SPEDE 1930-2001 R.I.P.

Pertti "Spede" Pasanen, the grand old man of Finnish comedy, passed away on Friday 8 September, 2001.

Most people outside Finland don't know Spede but he became a national institution with a career spanning for over forty years: as a comedian, writer, actor, film director and producer, TV game show host and even an inventor.

pHinnWeb's own favourites are Spede's innovative 1960s film comedies, though his most well-known character remains Uuno Turhapuro ("Numbskull Emptybrook"), the ragged, lazy-to-the-bone star of a series of feature films, as immortalised by the actor Vesa-Matti Loiri (image on the right).

SpedeNET (in Finnish)

Spede Pasanen @ kirjasto.sci.fi (in English)

Spede Pasanen @ fi.wikipedia.org (in Finnish)

Spede @ International Movie DataBase

Uuno Turhapuro - official (in Finnish)

Uuno Turhapuro - unofficial (in Finnish)