The actor John Clegg, who has died aged 90, turned well-known to British audiences due to his position because the piano-playing Gunner “La Di Da” Graham within the David Croft and Jimmy Perry sitcom It Ain’t Half Sizzling Mum, which ran for eight collection between 1974 and 1981, reaching 17 million viewers on the peak of its reputation.
The present involved the antics of the misfit group of troopers who made up a Royal Artillery live performance social gathering in India (and later Burma) in the course of the ultimate months of the second world battle. Gunner Graham – bald, skinny and bespectacled – was maybe probably the most genteel of the motley crew, his well-spoken good manners and college training upsetting verbal barrages from Windsor Davies’s stentorian Sergeant Main Williams, a memorable character in a state of fixed apoplexy along with his fees (whom he referred to disparagingly as “a bunch of poofs”).
The present’s visibility in later years in comparison with different oft-repeated entries within the Croft/Perry oeuvre has been hampered by such problematic (albeit genuine) language and the truth that its authentic main character – the Indian porter Rangi Ram – was performed underneath make-up by a white actor, Michael Bates (who, born and raised in India, spoke fluent Urdu).
Perry felt that the collection – which was based mostly on the actual experiences of each writers – was the funniest they’d written and viewers steadily instructed Clegg that they loved the collection as a result of the scenario and characters chimed precisely with their very own wartime recollections. It Ain’t Half Sizzling Mum definitely bears the hallmarks of Croft and Perry’s extra enduring successes, together with affectionately wrought, well-drawn characters given authenticity and humanity by deft comedian gamers.
Clegg lent Graham a profitable haplessness, and his relationship with Williams mirrored Clegg’s personal nationwide service expertise of a sergeant main who “took the mickey out of me one thing rotten as a result of I used to be a public schoolboy within the ranks. This was very a lot the identical relationship Sergeant Main Williams and Gunner Graham had – there was numerous me in Gunner Graham.” One main distinction was that Clegg couldn’t play the piano.
He was born in Murree, Punjab Province, in British India (now Pakistan), the center youngster (and solely son) of John Clegg, a significant within the Hampshire Regiment, and his spouse, Barbara (nee Bell), a instructor.
When he was 18 months outdated, the household moved to Lowestoft, Suffolk, and later settled within the village of Shawford in Hampshire. John was educated on the Pilgrims’ college, Winchester, after which Canford college, Dorset, earlier than his nationwide service: first as a personal with the Wiltshire Regiment in Hong Kong, after which, after being chosen for officer coaching, as a second lieutenant with the Royal Hampshire Regiment.
His mom wrote pantomimes for the native novice dramatic group and so Clegg was on stage from the age of 4: it was maybe inevitable that in 1954 he enrolled at Rada in London. Upon commencement in 1957 he went into repertory on the Watford Palace theatre, which was, fortuitously, run on the time by Perry and his spouse, Gilda.
Quickly described by the Stage as “a younger actor who ought to have an excellent future” Clegg was not simply flourishing professionally at Watford – he met the actor Mavis Pugh there and the 2 married in 1959. He was busy as a jobbing character actor, totally on stage, till he bought a giant break when requested to take over from Brian Rix taking part in Hickory Wooden in Ray Cooney’s One for the Pot on the Whitehall theatre and on tour in 1964.
After It Ain’t Half Sizzling Mum, Clegg loved nice success with a one-man present, Within the Eye of the Solar, through which he performed Rudyard Kipling. It portrayed, utilizing solely Kipling’s personal phrases, the author’s life within the Raj and received a Fringe First award when it premiered in Edinburgh in 1981.
He had compiled the piece with Mavis, who additionally directed it, and after it transferred to the Gate theatre in London, he carried out it throughout Britain for the subsequent few years. “An enthralling tapestry,” wrote the Stage “[Clegg] speaks with sensitivity and dramatic effectiveness, and is ready to make his one-man manufacturing appear to be peopled by many others.” Brushes of Comet’s Hairs, about Kipling as a younger grownup in Britain, adopted in 1993, opening on the Connaught theatre, Worthing.
Different theatrical highlights included greater than a dozen pantomimes (his most repeated roles had been the Sheriff of Nottingham and Abanazer), a nationwide tour of Cooney’s Run for Your Spouse (1984) and Gonzalo in The Tempest at Ludlow Citadel (1985).
Clegg had debuted on tv in a 1961 episode of Dixon of Dock Inexperienced and his different notable roles included the disturbed Clifford Howes in Crossroads (1978) and Froth within the BBC Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1979).
He reunited with Croft and Perry in 1990 for a few episodes of You Rang M’Lord (through which Mavis was a collection common), and appeared reverse Rowan Atkinson in Mr Bean (1994) and Steve Coogan in Coogan’s Run (1995, having fun with a pleasingly meaty position within the episode The Curator).
Having made his massive display screen debut in Half a Sixpence (1967), he additionally appeared in movies together with Taking pictures Fish (1997), Preserve the Aspidistra Flying (1997) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).
Mavis died in 2006.
