Obituary
I have just found out that Wilf Lunn died last year in December. Inventor artist on BBC’s Vision On. I’ve checked on the BBC’s page and obituary is there none, well I can’t find one.
I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago when he had an exhibition and talk at a local print workshop. I bought one of his prints and his autobiography My Best Cellar.
There was/is one in The Telegraph I recall
(but knowing The Telegraph, it’ll be behind a paywall)
Didn’t he blind himself with a fork trying to get a knot out of a shoelace
Afterword t-shirt
It’s why I no longer bother with shoelaces.
But slip-ons fly across the room when you cross your legs, blinding somebody else.
That doesn’t matter I suppose!
Doesn’t happen with elastic-sided bootees.
Bootees? What are you, six months old??
On my good days.
Luckily knot him.
After passing the barbers we’d stop at the music shop, where Mam would always tell me and Doreen the cautionary tale of how the owner of the music shop had blinded himself whilst undoing a knot in his shoe with a fork. With a fork!
I later wondered if she meant a large tuning fork. How else could he be blind in both eyes? He surely hadn’t knots in both shoes and done it twice.
The implication was that if you do things the wrong way, terrible things happen. You do not undo shoelace knots with a fork.
Telegraph is indeed a paywall but nothing from the BBC.
Mrs Moose met him. School thing. He wasn’t nice, apparently.
I prefer your obituary Moose. More succinct “ Wasn’t nice”.
She gave some detail but this isn’t the time or place amid all this wailing for the loss of the Wilfster.
There was an obituary in The Times. Again, it’s probably paywalled, but a quick copy and paste……
OBITUARY
Wilf Lunn, eccentric TV presenter
His madcap inventions appeared on children’s TV programmes in the Seventies and Eighties
The Times
Friday January 12 2024, 12.03am, The Times
When Wilf Lunn first auditioned forVision On in 1972, the producer Patrick Dowling decided that not even this surrealist children’s programme, full of visual gags, was ready for the madcap inventor from Huddersfield.
Nothing if not persistent, and the worse for drink, Lunn made the most of his trip to the BBC and somehow wrangled an appearance that night on Joan Bakewell’s Late Night Line-Up to leaven the serious discussion. He also made an appearance on the BBC current affairs show Nationwide by riding a tricycle that went bang to Woburn Abbey trying to feed a fake parrot to a lion cub there in protest against the increasing use of artificial flavourings. The lion cub showed little interest in the fake parrot, which “just shows that lions aren’t as stupid as people”, Lunn said.
He started to appear on Magpie, ITV’s offbeat answer to Blue Peter. When it became clear that Lunn was entertaining the British public, Dowling invited him to appear on Vision On, a show aimed primarily at deaf children, along with Tony Hart creating giant elephants with a football pitch line marker and the actor Sylvester McCoy adding zany visual gags. Lunn’s demonstration of his latest invention, such as a doorbell machine, added to the anarchy.
With a hint of devilment in his deadpan stare, Lunn went on to become a regular sight on television in the Seventies and Eighties, sporting an unruly ginger mane, big tinted spectacles, a straw boater with W on it and a cured moustache, which occasionally caught fire when his contraptions malfunctioned.
His path to fame had been smoothed by the actor James Mason, whose parents lived in the same area of Huddersfield where Lunn had been brought up. Mason, whom Lunn recalled “rediscovering” his Yorkshire accent on trips home, introduced him to the theatrical agent Blanche Marvin, who arranged for him to meet Dowling.
Lunn’s inventions, which tended not to have any practical purpose other than raising a laugh, were often propelled by an old-fashioned tricycle, which at some point went bang and involved pulverising unsuspecting fauna. Explaining his “low-flying bird destroyer cycle”, Lunn said: “The curiosity of the bird is aroused by the low sun. The bird flies down to investigate and is squashed by the heavy-duty clouds smacking together.” Another invention in doubtful taste was the “crutch criminal bicycle”, which delivered electric shocks to the testicles.
Other inventions included flatulent wind chimes, a cucumber straightener, a “geriatrics’ cricket bat” complete with walking stick handle, and a singing Christmas tree. For the Silver Jubilee in 1977 he built a bicycle that featured a portrait of Elizabeth II and a moving hand to acknowledge the cheers. The bike was fitted with a snow plough to ensure egress through cheering crowds.
In the early Eighties, Lunn made regular appearances on Jigsaw, another slightly surreal teatime children’s programme presented by Janet Ellis — with carte blanche to present his latest inventions. Lunn even survived an overhaul of light entertainment television in the 1990s, appearing as Jonathan Ross’s “resident professor” on Fantastic Facts, on which he created an expanding mortar board and a machine to cure hiccups.
Wilfred Makepeace Lunn was born in Rastrick, West Yorkshire, in 1942. Both his father, Hubert, and his mother Irene (née Shaw) were deaf and as a child he quickly learnt that the more outlandish his behaviour, the more likely he was to get their attention. His parents gave him plenty of inspiration, keeping a cauldron that they insisted contained the head of an uncle eaten by cannibals.
After being educated locally, Lunn attended Huddersfield School of Art and then taught lip-reading and religious education at Odsal House School for the Deaf, near Bradford. Something of a Renaissance man, he created plays in mime and accepted painting commissions. For Park Methodist Church in Brighouse he painted outre GloBrite images of Adam and Eve, depicting them before the fall. Ordered to “cover them up”, he further misjudged the client by adding a bikini to Eve and white-spotted underpants to Adam.
Lunn married Di North in 1965. The couple had two daughters and a son: Emma became a curator at the British Museum, Anna is a manager in the NHS, and Dick is a production designer on British films. After their divorce, he married Elizabeth Hindle in 1978, arriving at the register office on one of his customised tricycles, though not “the crutch criminal”.
In later years he opened a café in Huddersfield, which displayed his inventions. An eclectic array of distinctions came his way, including an invitation to become a judge at the World Disco Dancing championship. When invited to judge a Valentine’s Day kissing competition at a Yorkshire nightclub, he took along his Kissing Lady Robot, which vibrated when kissed. According to Lunn, “when really aroused the top of her head explodes, filling the place with confetti”.
Yet it became clear that his star was falling when he demonstrated his human cannon and, in trying to fire himself across the River Irk in Lancashire, fell short into the river. The headline of a local newspaper read: “Berk falls in the Irk.”
Wilf Lunn, inventor and TV presenter, was born on March 20, 1942. He died on December 13, 2023, aged 81
Some life!
Thanks @chrisf. That obituary was an hilarious read.
Fascinating – not being a child any more in the 70s and 80s he passed me by, and I don’t remember my kids talking about him either. An English eccentric in the great tradition of Rowland Emmet and Bruce Lacey. A YT session beckons…
Never seen in the same room: Wilf Lunn and Vivian Stanshall
Almost never:
“Were you often mistaken for Viv Stanshall?
(Fat Boab)
Yes I have been mistaken for Viv. I once had a long conversation with a stranger on the Tube. I was quite chuffed he recognised me. When he got off at his station he said, “Cheerio Viv.” Of course the minute I opened my mouth with my Yorkshire accent most people knew I wasn’t Viv. Viv’s natural voice was quite posh. I suppose the guy on the train thought I was faking a Yorkshire accent to amuse him.
I was invited to judge the Valentine Day kissing competion at the Hippodrome. I took along my Kissing Lady Robot. (She vibrated when kissed and when really aroused the top of her head exploded filling the place with confetti.) Cheryl Baker and Danny Baker were there to assist. The gents toilet was full of very young women putting white talcum powder down their rubber frocks (I think). I was shocked and felt terribly old and out of place in my ‘John Collier’ dinner jacket.
I returned to the dance floor. Looking around for some one vaguely in my age range, I spotted this older guy. I walked to wards him. When he saw me he said, “Doppleganger.” It was Viv Stanshaw [sic]. We were both totally out of place. He asked me what I was doing there. He’d come along to watch. He was a friend of Danny Baker. What a shame he died – he was making a comeback and who knows what other brilliant things he would have done?”
There can’t be a more Yorkshire name than Wilfrid Makepeace Lunn.