Eric Sykes, who cultivated his talent for comedy while serving in the army in World War II, worked as a writer on radio and a writer-performer on television through the 1950s before having his greatest success, the long­ running British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) sitcom Sykes Versus TV, which debuted in 1960. The services had proved to be fertile ground for aspiring entertainers, and many of Britain's favorite stars of the 1950s had discovered their performing skills while on wartime duty. Following the end of hostilities, these talents found themselves taking their acts on stage before getting the chance to do radio or television. Sykes was one such talent. He wrote comedy scripts as well as performing and eventually scripting one of radio's most popular comedies, Educating Archie, which was a prolific breeding ground for comic talent. His many appearances on TV were usually comedy-variety specials, and he developed a format for such one-offs featuring himself as a harassed producer struggling to put on a show and meeting with various obstacles.

     But it was in 1960 that Sykes enjoyed his most enduring success, with his Sykes and a ... Comedy writer Johnny Speight collaborated with Sykes on the idea of a sitcom based loosely on Sykes existing stage persona. In the idea, Sykes would live in suburbia with his wife, getting involved in simple plots centering on everyday problems. However, Sykes soon realized that by making his partner his sister rather than his wife, he would have more scope in storylines, with either or both of them able to get romantically entangled with other people. Comedy actor Hattie Jacques, who  had  worked with Sykes on the radio, was chosen as  the sister, and the first series, written by Speight, proved to be a success. The second series, written by Sykes and other writers from storylines suggested by Speight, consolidated that success. Subsequent series  were  all  written by Sykes alone. The TV character Sykes was a proud, rather work-shy individual with somewhat childish habits, as if part of him had not grown up. His sister Hattie was formidable in stature but timid by nature and was easily inveigled into her  brother's  schemes.  It was a departure for a big woman to be portrayed on TV in this way, but it was probably Hattie Jacques's radio career that had allowed  her to formulate  such characters, as her gentle voice belied her size, allowing her to portray, on radio, small, timorous women.

     The format was simple but enduring. Each week a single idea would be taken, and every possible comedic situation of the theme would be exploited. For example, in one episode ("Sykes and a Bath"), Sykes gets his toe stuck in the tap while having a bath, and the entire program revolves around efforts to free him; in another highly memorable segment, Sykes and his sister accidentally get handcuffed together and spend the whole episode trying to do cope with ordi­nary domestic situations while remaining connected. By concentrating on this technique, Sykes was able to come up with the seemingly endless storylines in which to place his characters. 

     The series was called simply Sykes and a…, with that week’s theme filling the blank word (e.g., “Sykes and a Telephone” and “Sykes and a Holiday. It became the longest-running sitcom of its time, continuing, with one notable seven-year break between 1965 and 1972, for 127 episodes, until Hattie Jacques's death in 1980. (On its return in 1972, the program was retitled Sykes.)

During the run of the sitcom, Sykes also made a series of short, dialogue-free films for the cinema, utilizing the same structure as the TV show: one idea exploited to the limit, comedically. The most famous of these was called The Plank ( 1967) and focused just on the mishaps caused by a man carrying a large plank around-incidentally, one of the Sykes episodes also used this concept. Later he remade two of these short films, The Plank and Rhubarb ( 1969), for television: The Plank (Thames, 1979) and Rhubarb, Rhubarb (Thames, 1980). Subsequently, Sykes, now a huge comedy star because of the success of the famous sitcom, appeared in specials and the odd series but never managed to re-create the popularity of Sykes. His long­ lasting top-flight career is even more remarkable considering that he has been dogged by hearing problems since 1952 and later from sight problems as well. Despite such challenges, he has continued working space, appearing in the 200 I horror film The Others and on the London stage (also in 2001) in Ray Cooney's farce Caught in the Net.