ED McMAHON DEAD AT 86

Ed McMahon, one of the best known faces on American television, has died in a Los Angeles hospital after a long battle against cancer.
McMahon, who was 86, was TV's most famous second banana, sitting alongside late night chat show host Johnny Carson from 1962 to 1992, welcoming a nightly national audience with his opening cry of "Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny."
He had been in failing health and had been in hospital in January being treated for pneumonia, said a spokesman for the American TV network NBC for whom McMahon had worked for most of his television career.
McMahon was born in Detroit but spent his childhood travelling the United States as his father worked as a promoter.
"I changed towns more often than a pickpocket," McMahon recalled in a 1980 interview. "I went to some 15 schools before high school. Nobody ever knew my name, and I was painfully shy."
While he would daydream of growing up to become a radio announcer, and fantasised that a torch was a make-believe microphone, the young Ed was finally left with his grandmother Katie Fitzgerald McMahon in Lowell, Mass., where he graduated from high school in 1939 and went on to Boston College.
He made his first appearance before a microphone was as a 15-year-old "caller" at a bingo game in Maine.
After that he would spend the next three years touring the state fair and carnival circuit.
He joined the U.S. Marines in 1941 and spent two years as a flight instructor during World War II.
McMahon sold vegetable slicers on Atlantic City's boardwalk to put himself through Catholic University in Washington, DC, where he studied drama and speech.
In the 1950s McMahon hosted a late-night TV interview show in Philadelphia before working as a clown on the show Sealtest Big Top.
He then went back to being a fighter pilot during the Korean War before resumed his career in television when the war was over.
In 1959 he was hired as comic Carson's straight man on the daytime quiz show Who Do You Trust?.
When Carson succeeded American TV host Jack Paar on The Tonight Show, he took McMahon with him.
The job was to last 30 years and make McMahon a household name in the U.S.
He made several appearances in films – often as himself such as in Bewitched and The Weather Man, both in 2005, and Love Affair with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening in 1994.
But his acting credits also included films like For Which He Stands in 1996, Butterfly in 1982, The Last Remake of Beau Gests in 1977 and Fun With Dick And Jane the same year.
In the 1980s McMahon teamed up with Dick Clark on Super Bloopers and Pratical Jokes and hosted his own long-running talent show, Star Search.
He also made commercial appearances for a multitude of products.
Unfortunately in 2008, McMahon, who was married three times, and his wife made news for a series of financial woes that resulted in the near-foreclosure of their Beverly Hills-area home.
In addition to his widow, Pamela, McMahon is survived by six adult children, three sons and three daughters.