Len’s sitcom trait – admittedly a technically brilliant and very funny one – of talking at 200 miles per hour, often seeming to speak other cast members’ lines for them, before disagreeing with himself and descending into muttering manic meltdown, tends to cast an unfair slant on his stuff as a whole. But on the fleapit wall, he was also a superlatively shifty Shadrak in Billy Liar. He’s a breeze as the undertaker in Oliver! He’s a brief respite from the Bakelite bombast in 2001. And he’s a copper in everything from The Pink Panther Strikes Again to Otley. And of course, he *was* Le Petomane. You’ll believe a man can fart!
FINEST HOUR: There can be none better than the perpetually panicking director of Britannia Hospital.
