Jackie Hamilton

Infobox Comedian
name = Jackie Hamilton


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birth_date = 1937
birth_place = Liverpool, England
death_date = 2003
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medium = Stand-up comedy
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active = 1960s – 2003
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spouse = Teresea
notable_work = "The Comedians", Merseyside club performances

Jackie Hamilton (1937, Liverpool – 2003) was a greatly revered local legend and stand-up comedian.

Due largely due to his alcohol-induced fecklessness, idiosyncratic delivery and strong Scouse accent he never quite made the big time nationally in the UK. However, his slick anti-climactic style of observational comedy is increasingly regarded as quintessential Liverpool humor at its very best; also providing a unique graphic commentary on the social history of Merseyside from 1963 to 2003.

Biography

Hamilton was born off Scotland Road, (known locally as 'Scottie') a notoriously tough dockland area in north Liverpool, where he lived with 2 sisters, Margaret and Susie. He married Teresea. He worked casually as a docker (stevedore) and on building sites, before becoming what was known locally as an "ale-house (pub) comic," where - (for every 10 minutes of his ribald badinage and spontaneous wit) - landlords would pay him in drinks. Despite a brief flirtation with national fame in the 1970s, when he appeared on the ITV TV show "The Comedians" and live on both BBC TV and on ITV, he was so incorrigibly unreliable that relatively few London booking-agents (among scores who greatly admired him) dared to reserve him for venues down south, and right up until he died in 2003, Jackie was generally to be found in or around the Merseyside club circuit, whose audiences treasured him enough and savoured him enough to tolerate his erratic behaviour and frequent no-shows.

BBC Radio 4 profile

On 10 April 2007 a profile of Jackie Hamilton entitled "Standing Up For Liverpool" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Les Dennis and produced by Tony Staveacre, it explored the life and career of the much-loved joker, using rare tapes of the man himself in interview and performance and the reminiscences of Ricky Tomlinson, Lennie Chesworth and Mickey Finn.