Brian Murphy obituary: The comedy actor and Man About The House who never stopped working

Murphy never retired. He was filming a comedy before Christmas and had been due to start production on a road movie in June in which he would star alongside his wife, former Hi-di-Hi star Linda Regan. The two had married in 1990.

It was with ITV’s Man About The House, a hugely popular sitcom that began airing in 1973, that Murphy became a household face.

He was cast after impressing Thames TV producers in Alcock And Gander, a slightly earlier series by the same writers and with the same co-star: Brian Cooke, Johnnie Mortimer and Richard O’Sullivan respectively.

This time he was paired with the Yootha Joyce as landlords to two young women who choose a man to flat-share with them. The idea was considered risque at the time.

George was a scheming but ultimately cowardly foil to the domineering Mildred and the couple became as well known as any pairing on TV, then or since.

When the show ended in 1976 the characters began appearing in George And Mildred immediately afterwards.

The series saw the couple move up-market to the suburbs and ran for five series, spawning a feature film, a theatre tour of Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

Murphy was born in September 1932 on the Isle of Wight and trained at the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art after completing his national service with the RAF, during which time he met another budding comic actor, Richard Briers.

He started his career in the 1950s as a member of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop – whose regular players also included Yootha Joyce – and appeared in both the stage and 1962 film version of Littlewood’s comedy Sparrows Can’t Sing, the latter starring Barbara Windsor and James Booth.

He also performed in the workshop’s World War One musical satire, Oh! What A Lovely War.

He spent most of the 1960s as a jobbing actor, appearing in such TV shows as The Avengers and Z-Cars. Later he had his own sitcoms on both ITV and the BBC: The Incredible Mr Tanner (opposite Roy Kinnear) and L For Lester, in which he played a driving instructor.

In 1993, he starred in the first major stage version of The Invisible Man, based on the classic by HG Wells. He signed up for Last of the Summer Wine as Alvin Smedley in 2003, supposedly as a one-off but ended up staying for seven years. A few years later he was to be seen as Maurice in The Booze Cruise alongside Martin Clunes and Neil Pearson, and from 2011 he appeared in The Cafe.

In later years, he voiced the character Mr Lovelybuns for the animated series Claude, based on Alex T Smith’s best-selling books.

He is survived by Linda and by two sons from an earlier marriage.