Mike Yarwood was Mr Saturday Night to millions... but at home his drinking was ... trends now

Performing on stage, Mike Yarwood was the ‘man of a thousand famous faces’. He knew just how to mimic Harold Wilson’s nasal Yorkshire accent, did an uncanny Bob Monkhouse smirk and nailed Bruce Forsyth’s mannerisms.

His impression of the then Prince Charles was so good that Diana told him she ‘laughed until she cried’ at one of his Royal Variety Performance sketches.

And his TV shows were so popular that his 1977 Christmas Day special drew a record 21.4 million viewers.

Back home in the village of Bredbury, Cheshire, however, two little blonde girls had no notion of the heady heights of their father’s fame. To them, Mike, who died last month at the age of 82, was simply ‘dad’.

And, behind the scenes of his meteoric success, their dad was falling to pieces.

He might have been known as ‘Mr Saturday Night’ but privately Yarwood was battling alcoholism, anxiety, depression and — seemingly at odds with his flamboyant public persona — crippling stage fright. In 1987, having divorced from his wife of 18 years, he dramatically disappeared from the limelight, fuelling rumours about what was going on in his life.

Clare and Charlotte, Yarwood’s daughters, were there through it all — and have now decided to reveal the truth about the demons that sank their father’s career.

Charlotte Yarwood says she knew from a young age that her father had a dangerous relationship with alcohol — and it was this that tore their family apart.

‘I would say I was five, six or seven. I didn’t know what the words to describe it were, but we knew as a family and certainly my mother knew he had a drink problem, and that it was getting worse and worse,’ she says.

In the end, it precipitated Yarwood’s divorce, and an estrangement from his beloved daughters which lasted several lonely years. ‘My brilliant mother could no longer deal with his drinking,’ recalls Charlotte, 53.

‘She had given him many chances to change and sort it out but his drinking affected her deeply. She could not live with that any longer, and so she had to get out.’

To those who grew up watching Yarwood, the notion of a shy family man jars with the image of the larger-than-life impressionist, the jewel in the BBC’s comedy crown, who was able to charm (nearly all) the politicians, presenters and public figures he mocked.

‘He really seemed to crave disappearing when he wasn’t performing,’ recalls Clare Yarwood-White, now 50. She and her sister have spoken for a one-off documentary, Mike Yarwood: Thanks For The Laughs, broadcasting tonight on Channel 5.

‘He could switch it on for the cameras but when he came home he just wanted a quiet life. He didn’t want anyone to come to the house; he didn’t want to socialise. He just wanted to be with my mum, my sister and me, and be left alone.’

Charlotte, who runs a small business, says their father felt ‘safe’ at home, away from the public’s scrutiny. ‘It was a welcome relief. The impressions... were his protectors. He found being himself really hard.’

Clare, a writer, says his choice of career was ‘at odds… with who he was’. She adds: ‘He was a very modest, very quiet, shy man. It takes enormous guts to stand up in front of an audience, especially as a comic. At times it must have been torture for him.’

It was this torture which, tragically, made Yarwood turn to drink, downing a pint or two — and gradually more — before going on stage to steady his nerves. But then he hadn’t set out to be in showbusiness.

Growing up outside Manchester, the son of a fitter and a nanny, he started doing impressions aged six, when he’d stuff a cushion up his jumper to impersonate TV’s tubby schoolboy Billy Bunter. His mother, Bridget, told him it was rude, but his father, Wilf, would be in stitches.

He failed his 11-plus and left school at 15. The teachers marked his departure by inviting him to impersonate each of them.

A skilled footballer, he toyed with the idea of a professional career, but instead took work as a dispatch clerk with a mail order firm and later as a salesman for a dress company.

But his love for comedy remained, and his spare time was spent honing his impersonations of TV stars such as Tommy Cooper and Morecambe and Wise in front of a mirror.

By chance one day, Yarwood met Royston Mayoh, a scriptwriter for the BBC children’s show Crackerjack!, and, under his tutelage, started performing in pubs, clubs and hotels.

He was a notorious pacer and used an old-fashioned carpet sweeper in place of a microphone stand to practise standing still.

Armed with his new stage skills he was soon invited to appear as a guest on TV shows such as Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the Cilla Black Show.

In 1968, three years before he got his big break with Look — Mike Yarwood!, he met Sandra Burville, a dancer. They fell in love and married the following year.

‘He lived at home with his mum and dad until he met my mum and married her,’ says Clare. ‘His mum doted on him a bit and he went straight from having everything done for him at home to marrying my mum, and she probably took on the reins of looking after him.

‘He never really had to function in the real world. We always joked about it. He wouldn’t know how to use a cash point or navigate a multi-storey carpark — all those basic things that everybody does.’

As YARWOOD’S star rose, with two young children at home, Sandra had to sacrifice her own working life. ‘Everything in our household revolved around his career,’ says Charlotte. ‘My mother, who was a stay-at-home mum, was kind of his PA. She was absolutely key in allowing him to pursue that important part of his career.’

There were perks to having a famous dad: the family moved to a mansion with a

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