Profile of Derek Nimmo on Famous Like Me

Derek Robert Nimmo (September 19, 1930 - February 24, 1999) was a British character actor, particularly associated with upper-class "silly-ass" roles.

He was born in Liverpool, England, and began his stage career at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bolton, Lancashire. It was during this time that he made a cameo appearance in The Beatles movie, A Hard Day's Night.

After a series of bit parts in British films, he made his name as the Reverend Mervyn Noote in the British sitcom, All Gas and Gaiters (1966), which 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 so closely associated with the clergy in the minds of the audience that he went on to play a bungling monk in another BBC sitcom, Oh, Brother!.

Derek Nimmo became so well-known for his roles as clergymen that, in the comedy television series The Goodies episode "Wacky Wales", there was a "team of Derek Nimmos" in an Ecclesistical Rugby Sevens competition.

Despite abandoning the upper-class accent for this role, he continued to be offered parts as clergymen and aristocrats, including the role of Lord Southmere in the comedy movie One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing.

He starred in the West End musical, Charlie Girl, which contained a scene specially written to allow him to perform his party trick of wiggling his toes. More than just an actor, he became a regular on the radio show, Just a Minute.

Derek Nimmo's death, from pneumonia, occurred a few weeks after a domestic fall which left him in a coma at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.

Nimmo is buried in the churchyard at Easton Maudit, Northants - a small rural village where he owned a home.

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