Leslie Douglas Sargent Crowther (6 February 1933 – 28 September 1996) was an English comedian, actor, TV presenter, and game show host.
He attended the respected Cone-Ripman Drama School in London, where he met his future wife, and whilst there competed (in 1947) at the Star Junior Ballroom Championships partnering Pamela Cochran, and then at 16, he appeared as a member of the Ovaltineys Concert Party of the Air on Radio Luxembourg.
[citation needed] Leslie senior died in January 1955 at the age of 67, ten days after being hit by a car.
In September 1967, Crowther was the presenter chosen to host the first series of the revamped children's favourites show, Junior Choice, on the newly opened Radio One station.
From 1964 to 1967, Crowther presented Meet the Kids, an annual trip to a children's hospital ward that was screened by the BBC on Christmas Morning.
In 1969, Crowther switched to ITV, and A Merry Morning was screened annually, following the same format, usually from the Seacroft Hospital in Leeds.
In 1972 and 1973, he appeared in a television sitcom called My Good Woman, alongside Richard Wilson, Sylvia Syms and Keith Barron.
[citation needed] The show business career of Leslie Crowther came to a sudden end on the afternoon of Saturday, 3 October 1992, on the M5 near Cheltenham, when he sustained serious head injuries in a car crash.
It was speculated that he fell asleep at the wheel and, as a result, his Rolls-Royce skidded into the embankment, overturned and ended up on its roof on the hard shoulder of the motorway.
In the months before the crash, Crowther was busy with Lord's Taverners events and functions as well as charity work and public appearances and on the previous evening, 2 October, he had been to a dinner in Swansea where he was guest speaker.
He then opened Allied Carpets stores in West Bromwich and Brierley Hill on the morning and early afternoon of 3 October.
Five days after retiring, he appeared as the subject on This Is Your Life for the second time when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during a book-signing session in Selfridges on London's Oxford Street.
[citation needed] He had previously been honoured by This Is Your Life in March 1973 when Eamonn Andrews surprised him at an antiques fair at Earls Court in London.
[citation needed] Crowther's final television appearance was in March 1995, as a guest on June Whitfield's This Is Your Life episode.
An episode of 'Going For A Song' (14 March 1976) revealed that he collected Parian ware, a type of biscuit porcelain made by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons.
Their son Nick works in radio, presenting traffic and travel bulletins for AA Roadwatch based in Stanmore.
[16] Leslie Crowther died suddenly from heart failure at 5pm on Saturday, 28 September 1996[17] in the Royal United Hospital in Bath, at the age of 63, with his wife Jean and family at his side.