| Roger Kitter 1949 -
2015
 Entertainer.
Born 20 October 1949. Educated at
Clifton College Bristol
. He has enjoyed a career in show business which has spanned thirty-six
years. It is very rare for any performer to be able to pursue a career which
combines stand up comedy and acting, but he has managed to do this very
successfully, in addition to performing as a radio presenter, game show host
and voice-over man.
Roger has appeared many times at the famous London Palladium "opening" for
international stars including Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Frankie Valli and
The Four Seasons, Vic Damone, Josephine Baker, Petula Clark, and the
legendary Perry Como. He has also starred in West End farces such as Run For
Your Wife, Pyjama Tops and What No Pyjamas? and toured nationally in the
farce Women Of A Certain Age and appeared as "Oberon" in William
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Roger received rave reviews when he
starred as Howard Cunningham in the musical version of the it TV series
Happy Days.
As a presenter, auctioneer, and after dinner speaker appears at numerous
corporate events and golf days and is regularly to be seen at most of the
top West End hotels for clients such as Top Shop, Coca Cola, The Insolvency
Practitioners Association and The Ford Motor Company, to name but a few.
Television and Radio have played a major part in Roger's career, constantly
appearing in shows such as Birds of a Feather, Get Back, Goodnight
Sweetheart, and The New Statesman. He has presented sketches in The Frost
Report, Generation Game, Jim Davidson Presents and It's Lulu and was a
regular panellist in Punchlines. He is probably best known for playing the
cowardly Italian officer Captain Alberto Bertorelli in the hugely successful
BBC series 'Allo 'Allo, which ran for ten years. He also starred in the West
End version of the show which also toured nationally and culminated in a
record breaking run in Australia. In 1997 the team got together for the last
time to perform the show for the season in Bournemouth.
Roger has recorded numerous television commercials including: Lego (Tommy
Cooper voice), The Sun Newspaper (different characters), Smiths Potato Tubes
( as John McEnroe), Thomson Local ( different character voices) and
Millennium Dome (the voice of the brain). He has appeared at numerous
Corporate Dinners, Golf Days, Auctions, and Presentations.
A regular BBC Radio 2 broadcaster Roger starred for eight years in the
series The Impressionists before developing his career by devising his own
BBC Radio 2 quiz The Names the Game, which ran for nine years. |
He made
quite an impact on the music scene in July 1982 with his top twenty hit
record, a send up of tennis ace John McEnroe called Chalk Dust -The Umpire
Strikes Back was released under the name of 'The Brat'. Not only was it
successful in the UK, it reached No.2 in Holland, No.4 in Belgium, and No.8
in South Africa.In 2002 Roger undertook the first half of a mammoth 49-night
tour with Jim Davidson celebrating Jim's 25 years in show business. He
continued throughout the summer and the remainder of the year doing concert
dates and corporate entertaining until pantomime , in which he starred as
Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington at the Bristol Hippodrome. He is
constantly in demand for pantomime and is acknowledged to be one of the
country's top panto "Dames"!
During the summer 2003 Roger spread the time
evenly, five days a week, between Bournemouth, Weymouth, and Great Yarmouth,
doing concerts, once again with Jim Davidson, and then toured during the
autumn months until appearing in the pantomime Aladdin at the Mayflower
Theatre Southampton.
In the spring of 2004 The BBC repeated Spywatch, a ten part children's
series in which Roger plays "Professor CD Rom", alongside Keith Barron. The
year 2004 also saw him star in his first feature film role with Summer
Phoenix, sister of the late River Phoenix. The comedy, called Susie Gold, in
which Roger played Tony, the promiscuous father-in-law of Susie's sister,
was a major release in March.
Currently, Roger is co-writing a six part, one hour comedy/drama series
about the life of his father, known as 'Sir' Leonard, who was a colourful
character known throughout the racing and casino world. This is a project in
which he will also take the role of executive producer, and may even take a
supporting role. At a similar time he has been asked to do the narration on
a one hour documentary, for the UK and American markets, about the life of a
larger than life property millionairess with whom Roger went to school, and
who is a close friend.
The 2004-5 pantomime season saw Roger co-starring in Aladdin alongside Brian
Blessed at The Derngate Theatre, Northampton.
He has been happily married to former actress Karan David for 29 years and
they have a 15-year-old daughter, Chloe, and a Yorkshire terrier called
Bertie Buttons.
Roger Daniel Kitter was initiated into Chelsea Lodge on
17th March 1995.
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