Kenny Baker
I do enjoy doing pantomime at Christmas. If I didn't do it, I'd feel as though I was missing something.Collection: Christmas
I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.Collection: Age
I miss being able to play my instruments - I'm too much of a physical wreck these days. Playing the vibraphone gives me backache, leg ache, and everything-else ache, and the asthma means I no longer have enough puff to play harmonica.
I've been in show business for 50, no, 60 years. I was approached in school to join a variety act.
I skated in ice shows all over Europe and South Africa for 20 years. I love to ice skate.
I started out Ice skating with 'Holiday On Ice' and just got offered the part of R2 by chance.
I'm the smallest man in show business, and I've got the smallest bird in Britain nesting in my garden.
Everything in my house has had to be specially adapted, from the height of the bed to the positioning of doorknobs. Even my Rolls Royce had special stacked pedals and an extra-low steering wheel.
I used to tour the theatres and clubs with an 18-foot luxury caravan strapped to the back of my Roller - it was a damn site more comfortable than most hotels.
Everything went wrong for me in the 1990s.
There are not very many opportunities for little people in the industry. There are small parts and character parts, but we don't get the girl-at-the-end-of-the-film kind of parts... but I was quite happy with what I was doing.
I didn't really get involved too heavily with being an actual film person.
I've always been a cabaret-vaudeville artist - an hourlong cabaret and a floor show in a hotel - somebody like that. That's my main forte.
I get about three letters a day from all over the world.
I had a day off, and I was walking down the street one day, and this Mercedes pulls up alongside me, and Alec Guinness leaned out and said, 'What are you doing, Kenny?' I said, 'I'm just walking around,' and he said, 'Do you want to come and see an oasis with my wife and I?' There was nothing arrogant or flash about him at all.
When TV came in, it closed a lot of theatres. Even the 'ice' shows melted away.
They don't always use dwarfs, unfortunately. They shouldn't be allowed to do that! How dare they do 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' and not have dwarfs!
There just aren't many little guys who are good actors. They don't get the training; they don't go to RADA. There just aren't the parts for dwarfs, and if you like it or not, you're typecast as a dwarf.
I started out Ice skating with Holiday On Ice and just got offered the part of R2 by chance.Collection: Holiday
And now, with the aid of this common beer glass, I shall play my fifty guinea solo.Collection: Beer