You might think a birth name of William White, which as a boy he shortened to Willie White, had quite enough comic potential for an entertainer who later brought high camp to British television.
But, in the end, he rejected it for the nom de panto Larry Grayson.
William was born, out of wedlock, on 31st August 1923. He never knew his father and grew up with a foster family in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, where his mother sometimes visited him as ‘Aunt’ Ethel.
Then his foster mother died when he
