Comic Norman Collier, known for his many appearances on TV hit The Comedians and light entertainment shows, has died at the age of 87.
Collier was famed for routines in which he pretended to have a fault on his microphone, as well as his strutting, clucking chicken walk.
The sandy-haired comic suffered from Parkinson's Disease for a number of years and died in a residential care home close to his home town of Hull. His family said he died at 6.05pm on Thursday.
Collier's son-in-law, John Ainsley, said his father-in-law died peacefully in his sleep at a nursing home in Brough, East Yorkshire. He said he had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease for seven years.
Mr Ainsley, who is married to Collier's daughter Karen, said: "His passion was making people laugh and that's what he did all his life. He was the same at home as he was on stage. He was adorable, he was hilarious. He was a wonderful person who just wanted to get out there and make people laugh."
Collier leaves two sons and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Mr Ainsley added: "He loved his family and just wanted to be around all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Everyone who knew him loved him. And to professionals, he was the comedians' comedian. People like Jimmy Tarbuck have always said Norman was the one they would go and see if they wanted a laugh."
Collier rose to fame on the local club circuit, but took more than a decade of plugging away before he turned professional in the early 1960s. By 1971 he was on the bill for the Royal Variety Performance and in the years that followed he became a regular face on TV entertainment programmes.
Impressionist Jon Culshaw was among those paying tribute, calling him a "wonderfully funny man". He said: "People would be permanently laughing whenever they were around him."
Ricky Gervais made a comic reference to Collier's long-standing microphone gag, in which he would pretend the sound had an intermittent fault causing letters and syllables to be silent. Gervais wrote on Twitter: "R P orman ollier."
UK 
