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R.I.P. Brian
He always came across in interviews as a kind and caring person.
Here is obituary from The Telegraph:
“Brian Murphy, the actor, who has died aged 92, achieved his greatest success in the ITV sitcom Man About the House (1973-76) and its spin-off series George and Mildred (1976-79).
He played George Roper, the henpecked, unkempt and terminally idle husband of his over-sexed, social-climbing spouse Mildred, played by Yootha Joyce. The warring pair, subletting landlords, were originally cast in three episodes of Man About the House as support acts to the tenants (played by Richard O’Sullivan, Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett) who rented the flat above.
But they proved so popular that they were kept on for all six series of the sitcom before being given their own spin-off – which did even better, attracting 22 million viewers at its height and becoming the most-watched programme on television.
George and Mildred saw the Ropers move from their flat to a middle-class housing development where Mildred’s attempts at social advancement were always being undermined by her shiftless husband – with his motorcycle and sidecar – defiantly proclaiming his working-class roots and trying to corrupt Tristram, the young son of their snobbish next-door neighbours, the Fourmiles, with socialist ideas.
The pair appeared in a film version and had their own stage show which toured packed houses in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
“I think it was so popular because it was a universal theme, the warring husband and wife,” Murphy reflected. “It translates into any language. The countries where the television show was most popular were Spain and Italy. And of course the writing was spot on.”
The pair became so well-known that members of the public would greet Murphy in the street as George and even ask for his advice on their own marriages. As George he was forever fending off Mildred’s attempts to seduce him, and Murphy recalled how a man once approached him in the pub and asked for his advice on dealing with his own wife who was “always pestering” him for sex.
Above all, Murphy attributed the sitcom’s success to his rapport with Yootha Joyce, whom he had first met in 1955 at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and to whom he referred as his “second wife”. “The producers of Man About the House didn’t realise we already knew each other, and they were taken aback by the chemistry between us when we instantly fell into our roles.”
The show came to an abrupt and premature end in 1980 when, with Murphy at her bedside, Yootha Joyce died of cirrhosis of the liver aged 53 due to chronic alcoholism. “We had another eight episodes of the show to go,” he recalled.
Although his subsequent attempts to avoid being typecast in browbeaten husband roles proved only moderately successful, Murphy never resented being known as George Roper: “He has made me a household name and I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay the bills any more. I love him.”The youngest of three sons, Brian Trevor John Murphy was born in Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, on September 25 1932 to Gerald Murphy, a grocer’s assistant, and Mabel, née Matthews. Later he moved to London with his parents, who had gone into the restaurant trade. His two older brothers were both killed on active service during the Second World War.
As a boy Brian loved acting, entertaining his friends with one-boy shows. During National Service (1952-54), stationed at RAF Northwood, he met his fellow aspiring actor Richard Briers, with whom he would spend weekends recording the great roles of Shakespeare into an old-fashioned tape recorder: “Then we’d report back for duty with very hoarse voices.”
They were almost arrested when a policeman saw them struggling with a bulky case containing the tape recorder: “He failed to see the funny side when he asked us what we’d got in there and Richard replied ‘a head’. ”
After demobilisation Murphy joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but left after a year when his money ran out, though not before a glowing encomium appeared in the The Stage: “Old men, young men, odd men and drunken men, smart fellows and broken-down creatures, Brian Murphy can play them to perfection.”
He was taken on by Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Workshop in Stratford East, appearing in 1963 in the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War, there and on Broadway, and as Hamlet in a production staged in Warsaw.
Back in Britain, however, while he had small roles on television and played an apothecary in Ken Russell’s horror film The Devils (1971), by the early 1970s he was getting a bit desperate for better-paid parts. “I had a young family and I’d put some money into a revival of Oh What a Lovely War that I was part-producing, so things were a bit tight. I got on to my agent and said maybe I should consider selling insurance or something. Man About the House fell into my lap and turned everything around.”
After George and Mildred ended, for many years there were only occasional glimpses of Murphy on television, making guest appearances in such series as The Bill, Sunburn and Jonathan Creek. Instead he concentrated more on theatre and radio, which gave him the scope to tackle straight roles as well as comic ones.In 2003, however, he joined the cast of Last of the Summer Wine as glider pilot Alvin Smedley, Nora Batty’s dashing new love interest, after the death of Bill Owen, who played Compo, the bane of Nora’s life. He continued in the role until 2010.
In later life he made guest appearances in other comedies and soaps including One Foot in the Grave, Mrs Merton and Malcolm, Brookside and Holby City, and as a shopkeeper called Stan in the pre-school children’s TV series Wizadora.
In 1957 he married Carol Gibson, a stage manager whom he had met at the Theatre Workshop. They had two sons and fostered several other children, but divorced in the mid-1980s. In 1995 he married the actress Linda Regan, best known for her role as the Yellowcoat April in the sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, whom he met when they were appearing in the husband-and-wife farce Wife Begins at 40 in Eastbourne. She survives him with his children.
Brian Murphy, born September 25 1932, died February 2 2025”
