A burly blunderbuss of comedy, Jimmy Edwards was best known as headmaster “Professor” James Edwards in Whack-O! Robert Ross remembers a comedy hero was always caning it...

Jimmy in his signature role of a booze-loving school headmaster with a strong belief in discipline (for others) and an all-consuming desire to apply his cane to the bottoms of his none-tooeager male pupils!

Jimmy Edwards (1920-1988)

I f Edward Lear’s fevered, farcical, and fun-fuelled imagination, had been made flesh the chances are it would have looked a lot like ‘Professor’ Jimmy Edwards. It’s doubtful whether two owls, a hen, four larks or even a wren were nestled in that vibrant top-lip hairy caterpillar of his, but there was certainly enough room for a miniature single malt and a packet of woodbines. For, with a voice of pure wood alcohol and a twinkle in the eye that could have beamed from Dover to Calais, the redoubtable Edwards moulded himself into a frightfully proper eccentric. This larger-than-life comedy force of nature radiated a true blue, hunting pink sense of Englishness that made him a beloved personality across four decades.

Like many of his comic generation, he had served for King and Country during World War II. In the case of Edwards it was with the Royal Air Force: and he had served with great distinction, being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and rising in the ranks to Flight Lieutenant. His war was brutally curtailed when, in 1944, his Dakota was shot down over Arnhem, in the Netherlands. Severely burned as a result, Edwards underwent experimental plastic surgery at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. So experimental was it that the boys on the ward were dubbed ‘the Guinea Pig Club’. Typically their motto was “We would rather drink than fight!” and, by Harry, they certainly remained true to that.