Gordon Irving Kaye[2] (7 April 1941 – 23 January 2017), known professionally as Gorden Kaye, was an English actor, best known for playing womanising café owner René Artois in the television comedy series 'Allo 'Allo!.
Early life
Kaye was born on 7 April 1941 in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the only child of Harold and Gracie Kaye;[3] Gracie was 42 when she gave birth.[4] Harold Kaye was a lorry driver[1] in the ARP during the Second World War, and at other times worked as an engineering operative in a tractor factory.[5]
He appeared in the 1978 comedy short The Waterloo Bridge Handicap, starring Leonard Rossiter,[9] and featured as Dines in the feature film version of Porridge (1979) alongside Ronnie Barker. He also appeared in the TV show about a Yorkshire vet, All Creatures Great and Small and in the private detective series Shoestring.[1] In 1981, Kaye appeared as Frank Broadhurst in the children's drama serial Codename Icarus.[10]
Kaye appeared in three episodes of Croft's British department store sitcom Are You Being Served? and was later offered the lead role in a series he had written called Oh Happy Band!, but Kaye was unavailable and the part went to Harry Worth. Oh Happy Band! lasted one series.[11]
Kaye had a small part in Terry Gilliam's film Brazil as desk clerk M.O.I. Lobby Porter and appeared in Gilliam's 1977 film Jabberwocky as Sister Jessica.[12]
In 1990, Kaye played the fictional local television presenter Maynard Lavery in an edition of Last of the Summer Wine.[15]
In the early 1990s he made a guest appearance in a Christmas special of Family Fortunes, in which he served as team captain and placed host Les Dennis on a special "Double Big Money" round for Dennis to score more than one hundred points to double the charity prize money, which he did.[16] In 1995 Kaye played Monsieur Pamplemousse in a BBC Radio three-part adaption of Michael Bond's 1990 novel Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates.[17]
Allo 'Allo!
In 1982, David Croft sent Kaye the script for the pilot episode of 'Allo 'Allo! inviting him to play the central character of René Artois. He accepted and appeared in all 85 episodes (the main series ran from 1984, two years after the pilot, until 1992) and 1,200 performances of the stage version.[18]
Kaye's autobiography, René and Me: An Autobiography (co-written with Hilary Bonner), was published in 1989. In the book, he described his experiences as a shy, gay, overweight, typecast youth.[21] The unusual spelling of his name (usually spelt "Gordon") was the result of a British Actors' Equity Association typing error.[21]
Kaye suffered serious life-threatening head injuries in a car accident while driving his Honda CRX, during the Burns' Day Storm in London on 25 January 1990.[22] Although he could not remember any details of the incident, he retained a scar on his forehead from a piece of wooden advertising hoarding that had smashed through the car windscreen. He was rescued by the police and taken to Charing Cross Hospital.
Writing in his memoirs, 'Allo 'Allo! co-writer Jeremy Lloyd said he visited Kaye in hospital, adding, "I believe part of his recovery was due to his agent getting a video and showing reruns of 'Allo 'Allo! to remind him who he was."[1] While recovering in hospital from emergency brain surgery to treat injuries sustained in the accident, Kaye was photographed and interviewed by two Sunday Sport journalists, Gary Thompson and Ray Levine. On Kaye's behalf, his agent Peter Froggatt, sued the newspaper, but the Court of Appeal held, in Kaye v Robertson, that there was no remedy in English law for an invasion of privacy.[1][23]
