Wisdom, Sir Norman Joseph, OBE, born 04-02-1915 in the Marylebone district of London. His parents were Frederick, a chauffeur, and Maud Wisdom, born Targett, a dressmaker who often worked for West End theatres, and had made a dress for Queen Mary. The couple married in Marylebone on 15-07-1912. Wisdom had an elder brother, Frederick Thomas “Fred” Wisdom, 13-12-1912, died 01-07-1971. The family resided at 91 Fernhead Road, Maida Vale W9, where they slept in one room. Wisdom quipped, “I was born in very sorry circumstances. Both of my parents were very sorry.” He and his brother were raised in extreme poverty and were frequently hit by their father. After a period in a children’s home in Deal, Kent,
Wisdom ran away when he was 11 but returned to become an errand boy in a grocer’s shop on leaving school at 13. Having been kicked out of his home by his father and becoming homeless, in 1929 he walked to Cardiff, Wales, where he became a cabin boy in the Merchant Navy.
He later also worked as a coal miner, waiter and page boy. Wisdom first enlisted into the King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster)
,
but his mother had him discharged as he was under age. He later re-enlisted as a drummer boy in the 10th Royal Hussars
of the British Army.
In 1930 he was posted to Lucknow, in the United Provinces of British India, as a bandsman. There he gained an education certificate, rode horses, became the flyweight boxing champion
of the British Army in India and learned to play the trumpet and clarinet. At the outbreak of World War II, Wisdom was sent to work in a communications centre in a command bunker in London where he connected telephone calls from war leaders to the prime minister. He met Winston Churchill
on several occasions when asked for updates on incoming calls, and once was disciplined for calling him Winnie. Wisdom then joined the Royal Corps of Signals
and performed a similar military function at the unit headquarters based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Whilst performing a shadow boxing routine in the army gym, Wisdom discovered he had a talent for entertainment, and began to develop his skills as a musician and stage entertainer, like the banjo player George Formby.













In 1940 aged 25, at a NAAFI entertainment night, during a dance routine,









Death and burial ground of Wisdom, Sir Norman Joseph.
Freda Wisdom died in Brighton in 1992. In the six months prior to his death, Wisdom suffered a series of strokes, causing a decline in his physical and mental health. He died on 04-10-2010 at Abbotswood nursing home on the Isle of Man at the age of 95.





