Hamilton Camp, 70; Folk Singer, Comic and TV and Movie Actor

"Short jokes are my life," Camp told the Post in 1997. "It's like shooting fish in a barrel."

His last television role was as a carpenter on ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

Camp was born Oct. 30, 1934, in London. After World War II, he moved to Canada and then to Long Beach with his mother and sister, and the siblings performed in USO shows. In 1946, he made his first movie, "Bedlam" with Boris Karloff.

On Broadway, he appeared in several productions, including the original "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" in the mid-1960s and "Paul Sills' Story Theater" in the early 1970s. He also toured Europe and Canada in various productions and performed at theaters around Los Angeles.

More recently, he was Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a 2004 staging of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" at A Noise Within theater in Glendale. The Times called Camp "a master of the discreet double take ... outrageously silly but never cheap."

Earlier this year, he finished his final film, "Hard Four," and completed a CD, "Sweet Joy," about the fragility of life and his love for Rasjadah, his wife of 40 years who died in 2002. The CD will be released in November.

In addition to his son, Camp is survived by three other sons, two daughters and 13 grandchildren, all of whom live in the Los Angeles area. Plans for his memorial service will be posted on his website, www.hamiltoncamp.com.