Manchester mill worker Percy is not new to London, visiting to see his beloved United play whenever they have a fixture in the capital. This cup final weekend, however, the 30-something virgin's eyes are opened to a whole new world and lifestyle, up close and personal. Other television roles included Doris Entwhistle in the sitcom Fairly Secret Army (1984-86), starring Geoffrey Palmer, and she had guest appearances in many series including The Avengers, The Goodies, Jason King, Robin’s Nest, Rumpole of the Bailey, Birds of a Feather, Last of the Summer Wine and Foyle’s War.

The Boxes’ time had passed. They were middle-aged people at a moment when middle-aged people suddenly seemed very old indeed – a trend that the movies, as ever, ruthlessly exaggerated.’

Napoleon (2023)

I haven't seen it since. Who knows if I'd rate it as highly the second time round? However, it's stayed in my memory all these years, especially the way Corbett transformed himself from his part in Steptoe and Son to this naïve put upon virgin.

FIONA MOUNTFORD for THE EVENING STANDARD says, "Leaden production finds no way in to any well spring of deep-running emotion." ELISABETH MAHONEY for THE GUARDIAN says, "A flat piece with little to engage us." CHARLES SPENCER for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says, "Tompkinson is in superb comic form....Collins, too, is deeply touching as a woman who has invented a romantic fantasy life because the memory of childhood abuse is too painful to live with." SARAH HEMMING for THE FINANCIAL TIMES says, "Its structure is creaky and repetitive, its plot development clunky." IAN JOHNS for THE TIMES says, "Dyer's clash between the worldly and unworldly carries few sparks here She played Delia King, a staunchly feminist element of the Helping Hands agency, in place to do anything for anybody. This was followed by Carry on Cruising (1962), the first Carry On in colour, in which she was the fun-seeking holidaymaker Glad Trimble, and then the part of the more world-weary Sally in Carry on Cabby (1963).

Wish (2023)

In 1988 she again drew on personal experience – she had cancer three times – to bring poignancy to the character of Mrs Dewey, an elderly woman dying of cancer, in Eskimos Do It (1988), part of the BBC2 Screenplay series. The previous year she had had a small but intense role as the gin-soaked mother Mrs Brent in Miss Marple: Nemesis. Whereas Muriel Box was approaching sixty when she made Rattle, Charles Dyer was only in his mid-thirties but they combine, in opening out the play for the screen, to make the material stupidly condescending – especially in the soccer supporter element. Box inserts – for ‘realism’ – shots of an FA Cup Final crowd yet there’s not a hint of anyone in Percy’s party caring in the least what happens to their team at Wembley. Unless I missed it, we never know what does happen – though much of the film’s audience in 1964 would have been well aware that Manchester United had won the Cup the previous year. The northerners’ day trip to London is presented as an only-here-for-the-beer works outing. Rattle of a Simple Man is a 1964 British comedy-drama film directed by Muriel Box and starring Diane Cilento, Harry H. Corbett and Michael Medwin, based on the 1963 play by Charles Dyer. [2] The screenplay is about a naive man who becomes involved with a prostitute.

Thirty-five years after his death, Harry H Corbett has the reputation of a major stage actor whose talents went largely to waste in screen work – thanks to the huge success he enjoyed in Steptoe and Son and the typecasting that followed. This thesis was successfully dramatised in the 2008 BBC4 TV film The Curse of Steptoe (directed by Michael Samuels from a screenplay by Brian Fillis). At the start of the film, Corbett (Jason Isaacs) is Shakespeare’s Richard II in a Theatre Workshop production at Stratford East: Joan Littlewood looks forward, once ‘you’ve got the histories under your belt’, to his Macbeth and, after that, ‘the Danish ditherer’. In January 1962, Corbett was playing Henry V at the Bristol Old Vic. He took a few days off to appear in ‘The Offer’, the prophetically named BBC Comedy Playhouse pilot that led to the commissioning of the first series of Steptoe and Son. It’s plain to see from Steptoe that Harry H Corbett was very gifted (he won the 1963 equivalent of a BAFTA for Best TV Actor for playing Harold Steptoe). Because of this and because of Corbett’s legend, I always keep an eye open for further evidence of how good he was. It’s a wild goose chase – the whole point of the legend is that such evidence doesn’t exist – but I keep hoping otherwise. So I recorded Rattle of a Simple Man when it was shown on ‘Talking Pictures’ the other day. Sad to say, Harry H Corbett’s performance in the lead is awful. I saw the "The Rattle of A Simple Man" probably in the North Atlantic in December of 1965 and still sit up when I hear or read the name of Diane Cilento. She and the movie made that big an impression on me! I've certainly been a fan of British film ever since.Ladies Who Do (1964) Charwoman Mrs Cragg (Peggy Mount) retrieves a discarded cigar from the wastepaper basket of city tycoon James Ryder (Harry H…