Biography

Served in the Royal Marines during the Second World War.

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1976 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to drama. Prime Minister Harold Wilson intended the award to go to him partly because he was a Labour Party supporter but the "H" got missed out of the name and the offer initially went to Sooty and Sweep entertainer Harry Corbett instead. Both were eventually included in the same honours list.

He suffered a heart attack in September 1979 and was involved in a serious car crash shortly afterwards. Corbett had smoked 60 cigarettes a day for years, but cut down to 20 a day after the heart attack.

The middle initial 'H' was just to avoid confusion with the other Harry Corbett (who operated the glove puppet "Sooty"). He said it stood for "Hanyfink" (anything).

He deserted from the army after being posted to Tonga, but later handed himself in to the military police.

Success has meant that people listen to me a bit more. It's the money that does that. You look at two chaps in an office, one earning fifty quid and another thirty. It's the bloke on fifty nicker who's going to get listened to. Yes, I've developed quite a bit of admiration for the chaps on the top of the heap. They've got the power. There may be a lot of idiots up there, too, but their voice is louder than anyone else's. To some extent, money has bought me that sort of freedom.

One thing that frightens me - when people ask me to explain my success. For once you've pinned down the formula, you're finished. After Harold, the junk man, had gone no one would take me seriously. In a movie I was in with Edward G. Robinson, A Boy Ten Feet Tall (1963), I was supposed to be a devil, and they just fell about with hilarity. I haven't tried villainy since.

I like the part because the man I'm playing is a failure - and failures are often of more interest in life than successes. I think there's a bit of everyone in Harold. Most of us try to put on an act, often behave in a way that's foreign to us. Harold makes fumbling attempts to 'get culture' by reading or listening to highbrow records, by dragging his father to exclusive restaurants and foreign films. He doesn't really succeed in kidding anyone, and somehow his failure is complete and pathetic.

Harold is not me, Harold only exists on paper.

I take marriage seriously but it's a bit of a burden to free enterprise. And if you don't want to get hot, stay out of the kitchen, I say. There is a sense in which every man is a bachelor, hugging his independence and never giving it up without further hankering for it. So you must be dead certain that marriage is going to provide some pretty hefty and permanent compensations. I don't believe in romantic love. That eternity bit. I think you feel it when you're about 13, then it wears away with the acne. But I've a great urge for strong temporary attachments. The trouble with women is they think in terms of centuries. I tend to look ahead just a couple of months. When I say 'forever,' I tend to mean 'till Christmas.' They think we're planning to go hand-in-hand for our pensions.