Editing It's That Man Again (section)

===The Diver===
{{Quote box |bgcolor=#e6e6ff|salign=center | quote =<big>'''The Diver'''</big><br />Played by Horace Percival<br />Series 3–8<br />Catchphrases:<br />• ''Don't forget the diver''<br />• ''Every penny makes the water warmer''<br />• ''I'm going down now, sir''.{{sfn|Kavanagh|1975|p=49}}||align=right| width=30%}}

The Diver was drawn from a real-life figure familiar to Handley's generation of [[River Mersey|Merseysiders]]. The one-legged diver and swimmer [[Frank Gadsby]] was well known at [[New Brighton, Merseyside|New Brighton]] in the first decades of the 20th century for high-diving off [[New Brighton Pier, Wallasey|the pier]], watched by what the ''[[Liverpool Echo]]'' called "countless boatloads of people"{{sfn|"Aeroplane Dive". ''Liverpool Echo''}} He would solicit donations with phrases appropriated by his caricature in ''ITMA'': "Don't forget the diver, sir, don't forget the diver. Every penny makes the water warmer!"{{sfn|"Don't Forget the Diver!". ''Liverpool Echo''}}{{efn|In 1919 Gadsby, known as "Professor" or "Peggy" Gadsby, went one better by diving into the [[River Mersey]] from a [[biplane]].{{sfn|"Aeroplane Dive". ''Liverpool Echo''}} To make his act more spectacular he sometimes oiled himself and set fire to the oil before diving in.{{sfn|"Seeing the Fashions at New Brighton". ''Liverpool Echo''}} When he retired, he was succeeded by another diver, Bernard Pykett, who had lost a leg in the [[First World War]].{{sfn|"Have a thought!". ''Liverpool Echo''}} When the pier was reconstructed in 1930 the local authority prohibited diving, and, as the ''Echo'' put it, "''Don't forget the diver!'' The familiar appeal for the one-legged diver&nbsp;... will no longer be heard by arriving trippers".{{sfn|"Don't Forget the Diver!". ''Liverpool Echo''}} Handley was not the only Liverpudlian comedian to celebrate the diver: he is mentioned in a 1942 song by [[Arthur Askey]]: "First class, third class, guard and engine driver/Sailors, whalers, don't forget the diver".{{sfn|Askey, "The Flu-Germ"|loc=Event occurs at 1 minute 14 seconds}}}}

In ''ITMA'' the Diver was what Worsley called a "crossing" character: he would cross a scene for a few seconds, often to interrupt Handley at a particularly inopportune moment:

{{blockindent|There would be a gurgling sound, a few bubbles, and up would bob the Diver. His few words very soon became part of the country's vocabulary, as did so many of our phrases, and it was not long before "Don't forget the Diver" was heard on all sides, in bars, in buses, on stations, even from disembodied voices in the black-out, and practically no lift descended without someone saying in those weary tones "I'm going down now, sir!"{{sfn|Worsley|1949|p=19|}}|}}