He started out on radio in the 1950s but after his transition to television his popularity grew through the 1960s and 1970s.
The long-running The Dick Emery Show, which was on TV from 1963-81, involved Emery dressing up as various characters.
These included the buck-toothed vicar, sex-starved spinster Hettie, and Clarence, an outrageously camp man who coined the phrase "Hallo Honky Tonk".