Jeremy Lloyd

Jeremy Lloyd was born in London, the son of an army colonel and a dancing Tiller girl. He left school early and did a number of dead-end jobs. At age twenty-three he successfully submitted a story to Pinewood Film Studios. It was turned into a film called “What a Whopper,” starring Adam Faith. This helped Lloyd get work in television and he wrote for several successful BBC shows, including the children's show “Cracker Jack” and “The Billy Cotton Band Show.” Appearing in the latter as an upper-class twit led to Lloyd being offered his first film role in “The School for Scoundrels.” He then appeared in “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,” “Doctor in Clover,” “Man in the Moon,” “We Joined the Navy,” “A Very Important Person,” and “The Liquidator,” plus television roles in “The Avengers,” “Afternoon of a Nymph,” and others. At the same time he continued writing, contributing ninety episodes to “The Dickie Henderson Show.” He also appeared for three years as Captain Cook in the musical ROBERT AND ELIZABETH and used some of his spare time to write poems about animals. Keith Michell offered to illustrate them and thus was born the best-selling children's book "Captain Beaky and His Band." Soon afterwards Harold Robbins invited him to Hollywood to work on a major film project, but he missed his fiancée, Charlotte Rampling, too much and returned to England to play in a version of THE FOUR MUSKETEERS at Drury Lane. However, he was again invited to Hollywood to appear in and write for “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In,” with Goldie Hawn. On returning to the U.K., he became married for a short time to Joanna Lumley and they played a couple in the television sitcom “It’s Awfully Bad for Your Eyes Darling.” She suggested to him that he should write a TV show based on one of his many jobs and he chose his time as a suit salesman at Simpson's of Piccadilly (now gone). “Are You Being Served?” was co-written with David Croft, and proved to be one of Britain's most successful television exports. In the 1980s, Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft wrote another sitcom “'Allo, 'Allo,” which was a tremendous hit and ran for nine years. Other work has included “Oh Happy Band” and “Come Back Mrs. Noah,” work on a detective series, “Whodunit” books, including "The Adventures of Captain Dangerfield" and "Captain Cat and the Carol Singers."