Professor Nitwitty and Gerry Gee

Denzil had a fondness for gadgets and eccentric inventions. He created the character of Professor Nitwitty for the “Happy Show” — the childrens program seen each weekday afternoon on GTV9. The character later morphed into Professor Ratbaggy, played at different times by Denzil and his colleague and creative collaborator Ernie Carroll, who shared responsibility for producing the Happy Show (later to become the Tarax Happy Show).

Having studied radio engineering early in his career, and with his own home workshop adorned with a pot pourri of old electrical bits and pieces, Denzil would sometimes turn his hand to fashioning props for these sketches.

In this photo from the late 1950s we see Denzil as Professor Nitwitty, presumably demonstrating some new invention to Gerry Gee and his “friend” Ron Blaskett.