Writer who created Dad's Army

Born: September 20, 1923;

Died: October 23, 2016

JIMMY Perry, who has died aged 93, was a comedy writer who drew on his own experience as a teenager in the Home Guard to create Dad’s Army, one of Britain’s best-loved and most enduring sitcoms. The bumbling, but heroic figure of Corporal Jones was inspired by a veteran from the Battle of Omdurman at the end of the 19th century and the gauche Private Pike was based on Perry himself.

Perry was a jobbing actor when he came up with the original idea and wrote the role of the spiv Private Walker for himself, though it eventually went to James Beck. He co-wrote the show with senior BBC producer David Croft and it ran for nine series between 1968 and 1977, with spin-off radio and stage shows, a feature film, books and sweetie cigarette cards and other merchandise.

In 2004 it came fourth in a BBC poll to determine Britain’s best sitcom of all time. Repeats are more popular than many new series. And the story of how Dad’s Army came about was the subject of the television drama We’re Doomed!, broadcast last Christmas with Paul Ritter as Perry.

Earlier this year there was also a new feature film, with an all-star cast, including Toby Jones, Bill Nighy and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The consensus was that it was not a patch on the original.

Perry formed an ongoing partnership with Croft and drew on personal experience organising Army concert parties in the Far East for It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (1974-81) and as a redcoat at Butlin’s holiday camps for Hi-de-Hi! (1980-88). He also drew on tales from his grandfather, who was a gentleman’s gentleman, for You Rang, M’Lord (1988-93).

The son of a successful antique dealer, Perry was born in Barnes in London in 1923. His mother took him to cinemas and music halls and he developed an early passion for showbusiness. His father however was sceptical, dismissing his ambition to be a film star or comedian with a cursory “You stupid boy”. In due course it became Captain Mainwaring’s habitual response to Pike’s suggestions.

Perry attended St Paul’s public school in London, but left in his mid-teens because he was, he said, tired of being thrashed. He went to secretarial college and worked in the carpet department of an Oxford Street store.

With Hitler threatening invasion, he joined the Local Defence Volunteers, as the Home Guard was initially known. It was part-time of course and he was also working at a munitions factory and doing the occasional turn as a stand-up comedian. In 1943 he enlisted in the Royal Artillery and found himself organising concert parties first in Britain and then in India and Burma.

After leaving the Army, he enrolled at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London and worked during the summer holidays as a redcoat at the Butlin’s holiday camp at Pwllheli in Wales.

He acted in provincial theatre, ran Watford’s repertory theatre, with his wife Gilda, a dancer who later made a few guest appearances in Dad’s Army, and he had a stint with Joan Littlewood’s famous Theatre Workshop company.

He also began getting occasional television roles, decided to create the outline for a series with a character that he could play and came up with the idea of a sitcom about the Home Guard, initially called The Fighting Tigers.

When he got a one-off role in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour in 1967, he took the opportunity to give his first script to David Croft, the show’s producer and director. It helped that Perry’s agent Ann Callender was Croft’s wife.

Croft liked it, as did Michael Milles, head of comedy, though he changed the title and various other names and details, insisted that the novice Perry collaborate with the much more experienced Croft on writing and refused to sanction Perry’s casting as Walker.

“I always resented it,” said Perry. “I wrote Walker for myself. That’s how it had all started. And I wanted to be on both sides of the camera. But Michael Mills didn’t think it was a good idea and neither did David, and in those days I was in no position to argue.” Perry also wrote the lyrics for the theme song and persuaded the legendary Bud Flanagan to record it.

There was some resistance at the top of the BBC to the very idea of the show poking fun at veteran soldiers when the memories and pain of the war were still fresh in many minds. But it was always affectionate and was popular with audiences from the outset.

Much of its success was rooted in the characters, including Captain Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe, Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier) and Lance-Corporal Jones (Clive Dunn) and of course young Pike, played by Ian Lavender, who is now 70, the only one of the principal platoon members still alive.

It Ain’t Half Hot Mum followed and was another hit. Again it was rooted in reality, right down to the casually homophobic language and attitudes, used for comic effect on the sitcom, but now considered unacceptable. Michael Bates blacking up to play an Indian is also a sensitive issue and the BBC has seemed wary of broadcasting repeats.

Away from his partnership with Croft, Perry wrote the sitcom Room Service (1979) himself and teamed up with Robin Carr for High Street Blues (1989), but both were short-lived and now largely forgotten. Perry brought out an autobiography in 2002 and called it A Stupid Boy.

He is survived by his partner, costume designer Mary Husband.

BRIAN PENDREIGH