Norman Beaton | WatchedThis
Norman Beaton
Acting
Biography
Norman Beaton was a popular and much loved Guyanese born British actor. He arrived in the UK in 1960 and worked as a calypso singer and musician and a teacher - being the first black teacher employed by the education authority in Liverpool. His heart set on a career in showbusiness, he moved to Bristol and became a presenter on the regional news magazine Points West, before a two week prison sentence curtailed his presenting career. He subsequently found work in London's West End, appearing in The Tempest as Ariel, a role he subsequently cited as the most important in his career. He helped set up the Black Theatre in Brixton in the mid 70s and broke into television with the first black British sitcom, The Fosters in 1976, playing Lenny Henry's father. A star turn in the movie Black Joy followed a year later, as did the principal role in the fledgling black soap Empire Road for the BBC. But it is perhaps his performance as Desmond Ambrose, the crotchety Peckham barber in Channel 4's hit sitcom Desmond's that Beaton will forever be remembered for. The series ran from 1988 until his ill health curtailed the show in 1994. He retired to Georgetown, the place of his birth, but collapsed and died of a heart attack at the airport on arrival, on 13th December 1994. He was 60 years old.
Filmography Movies
Acting
In Sickness and in Health
A hard-working doctor must also carry the burden of a turbulent home life, due to the expectations of his demanding wife. Part of Thames Televison's Armchair Cinema.
Up the Chastity Belt
A funny thing happened to Lurkalot, serf to Sir Coward de Custard, on the way to Custard Castle. Lurkalot sells lusty love potions and rusty chastity belts in the market place, but on this day Sir Graggart de Bombast arrives to sack the castle, and to get the lovely Lobelia Custard in the sack! Lurkalot must help Custard cream the knight in pining armour...
Real Life
A comedy about a dreamer whose Walter Mitty-like fantasies turn his world of make-believe into a world of trouble.
Black Joy
An innocent and unsophisticated Guyanese immigrant is exposed to the hustlin' way of life in the Brixton ghetto.
Playing Away
To mark the conclusion of their "Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in a small English village invites a black cricket team from South London to a charity game with comical results.
The Mighty Quinn
Police chief Xavier Quinn investigates the gruesome murder of Donald Pater, one of the wealthiest residents on a Caribbean island. He was found decapitated in his Jacuzzi. Although the local political establishment, especially crooked Governor Chalk, insists that small-time thief Maubee is responsible, Xavier has his doubts. This view is complicated by the police chief's personal history with Maubee: The men have been friends since childhood.
Pressure
A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.
Endgame
A performance of Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame', a play in which nothing happens, once - unlike Beckett's first play 'Waiting for Godot' in which nothing happens twice. It is not a play about chess, in any explicit sense, but it does feature a lovable if curmudgeonly old man in a dustbin. Generally accepted to be Beckett's bleakest play - indeed after it's 1957 English debut at the Royal Court, the TLS's Olivier Todd quipped that it made Waiting for Godot look like "a cheerful operetta". However, Beckett himself described it as "the favourite of my plays." Although the programme was not broadcast until 1991 it was recorded in 1989 prior to Beckett's death and had his blessing. This production is particularly notable as it is first full-length television performance of the play.
Nice
A naïve and "nice" West Indian's descent into postcolonial cynicism is depicted in a twenty minute monologue from writer Farrukh Dhondy.
Black Christmas
A bittersweet drama on a familiar theme - the frictions forced to the surface during a Christmas family get-together - Michael Abbensetts' Black Christmas is an understated and affecting study of relationships, unexpressed pain and a tormented nostalgia for a distant home.
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