George Cole, 1925-2015

The seemingly effortless ability to steal scenes from those billed above him so marked out George Cole that two of those secondary roles would come to loom large in the public eye: Flash Harry, the spiv who took such an innocent pleasure in his store of nylons that had fallen from a lorry in four St Trinian’s films (1954-66), and Arthur Daley, the seemingly avuncular London ‘businessman’ with ever-calculating eyes in ITV’s Minder (1979-94).

Born in Tooting in 1925, Cole began his acting career at the age of 14 in the stage musical The White Horse Inn, followed by the stage thriller Cottage to Let in which he played the evacuee Ronald. He repeated the part in Anthony Asquith’s 1941 film version, opposite Alistair Sim, who became Cole’s mentor. Cole credited Sim with developing his skills as an adult performer. After Cole’s war service with the RAF, the two often appeared together: The Green Man (1956) has Sim’s assassin foiled by Cole’s blithely innocent vacuum-cleaner salesman, while Flash Harry’s interactions with Sim’s ‘Miss Fritton’ in The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) are pure joy.

Throughout the 1950s, Cole enjoyed a run of uniformed parts, giving typically well-observed performances in The Intruder (1953) as a subaltern promoted from the ranks, and as a Petty Officer trapped in a submarine in Morning Departure (1950). Under the tutelage of Sim, Cole lost his cockney accent (although never the professional ability to revive it) and could be seen in comedies concerning young white-collar workers forced into outlandish situations. In Top Secret (1952) Soviet agents mistake Cole’s sanitary engineer as a spy, while in Laughter in Paradise (1951) he played a bank clerk obliged to fake a hold-up of his own manager.

Such hapless chaps were occasionally leavened by more sardonic types, such as the journalist trapped on a desert island in Our Girl Friday (1953), or the frustrated songwriter in It’s a Wonderful World (1956). In each role Cole’s vocal dexterity was matched by his body language: Flash Harry, for instance, swaggered from side to side like a pompadoured metronome. His mute slave Flavius in Cleopatra (1963) – a rare outing for Cole in an ‘international film’ – gave him an opportunity to display his skills at mime. Such was Cole’s talent for conveying a range of conflicting emotions in a single reaction shot, he rarely needed explanatory dialogue.

The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966) marked Cole’s final outing as Flash Harry, and in the 1970s he appeared in comparatively few films. The decade saw him survive the challenges of the dire Cliff Richard musical Take Me High (1973), and he played Tylo the talking dog opposite Elizabeth Taylor’s Queen of Light in the US/USSR co-production of The Blue Bird (1976).

But from the mid 1960s onwards it was television that allowed Cole the opportunities to show his range. The Firebug (1964), an episode of the ITC police drama Gideon’s Way, featured him as a mentally disturbed arsonist; the 1968 series A Man of Our Times had Cole as a middle-aged professional facing a major career change. His corrupt MP Sir Giles Lynchwood in the BBC’s adaptation of Tom Sharpe’s Blott on the Landscape (1985) was all the more effective for being played absolutely straight.

At the end of the 1970s Cole was cast as prosperous wide boy Arthur Daley in ITV’s Minder, a role with enough latitude to exploit all his considerable talents. Daley delivered malapropisms in orotund tones that hid an ambiguous background; his taste in sub-Saville Row suits was combined with a poise suggestive of readiness to flee possible retribution at any given moment. The character would readily exploit anyone desperate enough to enter his orbit, from Dennis Waterman’s eponymous minder downwards, yet Cole imbued Daley with a vast charm without ever losing sight of his venal outlook.

The final episode of Minder was transmitted in 1994, by which point Cole would perhaps forever be associated with secondhand Daimlers and cheap cigars. Such a legacy did not prevent him from subsequently enjoying a wide variety of roles and he continued working until he was 90. Before his death, he was even planning to appear in the horror film Road Rage. Generations of film and television viewers will remember Flash Harry telling a headmistress, “See you later, educator”, or Arthur Daley calling a rival an “invertebrate liar”, but these were merely two facets to the career of one of Britain’s master character actors.