Graham Walker, who has died aged 68, co-founded The Grumbleweeds, the northern comedy show band that enjoyed national popularity on radio and television in the 1980s.
Walker launched the act with Maurice Lee and Robin Colvill in Leeds in 1962, touring the northern club circuit.
They achieved their big break five years later as a straight pop group when, in 1967, having expanded to a five-piece ensemble with Albert and Carl Sutcliffe, they appeared on the ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks. But when they failed to make the impact they had hoped for, they turned to humour, concentrating on jokes, sketches and impressions as well as music.
Though they hosted their own ITV series between 1984 and 1987, it was on radio that they made their name, with 15 series running on Radio 2 from 1979 to 1988, the format combining sketches with comedy songs and impressions.
Their series The Grumbleweeds (originally called The Grumbleweeds Radio Show) ran from 1979 to 1988 and won popular and critical acclaim, with one newspaper likening it to the modern equivalent of The Goon Show. In 1989 it was followed by another series, Someone and The Grumbleweeds, which ran for a further four years, featuring guest stars including Dame Thora Hird, Lionel Blair and Barbara Windsor.
Produced by Mike Craig, the first five radio series were fast-moving shows in which the accent was on quick-fire sketches with contributions from a cast of regular characters, among them Wilf “Gasmask” Grimshaw (Carl Sutcliffe) and Walker as “Uncle Rubbish” . Craig later switched the format to situation comedy, with the show set in a rambling dilapidated house called Grumbleweed Towers, owned by “Uncle Rubbish”.
Walker’s character presided over a motley household that included a housekeeper called Freda Nattercan and two camp theatricals, Ernest and Geoffrey, who knitted their own jumpers and fretted if they creased their drip-dry pink pedal-pushers.
As well as their radio work, The Grumbleweeds featured for many years in summer seasons and panto. In 1998 the group reverted to a more financially viable two-man band, featuring just Walker and Colvill.
Graham Paul Walker was born on May 17 1945 in Leeds. On leaving Meanwood secondary school, he joined his parents in the family butchers’ business . In the early 1960s he teamed up with an old school friend, Maurice Lee, and Robin Colvill, whom they met in a coffee bar in Leeds.
Having worked as a straight pop act, they were spotted by the comedy scriptwriter Mike Craig , who was struck by their smart, determined and professional look, and impressed by their opening 10-minute routine packed with gags, comedy business, musical nonsense and fast-moving impressions.
When Craig joined the BBC as a producer in 1976, he persuaded the Corporation to commission the first of the 15 series of radio comedy shows featuring the group.
The Grumbleweeds’ radio series won the Radio and Television Industries award for the best programme of 1984. Receiving the trophy, which was cast in bronze, Walker (as “Uncle Rubbish”) ended his acceptance speech by promising to “take this beautiful award with us back to Yorkshire and first thing in the morning have it black-leaded”.
Graham Walker had been suffering from cancer. He is survived by his wife, Susan, and their son and four daughters.
Graham Walker, born May 17 1945, died June 2 2013
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