William George Peter Glaze (17 September 1917 – 20 February 1983) was an English comedian and comic actor, whose greatest popularity was on children's television in the 1960s and 1970s.
Life and career
Peter Glaze was born in London, the son of an actor-manager. He began his career in entertainment as a comedian at the Windmill Theatre in 1946. He was the Crazy Gang's understudy. He appeared in a supporting role in the Crazy Gang's final film, Life Is a Circus, in 1958.
From 1960 until his retirement in the early 1980s, he featured regularly in the children's television series Crackerjack, alongside hosts Eamonn Andrews and Leslie Crowther in the 1960s, and Michael Aspel, Don Maclean and Bernie Clifton in the 1970s. In Crackerjack sketches, he usually played a pompous or middle-class character, who would always get exasperated with his partner Don Maclean during the course of the sketch. Maclean would then give an alliterative reply, such as "Don't get your knickers in a knot" or "Don't get your tights in a twist". He regularly uttered the expression "D'oh!", originated by James Finlayson in Laurel and Hardy films, long before it became associated with cartoon character Homer Simpson. Short in stature, plump and bespectacled, Glaze often took part in slapstick routines on the show, as "a human punchbag for punchlines."