Malcolm Hardee was an anarchic British comedian, author, club proprietor and compere.
Hardee

Hardee came from a long line of River Thames lightermen - who earned their living on tugs pulling barges. The eldest son of Frank and Joan Hardee, he spent his first two years in an orphanage while his mother was in hospital with tuberculosis. He was educated at three south-east London schools - St Stephen's Church of England primary, Colfe's grammar and Sedgehill comprehensive.

Expelled from all three, he drifted into petty crime - stealing Coke from a local bottling plant, burgling a pawnbrokers and setting fire to a Sunday school piano because he wanted to see 'holy smoke' - eventually serving prison sentences for fraud and burglary. He also had convictions for arson and once infamously stole a Cabinet Minister's Rolls Royce.

During the late 1960s he worked as a mobile DJ - "Wolf G Hardee" - in between stints at various detention centres. After coming out of prison in 1977, he decided to turn to showbusiness as a way of staying out of trouble, saying: "Prison is like mime or juggling - a tragic waste of time".

Hardee regularly performed at the Edinburgh Festival and, with Martin Soan, he formed the Greatest Show On Legs -­ at the time, an adult Punch and Judy act. It became a regular at the Tramshed in Woolwich, alongside the likes of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. Soon afterwards, The Comedy Store opened in Soho, and they became regulars there, too. Their breakthrough came in 1981, when they did the balloon dance on Chris Tarrant's OTT. He also became known for an act in which he would use his own genitals to perform a unique and unforgettable impression of Charles de Gaulle.

On 2 February 2005, Hardee's body was recovered from Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe, by the River Thames after he was reported missing from his barge on January 31. A post-mortem soon confirmed he had drowned. It seems likely that he fell drunk, into the water on the way back to his houseboat "The Sea Sovereign" (20 feet) from The Wibbley Wobbley, which was moored nearby. About 700 people attended his funeral at St Alfege's Church in Greenwich - and perhaps fittingly, was one of the few funerals ever to get rave reviews the following day in both the Daily Telegraph and Sun newspapers. He was cremated at Hither Green in south-east London and his ashes scattered on the Thames he loved.