Philip Madoc

Philip Madoc, who has died aged 77, was a fine Welsh actor and played a Mohican warrior, Trotsky, King Lear and Lloyd George, but will be best remembered for appearing in 1973 as a U-boat captain in a celebrated episode of Dad’s Army.

Philip Madoc as the U-boat commander in the famous episode of 'Dad's Army' 

The episode features the men under the command of Captain Mainwaring guarding a captured U-boat crew led by Madoc, who proceeds to make detailed notes of their treatment.

U-Boat Captain: “I am making notes, captain, and your name will go on ze list. And when we win the war, you will be brought to account.”

Mainwaring: “Write what you like, you’re not going to win the war.”

U-Boat Captain: “Oh yes we are.”

Mainwaring: “Oh no you’re not.”

U-Boat Captain: Oh yes we are.”

Pike (sings): “Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp, He’s half barmy, so’s his army, whistle while you ...”

U-Boat Captain: “Your name will also go on ze list. What is it?”

Mainwaring: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”

The reason for this particular scene being enshrined as a classic of British comedy remained a mystery to Madoc , but decades later it was still coming back to haunt him. A keen traveller, he was on holiday in the middle of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia 25 years after the first broadcast when a man tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he was Philip Madoc. “When I answered 'Yes’, he looked delighted and said 'I knew it was you. I loved you in that Dad’s Army episode.’ I never thought it would come up in Mongolia.”

Madoc’s range as an actor was far more extensive than this incident would suggest. When once asked by a journalist why he had entered the profession, Madoc’s eyes misted over : “Prospero’s final speech in The Tempest and the chance of doing it properly is the reason I became an actor. You put up with all the hassle which accompanies this business – the disappointments, the insecurity, the frustrations – for speeches and roles like that.”

Philip Madoc was born at Merthyr Tydfil on July 5 1934 and was intensely proud of his name, explaining: “It comes from Madog, meaning 'man of bravery.’” He showed an early aptitude as a linguist at Cyfarthfa High School, Merthyr Tydfil, and went on to study Languages at the University of Wales before enrolling at the University of Vienna, where he became the first foreigner to win the Diploma of the Interpreters Institute. He ended up speaking seven languages, including Russian and Swedish, and had a working knowledge of Huron Indian, Hindi and Mandarin.

Having embarked on a career as an interpreter, he found the work soul-destroying: “I did dry-as-dust jobs like a sewing machine conference and political interpreting. You get to despise politicians when you have to translate the rubbish they spout.”

He was offered a job lecturing at Gothenburg University, but decided on a change of course and applied successfully for a scholarship at Rada.

Madoc went on to take many leading stage roles, among them as Iago in Othello; Antony in Antony and Cleopatra; George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; the Duke in Measure for Measure; Macbeth; Shylock; and Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

On television he played Magua in the BBC series The Last of the Mohicans, and won particular acclaim in the title role of the BBC drama The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. “I really wanted to play Lloyd George,” he said. “I didn’t grow up thinking of him as a hero, but since I have done research for the part I understand how his sexual prowess over women gave him the confidence to hold power. I read everything ever written about him. I’ve become a Lloyd George authority.”

In the 1990s he starred as DCI Noel Bain in four series of A Mind to Kill, which was particularly successful in the United States, where it was favourably compared to Morse. Each scene of the series was filmed first in Welsh, then in English, prompting Madoc to muse that identical lines and characters were often transformed by the different languages.

His many other television appearances included The Avengers; The Saint; Poldark; Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased); The Goodies; Dr Who; Porridge; and Fortunes of War.

On the big screen, Madoc featured in, among others, Zina; The Quiller Memorandum; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; and Operation Daybreak.

With his sonorous voice, Madoc was particularly prolific in audio, recording the works of Dylan Thomas; Morte d’Arthur; Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Canterbury Tales; and many others. For BBC Radio he played King Lear, and Prospero in The Tempest; recently he had portrayed Stalin in Life and Fate.

For recreation, Madoc enjoyed wind surfing, squash and ballroom dancing. He was a Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.

Philip Madoc’s first wife, with whom he had a son and a daughter, was the actress Ruth Madoc, famous for her starring role in the television series Hi-de-Hi!. The marriage was dissolved, and he was also divorced from his second wife, Diane. He is survived by his two children.

Philip Madoc, born July 5 1934, died March 5 2012

Dave Charnley

Dave Charnley, the boxer who has died at the age of 76, was known as “The Dartford Destroyer” and won British, Empire and European crowns in the 135lb lightweight division, only to be saddled with the unwanted tag of being the finest British boxer never to win a world title.

Dave Charnley (right) meets world champion Joe Brown for a weigh-in before their title fight at Earl's Court on April 18, 1961

He came desperately close, however, and many grizzled fight fans remain convinced that the hard-hitting southpaw did enough to defeat the American Joe “Old Bones” Brown when the pair clashed for the latter’s world crown at Earl’s Court on April 18 1961.

After 15 gripping rounds which saw the fortunes of both fighters see-saw astonishingly, Brown was adjudged to scored well enough to retain his crown. It was some measure of consolation to Charnley that The Ring magazine subsequently made the clash its “Fight of the Year” – an indication of the determination and courage the British challenger had displayed against one of the all-time lightweight greats.

David Charnley was born at Dartford, Kent, on October 10 1935. He worked as a boiler fitter in his late teens before his heavy hitting ability won him the Amateur Boxing Association featherweight title in 1954. He turned professional the same year.

He became British lightweight champion by outpointing Joe Lucy at Harringay Arena on April 9 1957, only subsequently to lose on points to the South African Willie Toweel in an Empire title challenge at Earl’s Court.

Charnley emerged from that encounter a better fighter, however, and gained revenge as well as another title by battering Toweel inside 10 rounds at London’s Empire Pool on May 12 1959. A fighter who deployed excellent footwork and ringcraft, Charnley’s chief weapon was a thunderous left hand, thrown hard and straight from a crouching southpaw stance. It was chiefly this punch which accounted for the 27 stoppage wins he notched up in a 61-fight career.

Victory over Toweel paved the way for the Kent fighter’s first attempt at a world title against Brown, in Houston, Texas, on December 2 1959, which ended when he was forced to retire with a badly-damaged eye before the start of the sixth. By the time of their rematch, Charnley had captured the European crown – with a 10th-round stoppage of Italy’s Mario Vecchiatto at the Empire Pool on March 29 1960 – and on that frenzied night at Earls Court, he proceeded to push Brown to the limit.

The Dartford Destroyer’s supremacy at British and European level was chillingly demonstrated at Nottingham Ice Rink the following year when, on November 20, he dispatched the Welsh challenger David Hughes in 40 seconds – including the count. At the time it was the fastest knockout in British title fight history.

It was 18 months later, on their third meeting, at Manchester’s King’s Hall, that Charnley finally had the satisfaction of knocking out Joe Brown, his great rival, in the sixth round. But by then the American had lost his world title.

Charnley lost his Empire crown on a close points decision to Bunny Grant in Kingston, Jamaica on August 4 1962, but the following year secured the Lonsdale Belt outright by outpointing Maurice Cullen in Manchester.

Moving up to the welterweight division, Charnley ill-advisedly took on the renowned American Emile Griffith in a non-title contest at the Empire Pool on December 1 1964, and suffered a sustained beating before the contest was halted in the ninth round. He retired as British lightweight champion following 48 wins, 12 defeats and one draw.

He went on to become a successful businessman, running hair salons and dabbling in property. He professed to “not particularly liking watching too much boxing” but was occasionally sighted ringside at his old south London amateur club, Fitzroy Lodge.

Dave Charnley’s first marriage was dissolved. He married, secondly, Maureen, who survives him with their two daughters.

Dave Charnley, born October 10 1935, died March 3 2012

Davy Jones

Davy Jones, who has died aged 66, was the lead singer of the original “boy band”, The Monkees, and a heart-throb for millions of teenage girls in the 1960s.

The Monkees were a manufactured band put together in 1965

The group, put together by NBC Television for a children’s “soap”, was the world’s first manufactured pop band and was derided by critics as much as it was adored by its fans. Two members of the band, Mickey Dolenz, the “zany” one with the big smile, and Peter Tork, a “goofy” blond with the floppy hair, could not play their own instruments; only one Monkee, Mike Nesmith, could actually play a guitar. Meanwhile the diminutive, British-born Jones, a former child actor chosen by NBC as the group’s designated pin-up, performed (lip-synched, some claimed) to music played by the cream of Los Angeles session musicians.

In the 1960s their television show, The Monkees, which chronicled the adventures of an imaginary band living in a California beach house, ran for 52 episodes, and the group sold millions of copies of songs such as I’m a Believer, Last Train to Clarksville and (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone. In 1967, The Monkees outsold both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I’m a Believer even kept both the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations off the top of the American charts. They also made a bizarre movie called Head, written by Jack Nicholson.

But when their television show ended The Monkees decided to seize “artistic control” and play their own songs. Dolenz learned to play drums, Jones a bit of guitar. They started to write some of their own material and went on tour in 1967, supported, bizarrely, by Jimi Hendrix, who was booed off stage by teenage girls yelling for Davy Jones (Hendrix finally gestured obscenely and stomped off). But their run in the charts soon ended and, after splitting up in 1968, they disappeared into obscurity.

Three of the band, Jones, Dolenz and Tork, staged various Monkees reunions over the years and in 1997 the band staged a comeback with Nesmith for the first time, releasing a new album and embarking on a tour of British cities. Last year, however, they abruptly pulled the plug on a tour to celebrate The Monkees’ 45th Anniversary. Later “internal group conflicts” were cited for the cancellation.

Jones never seemed to be unduly upset by the band’s failure to return to the big time: “Wherever I go, people still shout out: 'Hey, hey, we’re The Monkees’ And I never tire of that.”

David Thomas Jones was born in Manchester on December 30 1945. His father was a keen racegoer and took Davy to Manchester racecourse where, because of the boy’s small stature, father and son weighed up the possibility of Davy becoming a jockey.

The pair contacted the Manchester Evening News, which put them in touch with the trainer Basil Foster in Newmarket. By then, Jones had already tried his hand at acting, appearing briefly in an early episode of Coronation Street.

Despite this taste of fame, Davy was far keener to pursue a career in the Turf than on the screen. So when Foster contacted the Jones family and offered Davy a spot at his stables, the teenager leapt at the chance. He spent six weeks at Holland House Stables before leaving school in December 1961, earlier than he should have, so that he could work for Foster as an apprentice.

Soon Jones was “galloping up Warren Hill and loving every minute of it. Being a cocky kid, I even went into the stable lads’ boxing championship.” It was not a good idea: “I got a good walloping.”

Ironically, it was Jones’s spell at Newmarket that secured him his big break in showbusiness when, in early 1962, a theatrical agent who knew Foster came to visit. Foster mentioned that Jones had acted a little, and pointed out that he “spent all day cracking jokes and doing shtick”.

A few days later the agent contacted the yard to tell Foster that a West End production of Oliver! was looking for someone to play the role of the Artful Dodger. According to Jones, Foster insisted he try out for the part. “I just cried. I wanted to be a jockey. But he said 'You’re going. Come back when you’re famous’.”

Oliver! proved an immediate hit and transferred in 1964 from London to New York. There, with the rest of the cast, Jones appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on the same night that the Beatles made their debut appearance. Jones watched the Beatles from the wings of the set, and noted the adulation the band received. “I said to myself, I want a piece of that.”

Following his appearance on Ed Sullivan, Jones was spotted by scouts from the television wing of Columbia Records, who signed him up. The deal led to a couple of appearances in forgettable American soap operas as well as the release of a single.

Jones’s transformation from aspiring jockey to rock and roll superstar was still far from complete. So, along with 436 other struggling hopefuls, he turned out to audition for a pop group to be created for an NBC television show. Steven Stills, later of Crosby, Stills and Nash, was among those rejected, but Jones, along with Dolenz, Tork and Nesmith, was accepted. Rumours that Charles Manson, later to win an altogether grimmer notoriety, was also among those auditioning, have since been denied.

Accusations that the band was phoney and artificial were harder to bat away, however, particularly after Dolenz let it be known that some early Monkees records had been recorded before he was cast to join the band. “The Monkees was not a band,” Dolenz said. “It was this television show about this band that wanted to be the Beatles.” Critics may have branded them the “pre-fab four”, but in capturing the spirit of a nation of popstar wannabes, the television show achieved huge popularity.

Inevitably, The Monkees overshadowed the rest of Jones’s career. But he continued to act, appearing on stage in London in the late 1970s and in episodes of the American television shows The Brady Bunch and My Two Dads. He also returned to productions of Oliver!, though in the role of Fagin.

Nor did he ever lose his passion for the horses. He had an ownership interest in animals on both sides of the Atlantic, and represented a racecourse in Virginia.

Davy Jones, who died suddenly of a heart attack in Florida, where he lived, was married three times and had four daughters.

Davy Jones, born December 30 1945, died February 29 2012