Terry Hall (ventriloquist)

For the lead singer of the groups The Specials and later Fun Boy Three, see Terry Hall (singer)

Terry Hall (20 November 1926 – 4 April 2007), born Terence Hall, was an English ventriloquist. He appeared regularly on television with his puppet, Lenny the Lion.

Hall was born in Chadderton, Oldham, in Lancashire, where his parents ran a working men's club. He was educated at St Patrick's School in Oldham and at De La Salle College in Salford. Hall initially working as a ventriloquist with a boy dummy, named Mickey Finn, winning a talent show aged 15.

Hall created Lenny the Lion in 1954 from an old fox fur and papier-mâché, with a golf ball for the nose. He first appeared on BBC Television in 1956. The Lenny the Lion Show ran from 1957 to 1960, followed by Lenny's Den in 1959 to 1961, and Pops and Lenny in 1962 to 1963. Hall visited Ameria in 1958, making his debut on the Ed Sullivan Show with Lenny that year. Hall and Lenny remained popular throughout the 1960s, appearing on stage in Blackpool and on television. The Beatles made one of their early TV appearances in a 1963 episode of Pops and Lenny, singing "From Me To You" and "Please, Please Me." David Bowie's father worked on the show, and launched the Lenny the Lion Fan Club. Lenny advertised Trebor mints for three years. Hall released a single, "Lenny's Bath Time", in 1963.

From 1977 to 1980, Hall regularly appeared on children's daytime television, in the television programme Reading With Lenny.

Hall married twice. He had two daughters from his first marriage. He married a second time, to Denise Francis, in 1980. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease in later life. He died in 2007 in Coventry, West Midlands.

References

• Lenny the Lion at TelevisionHeaven.com

• Children's entertainer Hall dies, BBC News, 11 April 2007
• Obituary, The Independent, 12 April 2007
• Obituary, The Times, 14 April 2007