Actor and star of Are You Being Served?

Born: March 5, 1934;

Died: December 6, 2015

NICHOLAS Smith, who has died aged 81, was an actor whose fame rested almost entirely on the role of Mr Rumbold, the hapless, naïve manager at Grace Brothers, the fictional department store in the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served?

Rumbold, as a member of the management, was a more remote member of the cast than his subordinate, Captain Peacock, a mustachioed stickler played by Frank Thornton, though he was one of the few characters to appear in every episode. Since Thornton’s death in March 2013, Smith had been the last surviving member of the programme’s original cast.

The contrast between the characters was an important part of the show’s dynamic. Peacock, though frequently wrong, was habitually decisive to the point of pig-headedness. Smith played the jug-eared Cuthbert Rumbold (though they were his own ears) as equally high-handed, but the slightest challenge revealed him as an ineffectual ditherer, constantly terrified of his own masters, the incredibly ancient “Young Mr Grace” and his even older brother. When presented with the first script, Smith later recalled, he at once realised they “wanted me to play a complete idiot”.

Smith’s appearance – besides the ears, he was bald and slightly gap-toothed – were a gift for the part of middle-class twit, and he played variants on the theme as a headmaster in Worzel Gummidge (1979) and as vicars in the animated film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and the sitcom Last of the Summer Wine (2008). He conformed perfectly to Dickens’ description of Mr Spottletoe in the BBC’s version of Martin Chuzzlewit (1994).

But as a jobbing actor, Smith took on anything that came his way. An early role was in the Doctor Who story The Dalek Invasion of Earth, in which he played a mine worker who eventually helps the First Doctor (William Hartnell) lead the humans enslaved by the Daleks in a rebellion. He had a recurring role as a constable in Z-Cars (1972-75) and popped up in a number of British TV shows of the period, including The Frost Report, The Avengers and The Saint (Sir Roger Moore took to Twitter yesterday to express his sadness and declare Smith a “nice man”).

Nicholas Smith was born on March 5 1934 at Banstead in Surrey, the son of a chartered surveyor, and went from St John’s School, Leatherhead, to train at RADA. He had a good light baritone voice and was an accomplished musician, playing several instruments; in a YouTube video, he could be seen playing the piano and singing a pastiche of his own composition, name-checking various classical composers.

After drama school, he had a succession of roles in provincial rep, at the Bristol Old Vic, and on stage in the West End and Broadway, and broke into television in 1960 as the uncredited “Man at Airport” in Pathfinders to Mars.

Doctor Who was his first speaking role; the following year, he was in a TV adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities and could briefly been seen as a fireman on the big screen in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. From 1966, he was a regular on The Frost Report and thereafter popped up on all manner of shows, from Up Pompeii! to The Champions and Doctor in the House.

But Are You Being Served? was undoubtedly the role for which the public knew him. The programme, which almost entirely depended on British class distinctions, camp, innuendo and absurdly contrived doubles-entendres was wildly popular from its debut in 1973 until it ended in 1985, 69 episodes later.

Yet it almost never happened: a pilot had been made, but was shelved by the BBC. It was screened only to fill in a gap in the schedule when the 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a number of Israeli athletes. A full series was commissioned and shown the following year; it proved popular not only in Britain but was quickly an unexpectedly – some thought inexplicably – huge hit on the Continent, in Australia, and even in America, where it was shown on PBS and acquired a cult following.

Nicholas Smith’s last TV roles were in the children’s programme M.I. High (2010) as Professor Quakermass and a part the following year in an episode of ABC’s reboot of Charlie’s Angels.

He married, in 1959, Mary Wall, with whom he had a daughter, Catherine Russell who grew up watching the recording of every single episode of Are You Being Served?, and became a actress, best known for her role as Dr Serena Campbell in Holby City.

ANDREW MCKIE