Veteran actor Melvyn Hayes on comedy: Times have changed completely

Sprightly nonagenarian actor Melvyn Hayes, best known for his role as female impersonator Gunner ‘Gloria’ Beaumont in the Seventies sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, is still getting job offers more than 75 years after starting his career in entertainment.

“I still think I’m a kid, I’m young,” the 91-year-old actor declares, revealing that he goes to the gym twice a week and is up doing exercises in his lounge during the TV ad breaks.

It has taken him 37 years to complete his autobiography, It Ain’t Half Late Mum, in which he charts his humble beginnings as the third of four sons of Isaac and Queenie Hyams, a working-class Jewish couple of Polish and Dutch ancestry. His father first worked on the fairgrounds and later owned a men’s outfitting shop in South London.

The young Melvyn left school at 15 but his failed attempt to become a jockey was followed by an unexpected theatrical career.

The cheerful entertainer, who began his stage and screen journey as a magician’s assistant and has never had an acting lesson, starred with a young heartthrob Cliff Richard in the classic movie Summer Holiday as well as countless plays, films and pantos, and taught the likes of Lesley Manville, Tracey Ullman and Leslie Ash at the famous Italia Conti drama school during rare resting periods.

What did his parents make of his career?

“My father used to say to people, ‘My son’s an actor. He’s been starving for years.’”

He worked with young Richard on three films – The Young Ones, Summer Holiday and Wonderful Life – and says today that as the singing heartthrob’s success grew during the making of those movies, he remained the same.

“He’s one of the nicest people, so talented,” he enthuses.

But the sitcom that made Hayes a household name was It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, about a Royal Artillery concert party entertaining the troops stationed in India at the end of the Second World War, starring Windsor Davies and Don Estelle. It was full of innuendo, camp humour and stereotypical military characters.

Written by legendary British TV writing duo David Croft and Jimmy Perry, who also created Dad’s Army, Croft had originally earmarked John Inman from the Seventies comedy hit Are You Being Served? to play Gloria, but for some reason it didn’t happen.

“All he said, instead of saying how brilliant I was, or how marvellous, or how good or how rubbish I was, he said, ‘Melvyn Hayes was free’.”

It ran from 1974-81 for eight series and attracted up to 17 million viewers in its heyday, but later faced racist, homophobic and colonialist allegations and was deemed out of step with what was acceptable for modern audiences. The BBC pulled repeats from its schedule.

A major criticism was the casting of white actor Michael Bates as an Indian character, in brownface make-up.

Today, Hayes reflects: “Times have changed completely and utterly.”

Hayes remembers the era of Al Jolson – who was known for his pervasive use of blackface in his comedy.

“Now you wouldn’t do that today, and I understand. Why should you do entertainment that would offend people, that upsets people? That box [the TV] or the film or the theatre is to make people happy.”

But he admits: “I did films like Love Thy Neighbour [a show criticised for its use of racial slurs]. I should never have done that.”

He’s keen to move on from any unwise choices he might have made, so we steer towards how he feels about today’s comedy offerings.

“The comics of today, it’s a whole different world. They say they open their hearts to you, but they are not Bob Monkhouse. They are not Tommy Cooper. They are not Frankie Howerd. All those were classic guys, you know.

“But it’s a different style. How should I put it? Who was the northern comedian that had the nightclub?” Bernard Manning?

“He used to say, ‘I don’t care, long as it gets a laugh’. He was very popular, and he was a funny man, but you can’t do that sort of stuff today, it would never work today.”

Hayes counts Lee Mack among the great contemporary comedians – he has also appeared in Would I Lie To You? and Not Going Out with him – and admires the enthusiasm of double act Ant and Dec on TV who “give 110% in their performances”.

Scottish comedian, actor and writer Sir Billy Connolly remains one of his heroes. He recounts a story of meeting Connolly in 1980, when he happened to be staying in the same hotel as him in Norwich. To his astonishment, The Big Yin approached him and told him he was Hayes’s biggest fan and that he’d followed his career from the beginning.

“I was lost for words. I think mumbled, ‘Likewise,’” he recalls.

Hayes married three times (twice divorced) and had three children with his first wife, two with his second and a daughter with his third wife Jayne, and two adopted sons. All eight children are pictured in the book.

He and Jayne also fostered more than 50 children over the years.

He has 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and now lives in London with his youngest daughter and her husband.

Jayne died suddenly in 2022 which, after 30 years of marriage, clearly came as a blow. “That was the end of my life really,” he says solemnly, welling up. “We were together for 36 years. I find it very difficult, but my children have been there for me.”

He says one of the reasons he wrote the book was to let his children know what their father did for a living, why he was so often away on set when he should have been at school concerts.

He never anticipated that he would be entertaining and doing voiceovers in his 90s, and still gets calls. His agent rings him during our interview.

“Every actor thinks that the last job that they have will be their last job. You never think the phone will ever ring again.”

It Ain’t Half Late Mum by Melvyn Hayes is published in hardback by Alliance Publishing Press, priced £20. Available now