The actor Ian Lavender, who has died aged 77, performed the awkward, impulsive Personal Frank Pike within the long-running BBC comedy Dad’s Military, and was the final surviving member of the forged who portrayed Captain Mainwaring’s Residence Guard platoon.
A lot of the part-time troopers depicted within the collection, which ran from 1968 to 1977, have been exempted from call-up to the military in the course of the second world conflict due to superior age. Pike, their junior typically by a number of many years, had been excused due to his weak chest, and at all times wore the headscarf insisted upon by his widowed mum, Mavis.
Despite their foibles and foolishness, Mainwaring’s pomposity and the frequent slapstick sequences, the heroes of Dad’s Military have been brave males ready to offer their lives to guard their nation, and it was this innate the Aristocracy that lifted the collection, written by David Croft and Jimmy Perry, to greatness. At its peak it had greater than 18 million weekly viewers, and continues to be repeatedly rerun.
There have been many catchphrases – Lance Corporal Jones’s “Don’t panic!”, Personal Frazer’s “We’re doomed!” and Sergeant Wilson’s languid “Do you suppose that’s sensible, sir?” – and the best-remembered belongs to the gangster movie-fixated Pike, although he didn’t utter it himself: Mainwaring’s weary “You silly boy!”
Pike was additionally concerned in Dad’s Military’s most often quoted joke. “What’s your identify?” snarls the German U-boat commander who has been captured by the platoon. “Don’t inform him, Pike,” shouts Mainwaring. There was typically nice subtlety within the inter-platoon relationships, finest exemplified by that of Pike and Wilson (John Le Mesurier). Wilson, whom Pike calls Uncle Arthur, is Mrs Pike’s lodger, and is perpetually fussing across the boy, ensuring his scarf is on tight and gently steering him away from hazard. It was not till the tip of the ultimate collection that Lavender requested Croft if “Uncle Arthur” was really Pike’s father. “After all,” replied Croft.
Born in Birmingham, Ian was the son of Edward, a policeman, and Kathleen (nee Johnson), a housewife; his mom typically took him to see pantomimes, selection exhibits and Saturday morning cinema, which gave him his first ambitions to turn out to be an actor. After performing in lots of faculty drama productions at Bournville boys’ technical faculty he was accepted, with the assistance of a grant from town of Birmingham, by the Bristol Outdated Vic performing faculty. Clearly removed from being a silly boy, he handed 12 O-levels and 4 A-levels. “The one cause I don’t have a level is as a result of I went to drama faculty,” he stated years later.
He made his first tv look quickly after he graduated from Bristol in 1968, enjoying an aspiring author whose household need him to get a correct job, in Ted Allan’s play for the Half Hour Story collection, Flowers at My Ft, with Angela Baddeley and Jane Hylton.
In the identical 12 months, he was forged as Pike, becoming a member of the seasoned veterans of comedy and the classics Le Mesurier, Arthur Lowe (Mainwaring), Clive Dunn (Jones), John Laurie (Frazer), James Beck (Personal Walker), Arnold Ridley (Personal Godfrey) and Invoice Pertwee as Air Raid Warden Hodges. Janet Davies performed Mrs Pike.
Whereas Dad’s Military catapulted Lavender to nationwide fame on the age of twenty-two, the function of Pike haunted him for the remainder of his lengthy profession. Not that he had any complaints.
Requested in 2014 if he received fed up with a lifetime of getting “silly boy” referred to as out to him on the street, he replied: “I’m very happy with Dad’s Military. For those who requested me ‘Would you prefer to be in a sitcom that was watched by 18 million folks, was on display screen for 10 years, and can create numerous be just right for you and supply not only for you however in your kids for the following 40-odd years?’ – which is what occurred – I’d be a idiot to say ‘Bugger off.’ I’d be a idiot to have regrets.”
After Dad’s Military, Lavender made additional tv appearances, together with Mr Massive (1977), with Peter Jones and Prunella Scales, and in 1983 he revived Pike for the BBC radio sitcom It Sticks Out Half a Mile, a sequel to Dad’s Military, nevertheless it was not a hit and lasted just one collection. In distinction, the unique collection, with a lot of the common forged, had been rerecorded for radio from 1974 to 1976 and proved very fashionable.
He was additionally within the BBC TV collection Come Again Mrs Noah (1977-78), co-written by Croft; and performed Ron in a brand new model of The Glums (1979) for London Weekend Tv, tailored from Frank Muir and Denis Norden’s unique radio scripts of the Fifties. There have been extra smallish tv elements within the 80s, reminiscent of two episodes of Sure, Minister, and bits in Holding Up Appearances, Goodnight Sweetheart, Rising Damp and Casualty. He starred within the unsuccessful BBC collection The Howdy Goodbye Man in 1984 and offered the lead voice within the kids’s cartoon collection PC Pinkerton in 1988.
He was additionally in numerous quiz exhibits, together with Cluedo (1990). On Celeb Mastermind, broadcast on BBC1 on New Yr’s Day 2009, when the presenter John Humphrys requested him to state his identify, a fellow contestant, Rick Wakeman, shouted: “Don’t inform him, Pike!”
Along with co-starring within the first movie model of Dad’s Military (1971), he appeared in numerous low-level British intercourse farces of the Seventies, together with Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975), Keep it up Behind (1975), Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976) and Adventures of a Personal Eye (1976). He additionally starred within the thriller 31 North 62 East (2009). “I used to be near getting two very huge films within the 70s,” he stated with out rancour in 2014, “however ultimately they stated: ‘We are able to’t get previous Personal Pike.’”
Lavender’s second best-known function was his delicate and sympathetic portrayal of Derek Harkinson, Pauline Fowler’s homosexual good friend, within the BBC cleaning soap EastEnders from 2001 to 2005, and once more in 2016-17.
Along with numerous stay Dad’s Military productions, his stage work included the Peter Corridor Firm’s The Service provider of Venice, with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in 1989, touring because the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Present in 2005, Monsignor Howard within the London Palladium manufacturing of the musical Sister Act in 2009, The Shawshank Redemption on the Edinburgh fringe in 2013, and his personal one-man present of reminiscences, Don’t Inform Him, Pike.
Lavender had an incredible admiration for Buster Keaton, and was an professional on the silent comic’s profession. In 2011 he launched Keaton’s Sherlock Jr (1924) on the Slapstick silent comedy pageant in Bristol, and commented that discovering Keaton’s grave within the Fountain Lawns cemetery in Hollywood had been one in all his life’s particular moments.
In 2016 a brand new cinema model of Dad’s Military was launched, with Toby Jones as Mainwaring and Invoice Nighy as Wilson. Personal Pike was performed by Blake Harrison, and Lavender was promoted to play Brigadier Pritchard. In a touching in-joke, his youthful face was additionally seen on an commercial poster in a avenue scene.
Lavender is survived by his second spouse, Miki Hardy, whom he married in 1993; by his sons, Sam and Daniel, from his first marriage, to the actor Suzanne Kerchiss, which led to divorce; and by two granddaughters.
Arthur Ian Lavender, actor, born 16 February 1946; died 2 February 2024
