He was born in Liverpool, England, and began his stage career at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bolton, Lancashire. After a series of bit parts in British films, he made his name as the Reverend Mervyn Noote in the British sitcom, All Gas and Gaiters (1966), which was considered rather controversial because the main characters were senior churchmen (the Bishop, his chaplain Noote, and the archdeacon) who got into various scrapes as a result of their general incompetence.
By the time the series finished, Nimmo was so closely associated with the clergy in the minds of the audience that he went on to play a bungling monk in another BBC sitcom, Oh, Brother!. Despite abandoning the upper-class accent for this role, he continued to be offered parts as clergymen and aristocrats. He starred in the West End musical, Charlie Girl, which contained a scene specially written to allow him to perform his party trick of wiggling his toes. More than just an actor, he became a regular on the radio show, Just a Minute. His death, from pneumonia, occurred a few weeks after a domestic fall which left him in a coma at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.
DerekNimmo, who has died in hospital aged 68, two months after a fall at his home, was an example of a now extinct English species: the good-looking funny-man actor who can - protected by his looks and height -- bumble, stutter and wriggle without losing the respect of the audience.
On TV DerekNimmo was in high rating ecclesiastical comedy series like All Gas and Gaiters, Hells Bells and Oh Brother, O Father, where his personality was crucial in ensuring that stuttering and gangly vicars or monks did not offend the most touchy members of a mass audience.
DerekNimmo was born in Liverpool, the son of an insurance man. He had the good fortune to attend the city's Quarry Bank School, later a comprehensive but at that time a grammar school run by a headmaster, RF Bailey, who believed in opening up his pupils' awareness of life rather than merely the classroom.
DerekNimmo appeared on stage in many West End plays and starred in the musical Charlie Girl, which contained a scene specially written to allow him to perform his party trick of wiggling his toes.