18 Facts About Norman Beaton

Norman Lugard Beaton was a Guyanese actor long resident in the United Kingdom.

Norman Beaton became best known for his role as Desmond Ambrose in the Channel Four television comedy series Desmond's.

Norman Beaton attended Queen's College, and went on to a teacher training college, where he received high marks, and served as the deputy headmaster at Cane Grove Anglican School in Demerara.

Norman Beaton developed a parallel career as a calypso singer, scoring a number-one hit in Trinidad and Tobago with "Come Back Melvina" in 1959.

Norman Beaton then obtained a post in the shipping department of a bookshop until his wife and children arrived in London in 1960.

Norman Beaton then became a teacher in Liverpool, becoming the first black teacher to be employed by the Liverpool Education Authority.

Norman Beaton became increasingly unhappy with his work as a teacher and began writing plays, his first play being the musical Jack of Spades, which was about the doomed relationship between a black man and a white woman, quite controversial at that time.

Norman Beaton moved first to Bristol and then to Sussex where he played the leading role in a musical he had written, Sit Down, Banna, at the Connaught Theatre.

In 1975, Norman Beaton played Nanki-Poo in The Black Mikado, a modern version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

In 1976, Norman Beaton broke into television in the series The Fosters, which featured a young Lenny Henry, and the following year played the lead role in a low-budget independent film about a West Indian community in London, Black Joy, for his role in which he was named Film Actor of the Year in 1978 by the Variety Club of Great Britain.

Norman Beaton appeared in the BBC TV series Empire Road.

However, it was Norman Beaton's six-year run in the Channel Four television comedy series Desmond's, as the title character Desmond Ambrose, that would become his best-known role.

Norman Beaton played the lead role of Willie Boy in the 1987 TV comedy Playing Away, about a West Indian cricket team invited to play a rural white team.

Norman Beaton appeared in several movies, including The Mighty Quinn.

Norman Beaton appeared as a guest on The Cosby Show in 1991, and in the 1994 television serial Little Napoleons.

Norman Beaton was survived by five children from three marriages.

Norman Beaton spent many years living in Brixton with Jane Cash, whom he referred to as "the wife he never had".

Norman Beaton married Jean Davenport in 1988, but they separated later.