This was supposed to be his name-making follow-up to his lyrics on Passion Flower Hotel (1965), a musical at the Prince of Wales, with a book by Wolf Mankowitz and music by John Barry. In that same year he wrote book, lyrics and music – and played the lead – as Erb, a hardline trade union railwayman with conciliatory tendencies that failed, along with the show itself, after just 38 performances at the Strand (now the Novello). But he had also developed his “proper” acting credentials at the 69 Theatre in Manchester (precursor to the Royal Exchange) as Estragon in Waiting for Godot, Horatio in Courtenay’s Hamlet and Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer, which transferred to the Garrick in London in 1969. When he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-1970s, his country justice Silence in Henry IV Part 2 developed an outrageous and very funny falling-off-a-bench routine. Herman’s Hermits had a No 1 hit with it two years later Trevor Peacock wrote the pop song Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter in 1963. By 1962 he was playing small roles, extending to the old servant Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, in the relaunched Open Air Theatre, in Regent’s Park.
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At the age of 18, he took a trial for Tottenham Hotspur but theatre soon took precedence over football, and he found his way on to the stage of the Windmill theatre in 1956 as a comedian. Peacock was born in Edmonton, north London, the son of Victor Peacock and his wife, Alexandria, and was educated at Enfield grammar school.
In the opening 1976-77 season at the Royal Exchange he played Bob Acres in The Rivals, the title role in Harold Brighouse’s Zack and wrote the musical Leaping Ginger – about a small-time crook raising money for an old folks’ outing – premiered in 1977 and reworked for the following year, with Robert Lindsay as the star.
The ebullience and pub song vivacity of his songwriting and his attachment to the Manchester theatre were the two constants in his creative life. He also wrote lyrics for an Alan Price musical, Andy Capp (1982), in which Courtenay played the work-shy, pigeon-fancying layabout cartoon character first at the Royal Exchange and then the Aldwych in London. His best known chart-topper was Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, a jaunty, poignant narrative song written for Tom Courtenay in a 1963 television play, The Lads, but taken to No 1 in the US charts in 1965 by Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits.
Trevor Peacock, right, with Tom Courtenay in the 1963 television play The Lads.
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