Peter Charlesworth, popular theatrical agent to the stars

Barbara Windsor came off stage at the Côte d’Azur, a Latin-American cabaret club in Soho, and was mingling with the customers when a smartly dressed man approached her. “My name is Peter Charlesworth,” he told her. “I’m a song plugger at the moment, but I’m going to set up as an agent. I’d like to handle you.”
“That’s what they all say,” she retorted, shrugging off his proposal and walking away to get changed. He was still there when she returned. “No, seriously, I think you’re terrific. I think you’ve got what it takes,” he told her, adding that he would return with a friend to see her show.
The following week he did just that, accompanied by Benny Hill, who was starting to become well known on television. “There’s this little blonde girl who’s just fabulous. She sings, she dances, she can do comedy and work the audience,” he had told Hill.
Charlesworth, or PC as he was known throughout the entertainment world, was one of the country’s most successful theatrical agents, representing everyone from Judy Garland, whom he introduced to English fish and chips, and Petula Clark to the Frankies Howerd and Vaughan as well as a clutch of Dad’s Army stars. However, in 1963 he turned down the opportunity to represent a little-known club singer called Barbra Streisand. In the acknowledgments to his memoir the actor and singer Robin Askwith thanks Charlesworth “for paying me 85 per cent of what I earn”.
His philosophy was one of total involvement with those he represented. “The basic quality over and above job finding must be a deep consuming interest in the professional wellbeing of each person you represent,” he told The Stage in 1985. On occasions this “deep consuming interest” extended to his clients’ personal lives, such as when he was a witness at Shirley Bassey’s wedding to Kenneth Hume in 1961.
He also played cupid for Joan Collins and Anthony Newley, introducing them during lunch at the White Elephant, a glamorous showbusiness restaurant in Mayfair. They were married in 1963, remaining together for eight years. Collins described Charlesworth in her memoir as a “brilliant negotiator”, adding: “I would say he’s been my best agent … I have had some really bad agents, business managers, financial advisers — and husbands.”
Charlesworth’s strength lay in seeing the star quality in those who could not spot it in themselves. “Artists limit themselves by not being fully conscious of their own proper potential. It is my place to play the hunch, point out the possibilities, bring about the surprises,” he said. Windsor (obituary, December 11, 2020) described how he did just that for her. “He saw me as an actress, capable of both comedy and drama, and insisted I went for auditions for stage roles,” she wrote in her autobiography All of Me (2000).
He could also be firm. When Windsor wanted to pull out of a touring production of a play called The Gimmick, having been dropped for the forthcoming West End run, he talked her into staying. “Show them that you’re going to fulfil your contract, your two weeks’ notice. Behave like the professional I know you are,” he told her. On another occasion she walked out on the director Joan Littlewood in a huff and went straight to his office, “where I got all my anger off my chest”. He told her to “calm down, think of the opportunity I might be chucking away”. The following morning she returned to Littlewood’s studio.
On other occasions he was there to pick up the pieces after a disaster. When Lionel Bart’s musical Twang!!, a spoof on the Robin Hood story, collapsed in 1966 after only 43 performances, he urged Windsor to return to the stage as quickly as possible. “There’s a saying in the theatre that if you’re going to have a flop, have a big one. And boy, have you had a big one,” he told her. “People will remember you for that. Now we’ve got to make them forget it.” Before long she was in Come Spy With Me directed by Ned Sherrin, while her career in the Carry On comedy films was thriving.
Even when clients decided it was time to move on, Charlesworth remained gracious. Windsor did that towards the end of 1969, in part because her gangster husband Ronnie Knight (obituary, June 17, 2023) was jealous that she spent more time talking with PC than to him. “Peter, bless his heart, was smashing about it,” she wrote. “He left the door open for me to go back if things didn’t work out. And the last thing he said was, ‘You have this wonderful, varied talent, Barbara. Don’t let them pigeonhole you as that Carry On bird. And never take her on stage.’ ”
Thomas Peter Charlesworth was born in Fulham, west London, in 1931, the son of Thomas Charlesworth, who worked for the architectural blacksmith Thomas Crowther, and his wife Margaret (née Jupp). They separated when he was young and he left school at 15 to support his mother by working as a pageboy at Claridge’s. Moving on, he became a waiter at a showbusiness restaurant in Soho, where he began making contacts in the entertainment industry. Despite being a notoriously bad speller, he was also news editor for New Musical Express.
Jock Jacobsen, the celebrity agent and producer, recognised his charisma and in 1957 offered him the opportunity to work with stars such as Max Bygraves, the singer, comedian and variety performer. However, he was paid on commission only and did not receive a salary. While with Jacobsen he produced Hammer’s big-screen version of Man at the Top (1973); later he made a cameo appearance in Ray Cooney’s farce Run for Your Wife (2012).
After Jacobsen’s death, Charlesworth struck out on his own, opening Peter Charlesworth & Associates in 1979 and taking with him several clients. Bygraves refused to go with him saying: “You remind me of a second-hand car salesman.” He was joined in 1995 by Sharry Clark, a former Bluebell Girl and stage manager. After his retirement in 2016 she rebranded the business as Sharry Clark Artists.
Charlesworth enjoyed female company, but never married and had no immediate survivors. He ate out almost every day of the year, leaving the beautiful kitchen in his Holland Park home as pristine as the day it was installed. He shared an interest in Napoleon-era history with the actor Michael Gambon (obituary, September 28, 2023) and the two of them spent many hours discussing antique firearms and weaponry. He even owned a lock of the emperor’s hair. He was also a jazz enthusiast and a skilled poker player. “He always bloody won,” recalled Peter Benda, his lifelong friend, with feeling.
Peter Charlesworth, theatrical agent, was born on April 3, 1931. He died from complications of vascular dementia on July 8, 2024, aged 93