Wilfrid Brambell's career started at the celebrated Gate Theatre in Dublin, followed in wartime by entertaining the troops with ENSA, but he knew that to break into show business he would have to cross the water. Times were hard as he looked for work in London, but a chance meeting got him into a successful play at the Mercury Theatre and from there he progressed to larger roles. In 1948 he married his girlfriend Molly but they divorced 10 years later after he made the devastating discovery that he was not the father of the boy he believed to be his son. Brambell kept his private life to himself, but in 1963 he was arrested for chatting up a man who proved to be an undercover police officer, and although the case was dismissed Brambell may have been bisexual. The hugely popular Steptoe and Son had launched the previous year and the incident in 1963 almost cost him his job as one of the lead actors in the BBC sitcom. Brambell played the old rag and bone man with a colourful vocabulary, while Harry H Corbett was his son, and the catchphrase "you dirty old man" arose from an incident when pickled onions ended up in the bathtub. In the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night Brambell took the role of Paul's grandfather, and the Fab Four jokingly referred to him as a "very clean old man". In real life Brambell was well-dressed and dapper and was rarely recognised in the street. Corbett on the other hand was a Method actor who had worked with Joan Littlewood and was recognised everywhere, and this gave rise to rumours that the two men disliked each other. Family and friends all deny that there was any coolness between them. After 12 years of comedy magic, Steptoe and Son was wound up in 1972, with a Christmas special the following year featuring the unknown Joanna Lumley as Harry's girlfriend. 192pp, monochrome photos.
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