David Janson:
Always seemingly eager to please, this boyishly bowl-cut actor has cropped up in odd forgotten corners of British TV for nearly 50 years, including appearances in 'Softly, Softly', 'Doomwatch', 'Jason King', 'The Fenn Street Gang', 'Dixon of Dock Green', 'Z-Cars', 'Brush Strokes', 'T-Bag Strikes Again', 'Ever Decreasing Circles', 'Get Some In!', 'The Upper Hand', and Hyacinth Bucket's long-suffering postman in 'Keeping Up Appearances'.
His first brush with fame came as the truant schoolboy in Richard Lester's much loved Beatles movie 'A Hard Day's Night' (1963) in the sequence where Ringo similarly plays truant from the band, kicking stones into the canal and messing around with his new camera. A stint in the then-popular TV drama 'The Newcomers' (groovy theme by John Barry) in 1965/66 seemed promising, but it's all-but forgotten now.
The nearest he came to front-room TV star status was in the RAF national service comedy 'Get Some In' as likeable everyman Ken Richardson, constantly victimised by the 'orrible Corporal Marsh (Tony Selby). But somehow his leading man status seemed to ebb away in the direction of cheeky teddy boy Robert Lindsay (soon to get his big break as Wolfie in 'Citizen Smith'). Even more discouraging was his short-lived stint in 'Allo Allo', inexplicably replacing Richard Gibson as Herr Flick of the Gestapo in the last death throes of the series in 1992.
And so a character actor he has remained, and we salute him here.
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| As Michael the postman in 'Keeping Up Appearances' |
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