Patrick Murray

Patrick Murray:

† Dec 17 1956 – 29 September 2025

London-born actor, probably most instantly recognisable as Mickey Pearce, Rodney's comedy foil in 'Only Fools And Horses', permanently frozen as a chirpy two-tone wideboy, already something of an anachronism by the time he appeared in 1983.

Patrick Murray had previously been seen in the gritty Borstal drama 'Scum' (1979) and before that, the low-budget 'Moon Over The Alley' (1976) a sort-of musical that dealt fairly unflinchingly with racism in '70s Notting Hill, and 'The Class Of Miss McMichael' (1977) which saw a rigid Oliver Reed and progressive Glenda Jackson clashing in the staff room of a rough-house London school.      

In the interesting social conscience musical 'Moon Over The Alley' (1975)

  At the tail-end of the '70s there was a flush of tougher social dramas with 'natural' actors and Patrick Murray was able to find a series of roles in these, but his 'authentic' London characterisations were tempered by his slight build and less-than-menacing demeanour which led to a series of comedy parts, including the perennial chancer of the Nag's Head.  

            

As Dougan in the powerful and influential 'Scum' (1979)

While a semi-regular gig in 'Only Fools And Horses' that ran across 20 years, from 1983 till 2003, other roles filled out the actor's schedule. TV comedies included 'The Upper Hand', 'Shelley', Hale & Pace's 'The Management', and the strangely memorable Robert Gillespie vehicle, 'Keep It In The Family. 

With Glenda Jackson in 'The Class Of Miss McMichael' (1977)

As a lift boy in the feeble 'Curse Of The Pink Panther' (1983)

On the drama side, he shows up in smallish roles in 'Bergerac', 'Lovejoy', Roy Clarke's short-lived 'Pulaski', 'House Of Elliott' and of course 'The Bill'. I'm slightly surprised to see that he never appeared in 'The Sweeney' or 'Minder', which I would have thought were nailed-on certainties. One interesting oddity is 'Big Jim & The Figaro Club' a one-off nostalgic drama about a student who returns to his village for summer work on a building site, it later became a series, but without Murray.     

Playing Enid Blyton's idea of a villain in 'Five On Kirrin Island Again' 

Most recently, he has been starring in his own series - originally to be called 'Brain Damage', but which is now being touted under the name 'Conditions' - a light-hearted (I think) drama about retrieving some escaped mental patients. As far as I can tell, it has yet to be picked up by a network, although a number of episodes have been made - with Denis Waterman joining the cast at some point.    

Still wearing the Mickey Pearce pork-pie hat for the fans 

Feature film jobs since the '70s have been rather thin on the ground, but he can be spotted briefly in 'The Curse Of The Pink Panther' (1983) a poor effort made after Peter Sellers died, and has a rather grisly moment in the Hazel O'Connnor pop potboiler 'Breaking Glass' (1980) as the kid killed during a skinhead riot under the Westway.  He has apparently spent some time abroad and worked extensively as a limo driver in North Kent near where I live. More recently, I'm pleased to see that has returned to acting. He appears in 'Vikingdom' (2013) a cartoony 3D-CGI fantasy movie, although he's not easy to recognise under the world's biggest eyebrows. Here's the trailer.       

Something a bit different. As the wise man Alcuin in the
Norse hokum 'Vikingdom' (2013)

Patrick Murray-imdb

Pauline Yates

Pauline Yates: 

† June 16, 1929 - January 21, 2015

Perhaps the ultimate sitcom housewife, an unobtrusive foil to comic turns from the late great Leonard Rossiter in 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' and, to a lesser extent, Robert Gillespie in 'Keep it in the Family'. Pauline Yates became something of a middle aged pin-up during the '70s (unbelievably, she was born in 1929) for her combination of sweet wifely loyalty and brisk, unflappable sexiness.   

In 'The Strange Report'

Earlier TV includes 'Emergency Ward 10' and 'My Honourable Mrs' – an unlamented sitcom with Derek Nimmo as a man whose wife enters Parliament. Ha ha, imagine that. She also had the lead role in 'Harriet's Back in Town', a daytime soap made by Thames TV back in the early '70s.  She was in some old favourites of the time, like 'Bootsie and Snudge', 'The Strange Report', 'The Human Jungle', 'Maigret', and some comedy like 'Hark at Barker' and 'Hancock' ('The Eye-Witness').

About to get the heave-ho from Dirk Bogarde in favour of
Julie Christie in 'Darling' (1965)

In the '80s and '90s she was seen in 'Rumpole' and the usual second-string dramas of 'Casualty', 'Kavanagh QC' and 'Doctors' as well as the strangely redundant post-Leonard Rossiter series 'The Legacy of Reginald Perrin' in 1996, in which the original cast members seem to wander aimlessly around in search of their lost star.  

'Harriet's Back in Town' with William Russell

There were a few film roles,  but the only notable production was 'Darling' (1965). Pauline Yates's finest professional moments have almost all been on the small screen and almost all in 'Reggie Perrin', but it's a measure of that programme's lasting appeal that she is such a well-loved actress. In real life, her husband was the respected actor Donald Churchill, who died in 1991, and their daughter Jemma Churchill is also an actress. 

Update Jan 2015: Sad to hear that Pauline Yates died earlier this week.  

Pauline Yates-imdb

Glyn Houston

Glyn Houston: 

† Oct 23 1925 – Jun 30 2019

Here's one of the old guard, an authentic character actor with his own small place in British entertainment history. Gimlet-eyed Welshman Glyn Houston started his film career in the 'Dixon of Dock Green' prototype, 'The Blue Lamp' in 1950, before hitting a rich vein of rugged stoker and sailor roles in a sequence of warship and shipwreck dramas, including 'Waterfront' (1950), 'The Cruel Sea' (1953), 'The Sea Shall Not Have Them' (1954), 'A Night to Remember' (1958) and 'Sink the Bismarck' (1960).      

In the Norman Wisdom comedy 'Follow A Star' (1959)

With the decline of the British film industry starting in the early '60s, he found himself in some demand in television, with appearances in Welsh classic 'How Green Was My Valley' and the newsroom drama series 'Deadline Midnight'. As the decade went on, potboiler movies like motor-racing thriller 'The Green Helmet (1961) and prisoner-of-war pic 'The Secret of Blood Island' (1964), gave way to regular roles in 'Softly Softly' and 'Z-Cars', and the odd 'Danger Man' and 'The Saint'. 

In the Doctor Who adventure 'The Hand Of Fear'
with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen  

In the early '70s he got a useful leg-up with a casting as Lord Peter Wimsey's valet, Bunter, in the Ian Carmichael-fronted  adaptations of the Dorothy L Sayers whodunnits. He also played Nigel Havers' trusty foreman in 'A Horseman Riding By', before finding a curiously lasting fame as Robert Gillespie's exasperated editor in 'Keep It In The Family'. 

He also appears in this forgotten gem of scenery-rattling TV drama: Beasts     

Glyn Houston - imdb 

Robert Gillespie

Robert Gillespie:

Strange, impish character actor with a distinctive 'halting and blinking' delivery. He trained at RADA, which may account for his ability to be memorable and compelling in a lot of fairly slight and minor roles. His star turn in the seemingly bland family sitcom 'Keep It In The Family' was notable for his portrayal of the childlike, manically depressed Dudley Rush - a comic-strip artist with a hinted history of breakdowns and mental issues who lives with his attractive, supportive wife (played by Pauline Yates, echoing her performance in 'Reggie Perrin') and pert grown-up daughters. He only draws when holding the pen with a glove-puppet lion...  

Other TV roles include the unhappy transvestite Mr Mince in the first episode of 'Agony', the fair-minded chairman of the residents association, Mr Carter, in 'The Good Life', and the long suffering police sergeant in 'Man About The House' who was to become a recurring character extending even unto the realms of 'George & Mildred'. His resume stretches back to the '60s, and includes comedy like 'Dad's Army', 'Up Pompeii', 'Porridge', 'Rising Damp' and 'The Liver Birds'. There's a smattering of cult classics too: 'The Avengers', The Sweeney', 'Doomwatch', 'The Survivors', and the rather forgotten kids adventure series 'The Freewheelers'.

On the big screen, watch out for him in 'Otley' (1968), 'Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed' (1969). 'The National Health' (1973), 'Barry MacKenzie Holds His Own' (1974), and of course he played the AA man in my old favourite, 'The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins' (1971).

A scandal of some sort cut his on-screen career short in the '90s, but he is still acting and an innovative and successful director and writer for the stage.

But this is the good stuff, to my way of thinking: from 'Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads?'

Robert Gillespie - imdb profile