Bruce Forsyth’s record-breaking career in showbiz… in video

Sir Bruce Forsyth has entered the Guinness book of World Records for having the longest career of any male TV entertainer. So we hunted on YouTube for nuggets of seldom-seen Brucie gold from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s…

Bruce on the big screen! Here he is in the 1968 movie Star!, hoofing up a tornado alongside Beryl Reid and, if you please, Julie Andrews.

Brucie returned to The Generation Game in the 1990s, but the classic era for the BBC1 have-a-go game show was 20 years previously. His singing voice introduces a 1972 episode of “Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game”, a title that makes the programme sound like Bruce’s backing band. After a trademark Atlas muscle-man pose with added leg flick, Bruce is off and charming in his wildly clashing jacket and trousers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99g1LkglghY

Decades of board-treading in the West End left Bruce well-equipped to deal with hecklers. In 1976, he gives a masterclass to a nervous young comedian called Fozzie…

To the States for Hot Streak, a short-lived 1986 attempt to crack the US game show market. Bruce presides in manly fashion as teams of men and women compete in an elaborate word-description game, involving headphones and tapping each other on the shoulder. There’s loads of cash at stake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsTD9ZYB2nE

Bruce in total command during a one-man show at the London Palladium. He picks four blokes from the audience and makes them join him in a top-hat-and-cane dance number. Apart from one politically incorrect ad lib from Forsyth, which is a bit off even for 1991, his banter with the punters is brilliant.

One of Strictly Come Dancing’s best ever Brucie Bonuses: Forsyth and his spiritual heir Anton du Beke, performing Me and My Shadow together in 2008.