Thomas Henry Sargent (21 November 1894 – 7 May 1963), known professionally by his stage name Max Miller and billed as The Cheeky Chappie, was an English comedian often considered the greatest stand-up of his generation.

He toured extensively, appearing in variety, revues and by the early 1930s reached the top of the bill in the large music halls including the London Palladium.

Miller was born as Thomas Henry Sargent on 21 November 1894 in Hereford Street, Kemptown, Brighton, Sussex.

He was the second child of James Sargent, a labourer, and Alice (née West), a flower seller; Miller had three brothers and two sisters.

He tried jobs such as labouring, delivering milk, selling fish and chips, caddying at the Brighton and Hove Golf Course, and finally trained to be a motor mechanic.

He joined the Royal Sussex Regiment[4] and, after serving in France, was posted to India and a year later to Mesopotamia, where he was temporarily blinded for three days.

This experience stayed with him all his life, and in later years he did much work to help the blind including giving his home in Brighton over to St Dunstans during World War 2.

[5] Demobilised from the army, Miller found work to be in short supply, and he had lost his mother to the 1918 flu pandemic.

[10] In 1925, he continued in the revue Crisps, and in November that year joined the cast of Ten to One On, which starred Jimmy James.

After that, he was booked by Fred Karno to appear in The Show, and in May joined a touring cabaret revue called XYZ until the end of the year.

Miller much preferred to perform solo, and from 1930 onwards, he appeared in variety in large theatres, including the London Palladium and the Holborn Empire.

In those days, instant success was unheard of, and Miller, like any other performer, had to earn his fame through a long apprenticeship.

Miller was given a cameo role in the film The Good Companions (1933) in the part of a music publisher selling a song to a pianist, played by John Gielgud.

Miller would walk to the microphone and just stand there in his costume, a colourful suit with plus-fours, a kipper tie, trilby and co-respondent shoes, and wait for the laughter to begin.

However, in 1932 he embarked on his only overseas tour, when he sailed to Cape Town to appear in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa.

George Black's next revue, Apple Sauce, opened in August 1940 at the Holborn Empire, co-starring Vera Lynn.

In his review of the show, Daily Mail theatre critic Lionel Hale described Miller as the "gold of the music hall".

Val Parnell, the producer, who ran the Moss Empires circuit of theatres, was furious, and told Miller that he would never work for him again.

[20] Despite this, after eighteen months of Miller's touring in secondary theatres, he was invited back to the "number ones" – the Moss Empires – and returned in triumph to the London Palladium.

[21] One of these "number two" theatres was Hulme Hippodrome, where Ken Dodd said he appeared as a younger performer on the same bill as Max Miller in "about 1951, 1952".

The new medium did not suit his style; he needed the feedback only a live theatre audience could give him and the freedom to use his naughty material.

"[26] It has frequently been suggested that John Osborne modelled the character Archie Rice in his play The Entertainer on Miller.

However, these rumours only helped Miller's reputation as daring and naughty, and led to increased box office sales.

[34] Several radio and television documentaries have been produced including Gerald Scarfe's The Girls Who Do (40 Minutes, BBC, 1989) and Heroes of Comedy: Max Miller (1995).

Shakespeare, was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe,[35] and at the Fortune Theatre in London; it was broadcast on Channel Four in November 1982.

It has erected a bronze statue sculptured by Peter Webster in the Royal Pavilion Gardens, New Road, Brighton (unveiled 1 May 2005; re-sited August 2007) and mounted two blue plaques on his former homes on Ashcroft in Kingston Lane, Shoreham-by-Sea (2000) and at 160 Marine Parade, Brighton (2006).

In 2009, the Society curated an exhibition devoted to Miller's life and career in Bardsley's Fish Restaurant, Baker Street, Brighton.

In the British drama The Triple Echo from 1972, set during World War II, Glenda Jackson and Brian Deacon are listening to him (and laughing aloud) on the radio.