MALCOLM HARDEE, the irreverent godfather of alternative comedy, who launched the careers of stars including Paul Merton and Harry Enfield, has been found dead in the Thames.

The body of the 55-year-old comic was dragged from the river by police divers at Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, on Wednesday. The comic and promoter apparently fell from his rubber dinghy while travelling from his Wibbly Wobbly floating pub, in Surrey Quays, to his houseboat near by. He was found just feet from his home two days after friends reported him missing. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances. It is understood he had been drinking with friends on the night he drowned.

Many of the comics whose careers he helped to launch paid tribute yesterday to his pivotal role in the London comedy and cabaret scene. His friends included Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, Arthur Smith and Alexei Sayle, many of whom stepped into the spotlight at the London comedy clubs, the Tunnel Club and Up The Creek, that he had owned. He also had a two-year relationship with comedian Jo Brand. He came to national prominence when he enraged Mary Whitehouse, the good-taste campaigner, by cavorting naked apart from a pair of balloons on television. The son of a tugboat worker on the River Thames, he was born in Lewisham, southeast London, in 1950.

At school his anti-Establishment streak emerged when he became involved in petty crime, stealing Coca-Cola from a local bottling plant and setting fire to the Sunday school piano because he wanted to see “holy smoke”. In 1967, he escaped from borstal disguised as a monk and was later jailed for several offences, including cheque fraud and break-ins. After a short prison sentence he was determined to go straight. Transferring his irreverence for authority to the stage and television, he began a series of routines that were as shocking as they were funny.

In 1978 he made comedy history when he performed an expletive-ridden adult Punch and Judy act in Devon, the first show ever billed as “alternative cabaret”.

Three years later he earned the respect of other emerging alternative comedians, many of whom he knew from the Comedy Store in Soho, when he performed his naked dance routine called the Greatest Show on Legs on O.T.T., the late-night ITV programme.

Paul Merton said that Hardee had never received the recognition he deserved. “Not many people realise that [he] was a brilliant impressionist,” he said. Vic Reeves attributed much of his own success to Hardee, his first agent, who had such faith in him. “He was a terribly random person,” he said. “He would set up talent competitions with no prize telling the acts that the winner would appear on the television programme, The Tube. Then he cleared off and left me to deal with it. I had to give the winner a bag of oranges or something.

“I think falling from his dinghy is the way he would have wanted to have gone. He was always happiest when he was on the river.”

Alex Hardee yesterday said his brother used a barely seaworthy dinghy to travel the 20ft from the floating pub to his houseboat. It is also understood that he had fallen in the water on a number of occasions. Floral tributes were yesterday placed in front of the Wibbly Wobbly pub.

A post-mortem examination yesterday found the cause of death to be drowning.

MAN OF MISCHIEF

• After being barred from doing his naked balloon act at Freddie Mercury’s birthday celebration Hardee stole his birthday cake, a 12ft mock-up of a Rolls-Royce, and took it to an old people’s home
  
  
• A regular at the Edinburgh Festival, he became so fed up that The Scotsman’s critic did not turn up to his show that he wrote his own five-star review and got Arthur Smith, a friend and fellow comedian, to submit it by telephone. His show played to a full house for the rest of its run
  
  
• When banned from charging people to see his show because it was on unlicensed premises he charged them to leave
  
  
• He danced naked save for two balloons on the ITV sketch show O.T.T. in the Eighties

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