James Joseph Tarbuck is a British comedian, singer, actor, entertainer and game show host. He was a host of Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the mid-1960s, and hosted numerous game shows and quiz shows on ITV during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. He is also known for leading ITV's Live From Her Majesty's and its subsequent incarnations during the 1980s. Actress and television and radio presenterLiza Tarbuck is his daughter.
Biography
Tarbuck was born in Wavertree, Liverpool, on 6 February 1940. He has an older brother and his parents, Joseph Frederick Tarbuck and Ada McLoughlin married in March 1947. He attended Dovedale Primary School in Liverpool where he was a schoolmate of John Lennon. His first television show was It's Tarbuck '65! on ITV in 1964, though he had been introduced at the London Palladium on 27 October 1963 by Bruce Forsyth, and he was the last original host of Sunday Night at the London Palladium from 1965 until 1967. He has also hosted numerous quiz shows, including Winner Takes All, Full Swing, and Tarby's Frame Game. In the 1980s he hosted similar Sunday night variety shows, Live From Her Majesty's, Live from the Piccadilly and finally Live from the Palladium, which were produced by London Weekend Television for ITV. He appeared on the fourth series of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing in 2006, but was forced to pull out for medical reasons. In 2008, he returned to a variety format on television screens when he co-hosted, alongside Emma Bunton, an edition of ITV1's variety showFor One Night Only. He appeared on Piers Morgan's Life Stories on 25 May 2012, while on 3 December that year he was invited to celebrate 100 years of the Royal Variety Performance. Tarbuck made a Comedy Playhouse pilot for the BBC in 1967, acting in Johnny Speight's To Lucifer, A Son alongside John Le Mesurier and Pat Coombs, but a series was not commissioned. His only other acting credit was in a 1993 episode of police comedy The Detectives, playing the straight role of Johnny McKenna, an international arms dealer who liked to conduct his business on the golf course. In October 2015, Tarbuck and Des O'Connor starred in their own one-off show at the London Palladium to raise money for the new Royal Variety Charity. During the following two years they toured clubs and theatres around the UK with his comedy show, and sometimes as a double act with Kenny Lynch.
Personal life
Tarbuck married Pauline in 1959. His best man was footballer Bobby Campbell. The couple live in Coombe, Kingston upon Thames, London, and have three children: Cheryl, Liza, and James. Tarbuck has often been nicknamed 'Tarby'. He is a Conservative Party supporter, and at the height of his celebrity was a prominent supporter of Margaret Thatcher and her policies, baking her a cake to celebrate her 60th birthday in October 1985. Tarbuck is well-known as a keen player of golf, and was prominent as a competitor in pro-celebrity golf matches during the years when these were televised. In February 2020, Tarbuck revealed that, the day after his 80th birthday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
