- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLynne Shepherd
- Height5′ 7½″ (1.71 m)
- Britain's clown queen of comedy during the 1980s, Marti Caine's brand of humour combined an appealing dizziness with an endearing vunerability. Often compared to America's Phyllis Diller, she paved the way for women working in British light entertainment, both in nightclubs and in television.
Born Lynn Shepherd in Sheffield, Caine attended several schools in Yorkshire before working as a model, croupier and petrol pump attendant. At 18, she made her first professional appearance as a comedienne in a club in Rotheram and spent the next 15 years playing the Northern working men's club circuit.
She became an overnight household name at the age of 30 on the TV talent show, New Faces (1973). Viewers loved her gawky figure and glamorous looks and she went on to star in her own BBC2 TV show, The Marti Caine Show (1979), throughout the eighties.
In 1982, Caine spent 18 months starring in a stage show in South Africa which caused uproar from anti-apartheid demonstrators and, for a time, she was blacklisted by the United Nations.
During the latter part of her career, she combined TV work with stage shows in Britain and, for 3 years from 1986, was a judge on Central TV's New Faces (1973). She was popular in pantomime and made the part of the "Red Queen" in "Snow White and The 7 Dwarfs" her own, playing in Cambridge, Bath, Bournemouth and London.
A gifted and talented comedienne, Caine was an incisive and intelligent performer who often surprised her critics with her depth as an actress.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Patrick Newley
- SpousesKenneth Ives(1984 - November 4, 1995) (her death)Malcolm Stringer(1962 - 1979) (divorced)
- Marti attended Beck Road Infant School in Sheffield.
- Has 3 sons.
- Used to be 11 stone but lost a lot of weight when she was pregnant with her eldest and has never been able to regain it.
- I've also found that, since I've had my nose done, I can wear all sorts of things I couldn't wear before. With my outsize conk, I couldn't wear my hair up and off my face, and I couldn't wear hats because they made my nose look even bigger. My new nose makes me feel much more feminine, even pretty; I'd never felt pretty before. Since I was 16, I started losing weight and as I got smaller, my nose seemed to get bigger.
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