Tim Conway is best known for his role in the show McHale’s Navy and as a regular contributor to The Carol Burnett Show. He is also a touring comedian who specialises in clean, family-friendly humour – a rarity in the comedy world!
He’s recently penned a memoir in which he explains how being dyslexic as a child directly led to his fame as an adult.
He always struggled in school with his reading and spelling, and has strong memories of those times. Rather than getting angry and frustrated, he decided to become the class clown.
“I had dyslexia, and whenever I got up to read in class, everybody laughed at me,” Conway explained. “So I thought it was kind of funny to keep it going.”
He so enjoyed making his peers laugh in school, that he decided to try and make his living from comedy. He joked in a recent interview that he thought to himself: “I’ll just go downtown and read and have people laugh.”
His knack for comedy gained him starring roles in a number of 1960s sitcoms, and he is still active today on tour and as a guest star in shows like 30 Rock. At age 71, he even won an Emmy!
For a laugh, check out this recent review of his memoir, called What’s So Funny? My Hilarious Life.
Do your struggling readers have a funny bone?
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Sarah Forrest is a Reading Specialist for Oxford Learning Solutions, publishers of the Easyread System. Easyread is a leading intervention software for children with reading difficulties, dyslexia, auditory processing weakness, and more. www.easyreadsystem.com
