Jimmy Perry obituary: Creator of Dad's Army who used his own life experiences in much-loved sitcom

In partnership with David Croft, Perry came up with some of TV’s best-loved sitcoms, including ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum‘ and ‘Hi-de-Hi’

Jimmy Perry in 2001 (PA)

Memories of life as a 16-year-old in the Home Guard, whose volunteers defended Britain’s shores against Nazi invasion during the Second World War, led Jimmy Perry to create one of British television’s most popular and enduring sitcoms.

In Dad’s Army, Arthur Lowe played Captain Mainwaring, the pompous, grammar school-educated bank manager and self-appointed head of the Walmington-on-Sea platoon, who was based on Croft’s real-life commanding officer, short and round, and the manager of a building society. The laconic, public school-educated Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier) was Mainwaring’s second-in-command and chief clerk at the bank, and this joke about class was at the root of the comedy’s success.

The well-rounded, bumbling characters who were their subordinates became part of television history, too. The butcher Lance Corporal Jones (Clive Dunn), a veteran of Khartoum and the Battle of Omdurman, never let anyone forget his experience with the bayonet as he advised “they don’t like it up ’em”, asked “permission to speak, Sir” and implored: “Don’t panic!”; the gentle, weak-bladdered geriatric Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) frequently had to request permission to drop out of the line to “go to the lavatory”; the dour Scottish undertaker Private Frazer (the veteran film star John Laurie) pessimistically declared:“We’re doomed, we’re doomed!”; the spiv Private Walker (James Beck) could supply scarce goods on the black market; and the muffler-wearing Private Pike (Ian Lavender) was the junior bank clerk and mummy’s boy who was too young to be called up and referred to by Mainwaring as “you stupid boy”.

But the concept for a television classic came less from Perry’s genius for writing character-driven comedy than a desire to break out of years as a jobbing actor on stage and television.

In 1967, Perry landed a part in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour as the comedy actor Reg Varney’s even more uncouth younger brother and took the opportunity to present its producer with the script he had written, The Fighting Tigers. Perry recalled in his 2002 autobiography, A Stupid Boy: “Dad’s Army was born out of desperation. In 1967 I was working, as an actor, with the legendary Joan Littlewood at Theatre Workshop. I’d been slogging away for 17 years in musicals, doing years of weekly rep, and I’d got precisely nowhere I’d always earned a living, but lack of money was starting to get me down. I’d played small parts in sitcoms on television but no one seemed impressed. There was only one answer – to sit down and write a sitcom myself, with a good part in it for me.”

The cast of ‘Dad's Army’, Perry and Croft’s first and best-loved show (BBC)

On his daily train journey to Theatre Workshop at Stratford, in east London, he hit on the idea of bringing his Home Guard experiences to comic life. The following Sunday, he saw on television Oh, Mr Porter!, the 1937 film classic starring Will Hay and borrowed “the pompous man in charge, old man and young boy” for his own story. His agent, Ann Callender, sent him for the role in Beggar My Neighbour, produced by her husband, David Croft, from whom he received an enthustic response after presenting his sitcom idea.

Croft took the script to the BBC’s head of comedy, Michael Mills, who saw its potential and suggested that Croft script it with Perry, who had no writing experience. In the event, the pair met to thrash out storylines for two episodes at a time, then went away and wrote one each.

They located the platoon on the Sussex coast, just across the Channel from France, in the front line but, whereas Perry suggested Arthur Lowe as the sergeant, Croft saw more potential in reversing the two leading roles. Lowe became the commanding officer and the other parts were cast by Croft and Mills. Although Perry had seen himself as Private Walker, the idea was vetoed. “That was quickly nipped it in the bud,” he explained. “Michael Mills and David were dead against it – it would have been a constant source of irritation to the rest of the cast, rather like a cuckoo in the nest.” (In the event, Perry did appear in the final episode of the first series, as Charlie Cheeseman, a music-hall performer.)

Disliking Perry’s title, Mills said: “What about calling it Dad’s Army?” A wartime feel was given to the programme with the theme song, “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”, written by Perry and sung by the legendary music-hall artist Bud Flanagan, and each episode of the first series began with funny fake newsreel footage narrated by EVH Emmett, the familiar voice of British Movietone News.

Don Estelle, Windsor Davies and Melvyn Hayes scene from Perry and Croft’s ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ (BBC)

After surviving BBC management worries of whether “Britain’s finest hour” should be the subject of comedy and a first series that built up viewers only slowly, Dad’s Army (1968-77) become a much-loved national institution, attracting audiences of up to 20 million. The only major setback came with the untimely death of James Beck, at the age of 44 in 1973, when it was decided not to recast Private Walker.

So successful was the programme that it ran for 81 episodes, was turned into a 1971 feature film and a stage show (1975-6), and adapted for radio (1974-6) by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles – and continues to be repeated almost 40 years later. In 2016, a second Dad's Army film was released starring Toby Jones as Captian Mainwaring and Bill Nighy as Sergeant Wilson. The show was also the springboard for Perry to continue his writing partnership with Croft and create further popular sitcoms based on his own experiences – It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! and You Rang, M’Lord? – giving him quarter of a century of uninterrupted success.

Born into a middle-class family in Barnes, south-west London, in 1923, Perry was the son of an antiques dealer whose own father had been a butler in a house in Berkeley Square, London. As a child, Perry frequently went to London cinemas and theatres. When he said he wanted to be a film star or a comedian, his father responded: “You stupid boy!” At the age of 12, the index finger on his right hand was amputated after he developed septicaemia, having cut it while playing with a toy pistol.

On leaving school, he worked in his father’s antiques shop and the carpet department of Waring & Gillow, then war broke out and the family moved to Watford, where Perry joined the Home Guard nine months after its formation.He also trained as a maker of scientific instruments and worked in a small factory making naval telescopes.

After telling jokes and doing impersonations at a Home Guard concert, he joined the Hello, Watford, Hello concert party, which entertained wounded servicemen, factory workers and those at a naval base.

Actors and writers from ‘Dad's Army' at a memorial for actor John Laurie in 1980: John Le Mesurier, David Croft (behind), Frank Williams, Jimmy Perry, Bill Pertwee and Evan Ross (Getty)

Perry was then called up for war service with the Army (1944-7) and trained as a radar operator. During service in India and Burma, he took charge of a Royal Artillery concert party, promoted from bombardier to lance sergeant. He then toured northern India with the newly formed Combined Services Entertainment organisation.

On demob, he trained at Rada (1948-9) and worked as an entertainments organiser at Butlin’s Pwllheli camp during the summer holidays. After gaining acting experience in revues and repertory theatre around the country, he and his wife, Gilda, ran their own company at the Palace Theatre, Watford, for nine years (1956-65), then he joined Theatre Workshop, established by Joan Littlewood as a people’s theatre and an outlet for working-class and left-of-centre voices – part of the revolution that took place on stage and screen.

Following his success with Dad’s Army, Perry brought his Army experience in India to television in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (1974-81). Windsor Davies starred as the blustering Battery Sergeant-Major Williams,trying to instil some military discipline into the rag-bag performers of a Royal Artillery concert party in India. The colourful characters included the diminutive singer Gunner “Lofty”Sugden (Don Estelle), the drag artist Bombardier “Gloria” Beaumont (Melvyn Hayes) and the egg-headed pianist “Lah-de-Da” Gunner “Paderuski” Graham (John Clegg), along with the commanding officers Colonel Reynolds (Donald Hewlett) and Captain Ashwood (Michael Knowles), and the local wallah Rangi Ram (a blacked-up Michael Bates).

Although Perry and Croft’s sitcom ran to 56 episodes, with up to 17 million viewers, it was easy prey for accusations of racism and sexism, with its stereotyped characters and the sergeant-major’s references to his charges as a “bunch of poofs”. Perry was unapologetic, saying: “People complain that the language was homophobic and it was, but it was exactly how people spoke.”

Perry and Croft then brought their individual experiences of staging shows for Butlin’s to the screen in another long-running series, Hi-de-Hi! (pilot 1980, series 1981-88), set in 1959, when holiday camps were at the height of their popularity, before the start of cheap foreign package deals. Perry believed the sitcom’s success was a result of his and Croft’s approach, saying: “All the others who’d done shows about holiday camps had got it the wrong way round: they were full of jokes about guards on the gates, barbed wire and escape tunnels. From the very start of working on the show our premise was: the campers had a wonderful time – which was the truth – the humour would come from the entertainments staff.”

Simon Cadell starred as the university professor-turned-entertainments manager, Jeffrey Fairbrother, Paul Shane as the host, Ted Bovis, Ruth Madoc as the senior Yellowcoat and Radio Maplin announcer, Gladys Pugh, Su Pollard as the chalet maid, Peggy, and Jeffrey Holland as the comedian, Spike Dixon. “After doing shows that were restricted to men – old ones in Dad’s Army, young ones in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum – it was a wonderful change to write something that featured plenty of attractive women,” said Perry.

His final collaboration with Croft was You Rang, M’Lord? (pilot 1988, series 1990-93), an “upstairs, downstairs” comedy inspired by the stories he had heard of his grandfather’s experiences as a butler in Berkeley Square, where his grandmother was the cook and his father was born.

By the mid-1990s, Perry and Croft’s brand of humour was considered outdated by television executives, but their writing partnership had been one of the most successful in small-screen comedy.

Some of Perry’s own creations, without Croft’s involvement, were less successful. He wrote The Gnomes of Dulwich (1969), with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd starring as gnomes in what was intended as a satire on human behaviour. It was the first sitcom made in colour but ran for only one series. A self-confessed disaster was Room Service (1979), featuring the staff of the five-star Prince Henry Hotel, in London, and produced by Michael Mills after his move to ITV. High St Blues (1989), about four small shopkeepers fighting a supermarket’s bid for their site, which Perry wrote with its producer, Robin Carr, also ran for only one series.

More successful was Lollipop Loves Mr Mole (1971), again featuring Hugh Lloyd, as the meek and vulnerable Reg Robinson, married to the domineering and over-protective Maggie (played by Peggy Mount), whose peace is disturbed when Reg’s brother Bruce (Rex Garner) and his wife Violet (Pat Coombs) come to live with them. A second series was made under the shortened title Lollipop (1972) and it was Perry’s only comedy with a domestic setting.

Going into retirement after You Rang, M’Lord? finished, Perry reflected, ruefully: “I don’t think my type of writing is watched any more. There’s a certain hardness and ruthlessness about today’s humour. There’s not a lot of love. The world’s a tougher place now and my type of writing is just too gentle.” He won Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers’s Guild (1995) and at the British Comedy Awards (2003).

James Perry, born London 9 September 1923, died 23 October 2016