I say, Mr Derek…
If you think this week’s ALAW sounds as if it’s a bit ‘make do and mend’, you’d be right. I wanted it to be an uplifting five-line eulogy for the actor Derek Fowlds who died recently, but I left it too close to my weekly deadline to produce a well-polished one.
I best remember Fowlds as Mr Derek, Basil Brush’s straightman in the puppet fox’s TV show, and then as Bernard Woolley in the renowned Yes Minister series.
![](https://i0.wp.com/blog.piscibus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/fowlds.jpg?resize=600%2C360&ssl=1)
His rôle in the latter was as a support to the two leads, but his delivery and comic timing elevated it well above that of a mere bit part and included the punchline to one of the best sketches in the entire series. (I never saw him in Heartbeat, a long-running daytime TV drama that he valued for giving him financial security in his later years).
![](https://i0.wp.com/blog.piscibus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/fowlds1.jpg?resize=600%2C360&ssl=1)
Here’s the limerick:
I say, Mr Derek has died,
But memories of him will abide
As a stooge to a puppet
(A fox, not a muppet)
Who then sat at a Minister’s side.