Web Page No 2632

9^th November 2019

Arthur English

1st Picture. As Mr Harman

 2nd Picture. The Spiv or Wide Boy

3rd Picture. With a Kipper Tie

4th Picture. The Blue Plaque on his old home.

Arthur Leslie Norman English was born at 22 Lysons Road in Aldershot on 9^th May 1919, the son of Walter Frederick English and Ethel English (née Parsons)), who married at Holy Trinity church in Aldershot in 1909. Arthur English had two older brothers: Walter (born 1910) and John Edgar (born 1912). All three boys were born in their parents' bedroom in Lysons Road and all three were baptised at Holy Trinity church. He attended West End Boys School in Aldershot (now the West End Centre) from the age of 5 to 14. His first stage appearance was aged 10 when he joined a group from Gale & Polden called the 'Five O'clock Follies' as an acrobat. On leaving school in 1933 he briefly worked at Fisher's Hotel in Farnham before becoming an errand boy in a local grocery shop.

He served in the Army in World War II with the Hampshire Regiment and the Royal Armoured Corps reaching the rank of sergeant When he left the Services he moved home and took up a job as a painter and decorator and in the evenings worked as a semi-professional entertainer in various local venues with his comedy routines. 

He married Ivy Ruth Martin in 1941; it was she who made his enormous kipper ties out of brightly coloured curtain material at the beginning of his stage career. They had two children, Ann Faith (1942–1999) and Anthony (born 1947).

In 1949, while still employed in Aldershot as a painter and decorator, he and his then stage partner Jonny Carrol unsuccessfully auditioned at the Windmill Theatre in London. On a second, and this time solo audition with Vivian Van Damm, he became a resident comedian at the Windmill at the same time compering a show for Bob Potter. In fact, he stayed at the Windmill as the principal comic until August 1950.

His early professional career was as a stand-up comic in the persona of a stereotypical wartime "spiv", and he became known as "The Prince of the Wide Boys" dressed in a trilby hat, a white jacket and padded shoulders with a pencil-thin moustache set off with the most flamboyant kipper tie four feet wide. In fact it is as this character that was the only time I ever saw him live. It was in the theatre on South Parade Pier during a Summer Show. I remember the tie and his finishing bye line at the time ‘Open the Cage’

He started working on radio with the BBC series Variety Bandbox, using as always his own Aldershot accent but in the persona of a Cockney spiv. His usual delivery was to tell a long rambling shaggy dog story at ever-increasing rapidity without losing clarity until, at top speed, he would end with the catch-phrase: "Play the music! Open the cage!" Another popular catch-phrase was "Mum. Mum. They're laughing at me!".

He began to appear on British television in mainly comedy roles in the 1970s, and is probably best remembered for playing the truculent and somewhat bolshy (though not entirely unsympathetic) maintenance man, Mr. Harman, in Are You Being Served? which he played from 1976 to 1985, including the 1977 film adaptation. He played Arthur, Alf Garnett's mate, in In Sickness and in Health, a follow-up series to Till Death Us Do Part from 1985 to 1990. He also appeared in The Sweeney.

He had more likeable roles in two British children's TV series: The Ghosts of Motley Hall, which ran from 1976 to 1978 on ITV and as "Slugger" in Follyfoot, which ran from 1971 to 1973, also on ITV. He was in several other films and Everyday Maths (1978), a British TV schools programme starring Jack Wild, of Artful Dodger fame, as his grandson. In 1978 he was the subject in This Is Your Life, while in May 1983 he was a guest on Desert Island Discs with Roy Plomley. Also in 1983 he played Frosch in Die Fliedermaus with English National Opera at the London Coliseum. Surprisingly in 1985 he appeared one episode of the American TV series Magnum, P.I.

He appeared in the Royal Variety Performances in 1951 and 1980. For a time he had been president of Aldershot Town F.C. which had been formed out of the ashes of Aldershot F.C. The new club badge depicted a rising phoenix and was designed by Artur English. He had also been a long-standing member of the showbusiness charity the Grand Order of Water Rats, which he joined in 1970, he was made a Freeman of the City of London and an Honorary Freeman of the Borough of Rushmoor.

Following the death of his wife Ivy (1919–75) he began to drink heavily. In 1977 English married a young dancer, Teresa Mann whom he met while they were performing in a pantomime together at Wimbledon, and in 1981 the couple had a daughter – Clare-Louise English who is the partially deaf actress who runs the Hot Coals Theatre which specialises in plays for the deaf; John Inman and Jack Douglas were the child's godparents. The couple separated in 1986 and the marriage was dissolved in 1987. The last four years of his life were spent in Devereux House, a care home in Farnborough.

Arthur English died in 1995 at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey as a result of complications from emphysema. After a funeral service at St Michael's church at which fellow Water Rat Jimmy Perry read the oration his body was cremated at the Park Crematorium in Aldershot where his ashes were later interred in a plot with those of his first wife.

An Aldershot Civic Society blue plaque was unveiled by actor and singer Jess Conrad OBE on 15 July 2017 at 22 Lysons Road where Arthur English was born in 1919.

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On this day 9th November 1960-1965

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