1. John Inman was the only actor from those series to reprise the role when an Australian version was launched.
22 Facts About John Inman
1. 2.
In 1976, Inman was named both BBC TV Personality of the Year and TV Times readers' Funniest Man on Television.
3.
John Inman was a well-known character actor in the United Kingdom as a pantomime dame.
4.
John Inman was born in June 1935 in Preston, Lancashire, and was often said to be a cousin of actress Josephine Tewson, though she denied they were related.
5.
At the age of 12, John Inman moved with his parents to Blackpool where his mother ran a boarding house, while his father owned a hairdressing business.
6.
John Inman was educated at Cambridge House in Preston, and then a secondary modern school.
7.
John Inman always wanted to be an actor, and his parents paid for him to have elocution lessons at the local church hall.
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Josephine Tewson 8.
John Inman made his West End debut in the 1960s when he appeared in Ann Veronica at the Cambridge Theatre.
9.
John Inman appeared as the pop singer Willie in Dennis Spencer's What a Racket at Manchester's Palace Theatre in December 1963 and appeared in Paula Stone's How Now Brown Cow at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in late 1965.
10.
John Inman played the sharp-tongued sales assistant Mr Wilberforce Claybourne Humphries and his earlier career in the clothes retail business was good preparation for this role in a menswear department.
11.
John Inman reported that four or five members of the group Campaign for Homosexual Equality picketed one of his shows in protest as they believed his persona did not help their cause.
12.
The series became popular in the United States, where John Inman became a gay cultural icon.
13.
John Inman released an LP of the same name, and two further albums: I'm Free in 1977 and With a Bit of Brass in 1978.
14.
John Inman made many appearances on BBC TV's long-running television show, The Good Old Days.
15.
John Inman had a small part as Lady Capulet in the film Shakespeare in Love and appeared in the 1999 French and Saunders Christmas special.
16.
John Inman appeared as Father Chinwag in the film The Mumbo Jumbo.
17.
John Inman was hospitalised with bronchitis in 1993, and collapsed on stage in 1995.
18.
John Inman was admitted to Paddington's St Mary's Hospital in 2001 after suffering breathing difficulties and spent three days in intensive care.
19.
In December 2004, John Inman was forced to cancel an appearance in a pantomime as he was suffering from a hepatitis A infection, contracted from contaminated food.
20.
John Inman died early in the morning of 8 March 2007, aged 71, at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, of an infection.
21.
John Inman's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium after a funeral on 23 March 2007.
22.
For some thirty years, John Inman lived in a mews house in Little Venice, Westminster.