Stylish pop art print of drag icon Dick Emery who starred in the 1972 comedy film “Ooh… You Are Awful” as many of his beloved characters including the peroxide blonde Mandy with the famous catchphrase “Ooh, you are awful – but I like you.”

Dick Emery once stated “I was better in drag than combat gear” so, rather than join the army, Emery created Vera Thin, his drag homage to the Forces’ Sweetheart.

His performance in ITV’s “The Army Game”, the show that partly inspired the very first Carry On film “Carry On Sergeant“, led to a contract with the BBC to create his own show at Television Centre. The “The Dick Emery Show” went on to become one of the BBC’s longest-running shows, from 1963 until 1981, during which time his characters and their catchphrases became common parlance.

The series saw him become a household name, crowned the BBC’s television personality of the year in 1972, the same year the spin-off film “Ooh… You Are Awful” was released.

As well as his own television shows, Dick Emery has had a long film career, appearing in productions including “Follow a Star” with Norman Wisdom, Hattie Jacques, & Fenella Fielding, “Light Up The Sky” with Ian Carmichael, Tommy Steele, & Benny Hill, “Mrs. Gibbons’ Boys” and “Baby Love” with Diana Dors, “Crooks Anonymous” with Julie Christie, Stanley Baxter, James Robertson Justice, and a very young Dennis Waterman, “The Fast Lady” with Frankie Howerd & Bernard Cribbins, “The Wrong Arm of the Law” with Peter Sellers and Michael Caine as an extra, “The Big Job”, a Carry On film in all but name, with Sid James, Joan Sims, Jim Dale, & Edina Ronay, The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”, and Joe Orton‘s “Loot” with Richard Attenborough.