Remembering Leslie Phillips

Leslie Phillips passed away this week at the age of 98. Many of the tributes focussed on his cheeky catchphrases. But, as Cinema Paradiso discovers, there was much more to this skilled veteran of over 170 films and television programmes and dozens of stage plays than 'Ding Dong' and 'Hell-oow'.

Eighty-five years years ago, Leslie Phillips made his professional debut on the London stage. It's hard to think of anyone in recent times who has had a longer career, with even such lamented stalwarts as Bernard Cribbins and Angela Lansbury only starting out in the 1940s. There was a suavity to everything Phillips did, from saucy comedies to cat food commercials. But there were also several surprises along a way that took him from childhood poverty to national treasure status.

A Long Way Up

The youngest of three, Leslie Samuel Phillips was born in Tottenham on 20 April 1924. As he later recorded, his birthplace was 'beyond the sonic reach of the Bow Bells but within the general footprint of cockneydom'. His father, Frederick, made gas cookers for Glover & Main at a factory in Edmonton that had such poor air quality that it took a toll on his health and the family had to move to Chingford in Essex in 1931.

Leslie attended New Road Primary, but was forced to start earning money when his father died at the age of 44 in 1935. Mother Cecelia moved Fred, Doris and Leslie into a rented flat to cut costs and the 11 year-old not only took a paper round, but also sang in the choir at All Saints' Church in order to bring in money. As he had shown promise in plays at Chingford Senior Boys', Cecelia followed up a newspaper advertisement for auditions at the Italia Conti Academy and Leslie caught the attention of the selection panel by using his overcoat as a toga to deliver a speech from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Accepted without fees on the proviso that the school would take 20% of any sums earned for professional engagements, Phillips started taking drama and dance lessons. He was also taught Received Pronunciation to eradicate the broad accent that would have proved an impediment at a time when regionalism was frowned upon on both stage and screen. As a result, Phillips developed the refined tone that would become his trademark, although he always claimed that his real education came from mixing with fellow theatricals and officers in the wartime mess.

Having made his stage debut as a wolf opposite Anna Neagle in the 1937 Palladium pantomime, Peter Pan, Phillips left school at 14 to act full time. He was a cast as a cherub in a stained glass window in the Dorothy L. Sayers play, The Zeal of Thy House, before he reported to Welwyn Studios to make his first film appearance, as a background player in John Paddy Carstairs's comedy, Lassie From Lancashire (1938).

A few weeks later, American director King Vidor rewarded Phillips with a bit part after he spotted a fire on the set of The Citadel (1938) at Denham Studios. He kept a close eye on stars Robert Donat, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison, as well as Rosalind Russell, who was the first Hollywood star he had ever seen. A further bit followed in Carol Reed's Climbing High (1938), which starred Jessie Matthews, who was then Britain's biggest musical star. However, Phillips didn't enjoy his second stint in Peter Pan, even though he'd been promoted to the role of John Darling, as he detested Sir Seymour Hicks, who was playing Captain Hook. Cinema Paradiso users can see him in action in Roy Boulting's Pastor Hall (1940) and Fame Is the Spur (1947).

In 1939, Phillips was seen in Technicolor for the first time when he took an uncredited juvenile role in Victor Schertzinger's adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Mikado. More notably, he got to wave at the passing military parade in Zoltan Korda's dramatisation of A.E.W. Mason's 1902 adventure novel, The Four Feathers (1939). This would be the first of 38 pictures that Phillips would make at the newly opened Pinewood Studios. He would also crop up as a street urchin in Alexander Korda's production of The Thief of Bagdad, which was co-directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan. However, he was proudest of the fact that he got to work with Paul Robeson at Ealing Studios in Pen Tennyson's The Proud Valley (both 1940), in which an African American sailor jumps ship and finds camaraderie in a Welsh coal mine.

Making His Way

As the Second World War broke out, Phillips found himself back in the West End. After theatres re-opened following the Phoney War, he served as a firewatcher during the Blitz, while also working backstage and singing with the children's chorus at the Royal Opera House. He joined John Gielgud in the cast of Dear Octopus, which was written by the same Dodie Smith who would later be behind Disney's 101 Dalmatians (1961) and Tim Fywell's I Capture the Castle (2003). Even more thrillingly, Phillips got to work with Vivien Leigh in a 1942 revival of George Bernard Shaw's A Doctor's Dilemma. Not only did he get to meet Laurence Olivier when he came to watch his wife perform, but Phillips also received a nightly kiss from Leigh, who had taken a shine to him.

With his refined accent, Phillips was given the rank of Lance Bombardier when he joined the Royal Artillery in 1942. He served on an anti-aircraft battery before being sent for officer training at Catterick. Promoted to Second Lieutenant, he was transferred to the Durham Light Infantry, during which time he guested as a soldier in Gordon Wellesley's Rhythm Serenade (1943), which starred Forces' Sweetheart, Vera Lynn. However, the exposure to enemy fire caused Phillips to be diagnosed with a nerve condition that left him prone to paralysis. Consequently, he was denied the chance to participate in D-Day and was invalided out of the Army after a spell in charge of a transit camp at Chadacre Hall in Suffolk.

Looking the part in uniform - especially after he grew a moustache because he disliked using spirit gum - Phillips landed several postwar military roles, after having played a sapper in Ladislao Vajda's The Woman With No Name (1950). In addition to Squadron Leader Blake in John Gilling's High Flight (1957), he was also Major Tennant in John Guillermin's I Was Monty's Double (1958), Ray Taylor in Robert Aldrich's The Angry Hills, Squadron Leader Thomas in Darcy Conyers's The Night We Dropped a Clanger (both 1959), Flying Officer Jimmy Cooper in Ken Annakin's Very Important Person (1961), and Mac, an RAF officer in The Longest Day (1962), an account of D-Day that was co-directed by Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki.

Married to actress Penelope Bartley (with whom he would have four children), Phillips considered getting 'a proper job'. But he couldn't resist the lure of the stage and spent the postwar period re-learning his trade in repertory theatres in York, Dundee, Watford, Buxton, and Croydon. He also returned to the West End in the mawkish comedy, Daddy Long Legs (1946) before discovering a talent for farce in On Monday Next (1949) and Charley's Aunt (1950). Moreover, he continued to be offered minor roles in movies, playing audience members in both Bernard Knowles's Paganini biopic, The Magic Bow (1946), and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's balletic masterpiece, The Red Shoes (1948).

Phillips was briefly reunited with Vivien Leigh in Julien Duvivier's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1948). But he was more visible that same year as Stoker Snipe in Morning Departure, which was the first production transmitted live by the BBC from Alexandra Palace. Two years later, however, when Roy Ward Baker came to adapt Kenneth Woollard's play for the big scree, the part went to Richard Attenborough. Either side of this, Phillips was cast as Patric Doonan's fireman in 'The Engine Driver', Sidney Cole's segment in the Ealing portmanteau, Train of Events (1949), and as a reporter following the story of a syndicate hoping to win the Grand National in Henry Cornelius's The Galloping Major (1951).

Still primarily considering himself to be a jobbing actor, Phillips readily took dramatic roles like Harry, the sailor with a girl in every port, in Pool of London (1951), Basil Dearden's study of racism in British society. He also got to work with David Lean on The Sound Barrier (1952), playing a controller as Ralph Richardson seeks to make aeronautical history. Indeed, he made a mini-tour of the genres during this period, as he cropped up as a police sergeant in Ted Tetzleff's bomb disposal thriller, Time Bomb (aka Terror on a Train); Detective Cameron in Cy Endfield's murder mystery, The Limping Man; a student in Godfrey Grayson's Da Vinci forgery saga, The Fake (all 1953); and news photographer Howard Meade helping American journalist Mike Wilson (Paul Douglas) stop a mad scientist from running amuck with a ray gun in John Gilling's sci-fi programmer, The Gamma People (1956).

Perceptions changed, however, when Phillips was cast opposite Joy Shelton in the BBC sitcom, My Wife Jacqueline (1952). As the six episodes went out live from Lime Grove, audiences could see the impeccable comic timing that Phillips had honed in plays like For Better, For Worse. This would run for 18 months in the West End, although Phillips would lose the role of Tony Howard in J. Lee Thompson's 1954 film version to Dirk Bogarde. He scored another hit in The Diary of a Nobody (1954), the same year that he co-starred with Donald Sinden, as the embassy secretary in Ken Annakin's You Know What Sailors Are and with Diana Dors, as the box-office manager in J. Lee Thompson's As Long As They're Happy.

Phillips would link up with Dors again, as Robjohns the photographer, in Ken Annakin's Value For Money (1955), which stars John Gregson as a Yorkshireman whose inherited fortune goes to his head. A briefcase full of forged banknotes similarly proves too much for Ian Carmichael to resist in The Big Money (1956), which saw Phillips cameo as a receptionist in a reunion with his first director, John Paddy Carstairs. A second Carmichael outing followed in Roy Boulting's Brothers in Law (1957), an adaptation of Henry Cecil's comic legal classic, in which Phillips turns up behind a shop counter.

However, it was his friendship with Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna that kickstarted Phillips's career. They had worked together in both Sidney Franklin's The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Basil Dearden's The Smallest Show on Earth, in which Phillips had respectively played Bella's fiancé, Harry Bevan, and solicitor Robin Carter. While Travers was helping Ronald Neame remake W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil as The Seventh Sin, he overheard director George Cukor and actress Kay Kendall discussing a fair-haired British actor who might be suitable for a role in a forthcoming musical. As they couldn't remember his name, Travers blurted out across the canteen that the man they wanted was Leslie Phillips and he was cast as Sir Gerald Wren inLes Girls (all 1957).

Unfortunately, Phillips didn't enjoy his Hollywood sojourn, even though he got to punch the great Gene Kelly on the nose. However, he took exception to the way in which Cukor bullied people on set and had no compunction in reprimanding him for striking members of the cast who displeased him. Clearly, word spread and Phillips's big break turned into a dead end. But he disliked Tinseltown and cheerfully returned to London, as he had no intention of becoming 'a poor man's David Niven'. He did secure another overseas assignment, however, when he played Pat, an English journalist abroad in Gianni Franciolini's comedy, Ferdinando I, Re di Napoli (1959), which not only starred the sibling trio of Eduardo, Peppino, and Titina De Filippo, but also such Italian legends as Aldo Fabrizi, Vittorio De Sica, and Marcello Mastroianni.

Comic Heyday

On his return from Hollywood, Phillips landed his largest screen role to date, as bookmaker Richard Lumb in John Paddy Carstair's Norman Wisdom comedy, Just My Luck (1957). This kind of refined, but raffish character suited Phillips down to the ground and he honed it further as Simon Hurd in David Eady's The Man Who Liked Funerals (1959), which afforded Phillips his first starring role as an everyman who starts blackmailing mourners in order to save his local youth club.

The scheme starts to unravel when Hurd picks on the family of a notorious crook and this incompetent streak came further to the fore, as Phillips joined Jon Pertwee and Stephen Murray in the cast of the long-running BBC radio hit, The Navy Lark (1959-77). Set aboard the recommissioned HMS Troutbridge in Portsmouth harbour. the sitcom gave Phillips his first catchphrase, 'left hand down a bit', which inevitably presaged the frigate crashing into something. In addition to appearing in all 244 episodes, Phillips was also the only member of the crew to make Gordon Parry's The Navy Lark (1959), as Lieutenant Pouter attempts to prevent a senior officer from shutting down his base on the Channel Island of Boonsey.

He would remain afloat as Lieutenant Commander Bill Fanshawe in Gerald Thomas's Watch Your Stern (1960), in which he played an American who accidentally gets hold of the wrong plans for an acoustic torpedo. His castmates included Kenneth Connor, Joan Sims, and Hattie Jacques, who had has also appeared in Thomas's Carry On Nurse (1959), which saw screenwriter Norman Hudis present Phillips's Jack Bell with the lines, 'Ding dong! You're not wrong,' when having his bunions treated by Staff Nurse Dorothy Denton (Shirley Eaton).

The film was based on Ring For Catty, a play by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale that Gerald Thomas and producer Peter Rogers would further rework as Twice Round the Daffodils (1962). However, the pair were best known by then for the Carry Ons and Phillips made his second appearance in the series as child psychologist Alistair Grigg, in Carry On Teacher (1959), who falls for gym mistress Sarah Allcock (Joan Sims) during an inspection of Maudlin Street School.

Despite being unimpressed his 'measly 500 quid' fee, Phillips returned as PC Tom Potter in Carry On Constable (1960), which was not only the first in the 31-title series to feature Sidney James, but it was also the first to include nudity, as Phillips, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, and Kenneth Williams are seen from behind in the showers. Yet, while he enjoyed the camaraderie, Phillips never felt part of the gang and didn't return to the fold until he guested as King Ferdinand in Thomas's Carry On Columbus (1992), which was roundly panned by the critics and brought the long-running franchise to an end.

Having moved into the Irish town of Ballymorgan as English toff Crispin Brown in Muriel Box's This Other Eden (1959) and offered Alf and Ada Larkin (David Kossoff and Peggy Mount) the chance to run a pub, as brewery owner John Belcher in C.M. Pennington-Richards's Inn For Trouble (1960), Phillips demonstrated a seductive bedside manner, as Dr Henry Manners, in Gerald Thomas's Please Turn Over (1959). Once again produced by Peter Rogers and scripted by Norman Hudis (from Basil Thomas's play, Book of the Month), the action amusingly contrasts reality in a quiet English town with the raunchy re-imaginings of 17 year-old novelist, Jo Halliday (Julia Lockwood). Clearly, the comedy amused Thomas's director brother Ralph and Rogers's producer wife, Betty Box, as they cast Phillips as Dr Tony Burke in Doctor in Love (1960), in which he developed another catchphrase with which he would forever be associated, a slow, breathy, and libidinously appreciative, 'Hell-oow'.

In all, seven pictures were derived from Richard Gordon's novels and Phillips returned in the guise of Dr Gaston Grimsdyke in Doctor in Clover (1966), who is sacked from his post at a prison and returns to his alma mater, St Swithin's Hospital, for a refresher course with his old teacher, Sir Lancelot Spratt (James Robertson Justice). However, Phillips would reprise the role of Tony Burke in Doctor in Trouble (1970), which sees him become an accidental stowaway aboard a cruise ship. This also proved to be a series closer, but it introduced Phillips to Angela Scoular, who had twice been a Bond Girl in the multi-directored Casino Royale (1967) and Peter R. Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). They became an item after Phillips ended the affair with Caroline Mortimer that had resulted in his divorce in 1965 and cost him the lead in the BBC sitcom, Our Man At St Mark's (1963), as it was deemed unsuitable for an adulterer to play a vicar.

This was a rare setback, however, in a decade that established Phillips as one of Britain's top comedy stars. As Cinema Paradiso users will discover by clicking on the titles, he was by no means confined to essaying womanising charmers. Indeed, he played a steadfast husband in Gerald Thomas's No Kidding (1960), which chronicles the efforts of David Robinson and his wife, Catherine (Geraldine McEwan), to open a holiday home for troubled children. And he is no less devoted to Shirley Eaton in John Paddy Carstairs's A Weekend With Lulu (1961), in which the fates conspire to spoil the efforts of Timothy Grey and Deidre Proudfoot to have some time alone in a caravan on the coast.

In Gerald Thomas's Raising the Wind (1961), Phillips plays Mervyn Hughes, a student at a London music school who risks his grant by selling a jingle to sharkish advertisers Sid (Sidney James) and Harry (Lance Perceval). He proves just as gaffe-prone as vet Jimmy Fox-Upton in Darcy Conyers's In the Doghouse (1962), in which he shares two heartbreaking scenes with Esma Cannon, as a widow whose beloved dog has to be put down.

But Phillips also had a shady side, as he demonstrated in Ken Annakin's Crooks Anonymous, as serial criminal Dandy Forsdyke agrees to join a self-help group in order to go straight and marry a stripper. Babette was played by a debuting Julie Christie and she reunited with Phillips in the same director's The Fast Lady (both 1962), in which caddish car salesman Freddie Fox pulls a fast one by selling housemate Murdoch Troon (Stanley Baxter) a 1927 Bentley in order to impress Claire Chingford (Christie), who loves flashy motors.

Frustratingly, this isn't currently available to rent. Neither is Peter Graham Scott's semi-sequel, Father Came Too! (1964), which sees estate agent Roddy Chipfield (Phillips) save the day when newlyweds Dexter and Juliet Munro (Stanley Baxter and Sally Smith) fall foul of town planners. But Cinema Paradiso members can see Phillips guesting as a young husband named Walters in Michael Winner's You Must Be Joking! (1965), which follows four soldiers on a scavenger hunt that has been devised as an initiative test by Army psychologist, Major Foskett (Terry-Thomas).

Such was Phillips status by the middle of the decade that he was reported to be one of the best-paid stars in show business. But he was getting bored with bounders and bunglers and wanted to show that he was a serious actor. As a consequence, he told his agent to stop accepting comic roles and seek out some more challenging assignments.

Globe-Trotting Thesp

Phillips had shown himself capable of playing ruthless characters in the Philip Mackie stage thrillers, The Whole Truth (1955) and The Big Killing (1962), while he took another macabre turn in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Deadly Game (1963). Yet, the theatregoing public wanted to see him in comedies like Boeing-Boeing (1963) and he always regarded lounge lizard Victor Cadwallader in The Man Most Likely To… (1968) as one of his favourite roles. Indeed, during his 655 appearances, he liked to find different ways of raising laughs during the show. Following a 1973 revival that he also produced and directed, Phillips took Joyce Rayburn's play on tour to Australia and South Africa, where he insisted on performing in the townships in defiance of the Apartheid guidelines.

He had also tried his hand at film producing with Gerry O'Hara's Maroc 7 (1967), a thriller in which he also played Raymond Lowe, a photographer who helps fashion magazine editor Louise Henderson (Cyd Charisse) steal jewellery. Set in Morocco, the film co-starred close friend Denholm Elliott, who followed Phillips, Terry-Thomas, and other showbiz personalities in acquiring a holiday home in Ibiza. This lifestyle reinforced Phillips's playboy image, as did the ITV sitcom, Casanova '73 (1973), in which he played philandering husband Henry Newhouse.

Back on the big screen, he played gadabout Simon Russell, who is forced to marry the first single woman he meets in order to inherit a fortune in Duncan Wood's Some Will, Some Won't (1970). Guy Middleton had taken the part in Mario Zampi's Laughter in Paradise (1951), which is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. As is Graham Stark's The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), in which Phillips plays compulsive eater Dickie in the 'Gluttony' episode that was co-written by Barry Cryer and Monty Python alumnus, Graham Chapman.

Relaxed attitudes towards censorship resulted in a softcore comedy boom in the early 1970s. The Carry Ons became more risqué in response, as familiar faces turned up in various stages of undress in smutty romps like Val Guest's Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Martin Campbell's Eskimo Nell (1975). By confining himself to bawdy Whitehall farces, Phillips managed to remain on the classier fringe, as he played boutique owner Gilbert Bodley selling a mink to mobster Harry McMichaell (Derren Nesbitt) in Ray Cooney and David Croft's Not Now, Darling (1973), which co-stars Julie Ege and Barbara Windsor as the women caught up in the comedy of errors.

Sadly, we can't bring you Cooney and Harold Snoad's sequel, Not Now, Comrade (1976), in which a defecting Russian ballet dancer winds up at the country seat of Commander Rimmington (Phillips). But Cinema Paradiso can offer Bob Kellett's Don't Just Lie There, Say Something! (1974), which stars Phillips as Sir William Mainwaring-Brown, the cabinet minister behind a bill to restrict the permissive society who can't keep his hands of women other than his wife, Birdie (Joan Sims). We can also transport you to the Costa del Sol for the same director's Spanish Fly (1976), which sees fashion photographer Mike Scott run into old school nemesis, Sir Percy de Courcy (Terry-Thomas), who has accidentally laced the local wine supply with aphrodisiascs.

Between stage runs in Roger's Last Stand (1975) and Sextet (1977), and a world tour of Not Now, Darling (1979), Phillips found time to guest on talk shows like Tell Me Another (1976). Such is the way with old telly programmes that the majority never find their way to disc, no matter who they star. Consequently, fine Phillips performances in the crime series Chancer (1990), and the sitcoms Honey For Tea and The House of Windsor (both 1994) remain out of reach. With a library of over 100,000 titles, however, Cinema Paradiso enables Phillips fans to catch him in the 1988 'Rumpole and Portia' episode of Rumpole of the Bailey (1978-92) and the 1993 'Galloping Major' episode of Lovejoy (1986-94).

More surprisingly, Phillips appeared twice alongside the cream of Alternative Comedy in two episodes of The Comic Strip Presents... (1982-). In 'GLC: The Carnage Continues', he played politician Sir Horace Cutler, while he cameos as the Dean who has designs on poetry student Hannah Van Hosenstratt (Jennifer Saunders) in 'Oxford' (both 1990).

Going Legit

For all his fame in comedies, Phillips had always thought of himself as an actor rather than a funny man. As he grew older, he became more interesting in character parts and once again forced directors to see him in a new light after he triumphed as Gayev in Lindsay Anderson's 1983 production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Once again, Laurence Olivier was on hand to commend his work, this time as the husband of Joan Plowright, who was playing Gayev's sister, Madame Ranevskaya. Shortly afterwards, however, 93 year-old Cecelia Phillips died after being mugged and he discovered that his mother had secretly kept scrapbooks of all his press clippings.

Further acclaim came for Phillips's display as James Croxley in Peter Nichols's Passion Play (1984) and, as a result, he returned to the cinema for the first time in nine years, as Sir Joseph Byrne, the Governor of Kenya, in Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), which was adapted from the book written by Karen Blixen under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford headlined the heritage drama, as it converted five of its seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Having played Stewart Baldwin opposite Joan Collins and George Hamilton in Anthony Page's mini-series, Monte Carlo (1986), Phillips found himself in another multi-nominated blockbuster, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun (1987). In order to play Maxton, a business associate of the father of young Jim Graham (Christian Bale) who is detained by the Japanese, Phillips had to lose two stone to look suitably emaciated. However, he was back on more familiar ground, as Lord Astor in Michael Caton-Jones's Scandal (1989), as the flirtatious peer becomes involved in the Profumo Affair through his friendships with Minister of War John Profumo (Ian McKellen) and osteopath Stephen Ward (John Hurt), who had introduced the men to Christine Keeler (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) and Mandy Rice-Davies (Bridget Fonda).

Phillips remained in the House of Peers in Bob Rafelson's Mountains of the Moon (1990), to play Lord Henry Arundell, whose daughter, Isabel (Fiona Shaw), marries Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin), who would go in search of the source of the Nile with fellow explorer Richard Hanning Speke (Iain Glen). Also in 1990, Phillips was seen as William Fosdyke alongside John Gielgud in Martyn Friend's two-part John Mortimer adaptation, Summer's Lease, while he impressed as Lord Chief Justice Lane in Michael Beckham's IRA teleplay, Who Bombed Birmingham?

The stage continued to beckon, however, as Phillips played Mr Bennet in a touring production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1988). He returned to the West End as a poet whose mind is failing in Painting Churches (1992) before so impressing Anthony Hopkins in his Theatr Clwyd production of August - which Julian Mitchell had reworked from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya - that Hopkins recast him as Professor Alexander Blathwaite on making his directorial debut with August (1996). But Phillips stole the show as Sir John Falstaff in the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Merry Wives of Windsor (1996).

Following a success on the Edinburgh Fringe in Peter Tinniswood's On the Whole, It's Been Jolly Good (1999), Phillips reprised the role of Sir Plympton Makepeace MP in the BBC radio series, Tales From the Backbench (2001). That year saw Phillips bow out of live performance, as an ageing judge in the West Yorkshire Playhouse rendition of John Mortimer's Naked Justice. However, he claimed in an interview that 'retirement' wasn't a word in his vocabulary and he continued to work in film and television.

He gave one his finest small-screen appearances as Lord Flamborough in David Nobbs's Love on a Branch Line (1994), in which he plays an eccentric nobleman who lives on a steam train on a private stretch of line after having lost both legs driving a train during the General Strike in 1926. Phillips also enjoyed himself as George, Lord Canterville, alongside Patrick Stewart and Neve Campbell, in Syd Macarney's tele-take on Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost (1996).

A return to lechery followed, as Sydney Fisher in Mark Greenstreet's Caught in the Act (1997), which follows the efforts of Sara Crowe, Annette Badland, and Nadia Sawalha to form a variety act while staying in a sleepy Norfolk village. Also in 1997, Phillips got to co-star with Bruce Willis, as Woolburton in The Jackal, Michael Caton-Jones's reworking of Fred Zinnemann's 1973 adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's bestseller, The Day of the Jackal. Ending a busy year, Phillips ventured into the realm of Agatha Christie for the first time, as smooth-talking commission agent Lincoln Bradley in Charles Beeson's The Pale Horse.

In Demand to the End

Any actor intent on keeping busy will crop up in TV crime shows at certain points in their career. Phillips was no exception and Cinema Paradiso users can discover his typically assured contributions to such series as Dalziel and Pascoe (1996-2007), Midsomer Murders (1997-2021), and Liverpool 1 (1998-99). However, he also guested in such unavailable favourites as The Bill (1984-90), Heartbeat (1992-2009), Holby City (1999-2022), and Monarch of the Glen (2000-05).

Phillips was particularly effective as Gervase Crouchback in Bill Anderson's Sword of Honour (2001), William Boyd's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's celebrated wartime trilogy, in which he played the father of the drama's anti-hero, Guy Crouchback (Daniel Craig). But he could always be relied upon to surprise audiences, whether he was playing an old retainer feeling the force of Kathleen Turner's displeasure in Beeban Kidron's Cinderella (2000); reuniting with Geraldine McEwan as suspect Sir Philip Starke in the 'By the Pricking of My Thumbs' episode of Marple (2004-13); returning to the medical milieu in Harley Street (2008); or guesting in The Catherine Tate Show (2004-06) and Alan Carr's Now Thats What I Call a Ding Dong (2008).

In 2000, Phillips headed down to Cornwall to play vicar Gerald Percy in Nigel Cole's Saving Grace, which follows the efforts of widow Grace Trevelyan (Brenda Blethyn) to pay off her late husband's debts by growing cannabis. He struck a very different note, however, in Simon West's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), as Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) seeks out Wilson, an old friend of her father, Sir Richard (Jon Voight), who informs her about Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) and the Illuminati.

But greater cult celebrity awaited, as Phillips signed on to voice the Hogwarts Sorting Hat in Chris Columbus's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). He subsequently returned in Columbus's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and David Yates's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011).

During this run, Phillips reunited with Rupert Grint in another kidpic, in playing the judge in Pete Hewitt's Thunderpants (2002), which follows the flatulent Patrick Smash (Bruce Cook) into space. Phillips also played neurotic media tycoon Herbert Ames in Richard Burridge's little-seen art theft thriller, Collusion (2003), before moving on to reunite with the Comic Strip's Peter Richardson to send up his louche image as the Nazi-sympathising Lord W'ruff in Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004).

Having cameo'd as himself in Danny Boyle's Millions (2004), in which a Widnes boy sees a bag of money being thrown from a passing train, Phillips guested as Freddie in Brian W. Cook's Color Me Kubrick (2005), a true-life con story that centres on Alan Conway (John Malkovich), who spent years impersonating film director Stanley Kubrick. Phillips also gave a creepy account of himself as the next-door neighbour adding to the woes besetting teenager Alice Thompson in Ben Myers's teleplay, Walking With Ghosts (2005).

The following year saw Phillips secure the only major acting nomination of his entire career. In 1991, he had played Gordon Halliwell, a royal page who sides with Lord Percival Graves (John Hurt) rather than Sir Cedric Willingham (Peter O'Toole) after American Ralph Jones (John Goodman) inherits the throne in David S. Ward's King Ralph. Phillips now reunited with O'Toole in Roger Michell's Venus (2006), for which he received a BAFTA Best Supporting nod for his performance as Ian, the best friend of fellow actor Maurice Russell, who tries to warn him against forming an attachment with his self-serving grand-niece, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). The sequences in which Phillips skims the obituaries in a coffee shop with Richard Griffiths and in which he and O'Toole get drunk in the Garrick Club and misbehave in St Paul's Church in Covent Garden are truly cherishable.

Phillips received a CBE in compensation for missing out on his award and, in 2010, he was given the Freedom of London. Two years earlier, he had co-starred with fellow Cockney Michael Caine in John Crowley's Is There Anybody There? (2010), as Reg, a resident of the old people's home where retired magician Clarence (Caine) forges a friendship with Edward (Bill Miner), the 10 year-old son of the owners (David Morrissey and Anne-Marie Duff). Sylvia Syms, Peter Vaughan, Rosemary Harris, and Elizabeth Spriggs provided splendid support, as do Phillips, Simon Callow, and Joanna Lumley to William Hurt and Isabella Rossellini, as a married couple adopting different approaches to getting older in Julie Gavras's Late Bloomers (2011).

It's a shame this dramedy isn't available on disc and the same goes for Martin Gooch's After Death (2012), in which Phillips gave his final performance as Jeremiah Jones, the inventor whose sudden passing brings his four children home to discover the cause of his demise. Footage from this Gothic chiller is due to resurface in Darkheart Manor (2022), which represented Phillips's third collaboration with Gooch after the quirky 1998 short, The Orgasm Raygun. Maybe this will resurface in time, along with Things Talk, Steve Clark and Stefan Golaszewski's 2009 tele-short, in which Phillips voices a grandfather clock.