Again and again this look into the camera at the end of a sketch: Diether Krebs then glugs through glasses thick as the bottoms of a Coke bottle towards the audience and makes them his accomplices, disfigured by lint-haired wigs or artificial bald heads, monstrous overdentures or no less grotesque side parting hairstyles.

This is how "the man of a thousand faces", as the comedian is aptly called by his comedy partner Iris Berben, burned himself into the memory of everyone who tuned in to his television show "Sketchup" in the eighties.

Ursula Scheer

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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But Krebs, who would have turned 75 on August 11, also acted as the "crime scene" commissioner and the son-in-law of "disgust" Alfred Tetzlaff, advanced to hit parade wonder in the role of softies Martin and played as a sleazy businessman Kampmann for the crook comedy "Bang Boom Bang" in the cinema one last big.

That was just before the turn of the millennium;

He died a few months later at the age of just in his early fifties, not without having joked with black humor: "Imagine, the 'Bild' newspaper writes: Diether Krebs has cancer".

"All-rounder" and "primal force"

His best sketches, never-before-seen pictures and new facets of what was celebrated as an “all-rounder” and “primal force” now want to be shown in a documentary by Christian Stöffler with the very immodest title “Diether Krebs – The Greatest”, through which Iris Berben guides as a colleague and friend .

Other companions include her “Sketchup” predecessor Beatrice Richter, the director of the show, Uli Stark, and the actors Dominique Horwitz and Carry Goosens.

Finally, Diether Krebs' sons Moritz and Till talk about the people behind the countless stage characters.

The story of a Ruhrpott boy, bon vivant, spouse, father, actor should appear, emphatic, but without glorifying kitsch.

The fact that Krebs was also able to play drunk so wonderfully because he liked to drink too much himself and then drive with his child in the car to the Hamburg wholesale market at night to eat Mettbrötchen is not concealed.

The fact that he also dubbed "adult films" at the beginning of his career is mentioned, as is the fact that he always called his wife at ten o'clock in the evening when he was out and about and adamantly kept the summer holidays with the family free of work.

All of this is part of the character of a bon vivant and workaholic, who threw himself into everything he set his mind to do, regardless of the consequences – even if it was splashing himself with mustard and ketchup for a number because the waitress (Beatrice Richter) “eat wild ' suggested.

Or to be shot down as a neglected Bavarian by a woman wearing a dirndl (Iris Berben) under the motto "Our village should become more beautiful".

Later, in his comedy show "Full Next to It", he explained to a would-be do-it-yourselfer, congenially embodied by Dieter Pfaff, how to do it with curtain rods, flanges and sleeves, in the role of a hardware dealer who smashes the self-confidence of his counterpart.

When the customer prefers to buy a tube of all-purpose glue, it's time again, the post-punch look at the camera,