Sykes's life wasn't all light-hearted pratfalls, however. As Bruce Forsyth – given a welcome break here from carving endless jokes out of Spam for Strictly Come Dancing – observed, "The audience understood him; he had a certain amount of pathos." It wasn't hard to see why: Sykes's mother died shortly after giving birth to him, and as a little boy he said he felt "almost like a lodger in my own home". Like many great comic actors, his whimsy was tinged with melancholy.
In an affecting end to this tribute, we saw Sykes in one of his final roles, as Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, delighting his grandchildren, this time, with his own magic.
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