during this time that he made a cameo appearance in the Beatles film A Hard Days Night in which he 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 Little2 and in the comedy film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing1 as Lord Southmere as well as appearing in the James Bond spoof film Casino Royale2 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 series Oh Father now a Roman Catholic priest3 Another sitcom in which he appeared in a starring role as a clergyman many years later was Hells Bells by now promoted to a dean2 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 the 1975 The Goodies episode Wacky Wales a team of Derek Nimmos played in a spoof Ecclesiastical Rugby Sevens competition