There can be few people left on Earth who don’t know the gentleman’s gentleman came from a working class London family, but that hoary old cliché points the way to a career a tad deeper than endless suave doorbell impersonations. If you want unvarnished Phillips, try one of those Ealing ‘working milieu’ dramas like Pool of London, with Les as a reasonably rough jack tar hanging round the docks. Ironically, it was a progression up the naval and military ranks, via various films, which saw more use of that toppermost accent, culminating in the ‘left hand down a bit’ shenanigans of The Navy Lark. Then came the Carry Ons and Doctors, and his character names became ever more fruitily baroque: Dandy Fosdyke, Kingsley Binns, Dennis Proudfoot, Gilbert Bodley. A body of work too distinctive for BAFTA, it seems. Tchah!
FINEST HOUR: Running the whole gamut in Doctor in Love: chatting up fillies, acting drunk, panicking in a cowardly funk, and adding at least another 100{30e2395aaf6397fd02d2c79d91a1fe7cbb73158454674890018aee9c53a0cb96} of worth to the production in the process.
Neville Jackson
July 18, 2018 at 7:44 pm
And then later came “Chancer”…to which he just hammed it up….”where are you Crane you snivelling little shit…” “Ding Dong” came out once, maybe twice…”The man has personally relieved me of HALF A MILLION POUNDS…find it Piers…I don’t give a fish’s tit WHO you tread on…” bloody genius…