GEORGE COLE

(22 April 1925 - 5 August 2015)

For nigh on 75 years actor George Cole was a continuous presence in films, radio, television and on stage. It is doubtful that he was ever out of work from the age of 15 onwards. He made his mark in British films particularly with his portrayal of the spivvy Flash Harry in the St Trinian’s comedies of the 1950s. That sort of character was partially resurrected in the long-running Minder series on television from 1979 to 1994. Of course Cole was not nominally the star of the series, as the title role of Terry McCann, the minder, was played by Dennis Waterman, but the show really belonged to his dodgy entrepreneur boss, Arthur Daley, the Cole role in an entertaining mixture of drama, action and comedy, which both actors obviously enjoyed playing.

Born in Tooting, Cole was given up for adoption by his parents when he was just ten days old. Leaving school to be a butcher’s boy, he somehow managed to get a part in a touring version of the musical White Horse Inn, and stayed in showbusiness. He was then in the stage play of Cottage to Let (1940), a World War II spy thriller. When the play was filmed he worked with Alastair Sim and was taken up by Sim and his wife, staying with them for 12 years and appearing in many of Sim’s films. After National Service in the RAF, Cole was in The Demi-Paradise and Henry V with Laurence Olivier, Scrooge with Sim, My Brother’s Keeper with Jack Warner, and many other notable British films of the time: The Spider and the Fly, Quartet, Morning Departure, Gone to Earth, Flesh and Blood, Laughter in Paradise, Lady Godiva Rides Again and even Cleopatra (1963).

From 1953 he was in the BBC Radio sit-com, A Life of Bliss, depicting the romantic agonies of a naïve young bachelor. The show ran for 16 years and was briefly on television in 1960. When there was little or nothing for Cole in film work, he returned to the theatre and subsequently appeared in The Pirates of Penzance at Drury Lane. Television also called and Cole was in several successful series such as A Man of Our Times, about the misfortunes of a businessman; Jackanory, where he played the storyteller; Don’t Forget to Write!, on the misadventures of a playwright; The Bounder, with Peter Bowles as a crook; Blott on the Landscape, Comrade Dad, Root into Europe, An Independent Man, My Good Friend and Dad, but it is as Arthur Daley that he will be forever remembered. Cole made over 100 film and TV appearances and he still has one film, Road Rage, to be released during 2016. He leaves a widow, actress Penny Morrell and four children. George Cole received the OBE in the 1992 New Year’s Honours List for services to drama.

MICHAEL DARVELL