Leslie Crowther

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Leslie Crowther bigraphy, stories - Comedian

Leslie Crowther : biography

06 February 1933 – 29 September 1996

Leslie Douglas Sargent Crowther CBE (6 February 1933 – 29 September 1996) was an English comedian, actor and gameshow host.

Selected filmography

  • Over the Odds (1961)

Alcoholism

Like his father before him, Crowther was an alcoholic and this problem continued throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

On 14 November 1983 Crowther was arrested for drink-driving. Two weeks later he was fined, and banned from driving for nine months. This did not deter Crowther and in October 1988 he turned up at a gala in Glastonbury, drunk. This made him realise that he had a serious problem and needed help. Unlike five years earlier, his alcohol addiction received much publicity. From January 1989 to 17 March 1989 Crowther was a resident in Clouds House, a drug and alcohol treatment centre near Shaftesbury. He never drank alcohol again.

The end of a career

Crowther was a popular president of the Lord’s Taverners from January 1991 to December 1992. He was a huge cricket fan and had an apartment near London’s Lord’s Cricket Ground for many years. He had a bench dedicated to him by the Taverners.

In August 1992, Rita Rees of the Bristol Headway branch, a brain injury charity, introduced herself to Crowther at Bath railway station, told him about Headway’s work, and asked him if he would visit Headway house, a recovery centre for people who had suffered brain injuries. He agreed to do so. Crowther visited on 16 September 1992, and according to his wife, was very moved by what he had seen. However, Leslie Crowther’s showbusiness career came to a sudden end on the afternoon of 3 October 1992 on the M5 near Cheltenham, when he sustained serious head injuries in a car crash which nearly killed him. The precise cause of the accident remains unknown. It was speculated that he fell asleep at the wheel and, as a result, his Rolls Royce car skidded into the central reservation barrier and overturned several times. In the months before the accident, Crowther was extremely busy with Lord’s Taverners events and functions, and the day before, 2 October, had been to a dinner in Swansea. That night he stayed at a hotel in Birmingham and then opened some Allied Carpets stores in Birmingham on the morning of 3 October. Crowther was returning home when the accident occurred.

The car ended up on its roof on the hard shoulder of the motorway, and was a write-off. At first, Crowther did not appear to be seriously injured, apart from being shaken up and sustaining a cracked bone in his neck. Crowther was able to tell the police his personal details, including his home telephone number and what Warfarin tablets he was taking for his heart condition; he was diagnosed with heart trouble three years before. In his autobiography, he claimed the stress of the media harassment over his alcoholism in late 1988/early 1989 had brought it on.

However, after being taken to Cheltenham General Hospital, his condition suddenly deteriorated and he lapsed into unconsciousness. A brain scan revealed a blood clot had formed on the left-hand side of his brain. Crowther was taken to Bristol’s Frenchay Hospital for brain surgery to remove the blood clot that evening.

On 5 October, after a nurse was unhappy with his condition, a further scan revealed that another blood clot, the size of a small apple, had formed on the same side of his brain. Crowther then underwent a second brain operation that lasted two hours and a tracheotomy to help him breathe. Crowther remained in a coma for 17 days after the accident. He was a patient in Frenchay Hospital until February 1993. He came home for the first time just before Christmas in 1992. After his release from hospital, Crowther underwent months of occupational therapy and physiotherapy.

Biography

Crowther was born in West Bridgford in Nottinghamshire. At the end of 1944 he moved to London with his parents, but was evacuated for a few months to Bute until just after the war ended. bute-gateway.org. Retrieved 1 February 2008.