Richard Davies obituary

As the philosophical science teacher Mr Price, notable for his sarcastic wit, in the television sitcom Please Sir!, Richard Davies, who has died aged 89, was the perfect foil to the programme’s star, John Alderton, who played the idealistic, newly qualified Bernard Hedges, in charge of the unruly Class 5C. “I pity you,” Price would tell him.

Bob Larbey and John Esmonde’s creation, set in Fenn Street secondary modern school and watched by up to 20 million viewers, ran from 1968 to 1972 and featured memorable, well-drawn characters in both the classroom and staffroom. Other teachers seen alongside Price were the incompetent head, Mr Cromwell (Noel Howlett), tyrannical assistant head, Miss Ewell (Joan Sanderson), and the doddering Mr Smith (Erik Chitty).

Davies also appeared in the 1971 film spin-off and, in the same year, in the sitcom’s sequel, The Fenn Street Gang, which followed pupils’ fortunes on leaving the school.

Earlier, he played another Welshman in the much lauded 1964 film Zulu. As Private 593 Jones, he told a Swiss-born Natal Mounted Guard soldier: “This is a Welsh regiment, man – though there are some foreigners from England in it, mind. I am Jones from Bwlchgwyn.”

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Davies was at the height of his career during a period when Welsh actors were frequently typecast in “Taffy” roles and, as in Please Sir!, he was often heard to say “boyo”. However, his comedy and dramatic skills meant he was able to break out of the stereotype at times and enjoyed a long, prolific career.

He was born in Dowlais, Mid Glamorgan, the son of William Davies, a railway guard, and his wife, Esther (nee Coles). After attending school in Merthyr Tydfil, where he started acting, Davies went to work as a miner. He then briefly acted in Colwyn Bay, before joining the military police during the second world war, when he was seconded to the Combined Services Entertainment Unit.

On demob, he joined the Pilgrim Players travelling theatre company, taking his professional name from the character he played in his first radio play, Dicky Bach Dwl in Night Birds. Repertory work followed across the country and Davies made his London West End debut in Little Lambs Eat Ivy (Ambassadors theatre, 1947-48). Later, he spent a season (1951-52) with the Old Vic company, touring Europe and South Africa, and he was back in the West End for Carrington VC (Westminster theatre, 1953).

Following his screen debut, for the BBC in the Welsh-set Cliff Gordon play Choir Practice (1949), he played a police driver in the Ealing Studios film The Lavender Hill Mob (1951). He was soon in demand for character roles on television, playing five different parts in the police drama No Hiding Place (1964-67).

After Please Sir!, Davies became a regular in sitcoms. He played Taffy Evans, the Welshman reunited with his former English, Scottish and Irish shipmates, in Rule Britannia! (1975), and Clive, on the working men’s club committee, in Oh No It’s Selwyn Froggitt (1976-77). In Bottle Boys (1984-85), he played Stan Evans, the boss of Robin Askwith’s milkman.

He played Grimble, one of the eccentric inventor’s creations, in the first series (1973) of the children’s programme Robert’s Robots, and appeared in Coronation Street as Idris Hopkins (1974-75), who worked at a foundry while his wife, Vera (Kathy Staff), and mother, Megan (Jessie Evans), ran the corner shop. In one of Fawlty Towers’s most famous episodes, The Kipper and the Corpse (1979), Davies was Mr White, who with his wife wants access to the room where another guest has died. He played Max Johnson in the Welsh soap opera Taff Acre (1981) and a Welsh holiday camp manager in the 1987 Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen.

Showing his versatility, Davies impersonated the trade union leader Clive Jenkins in a spoof of Question Time for Not the Nine O’Clock News, and played the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Whoops Apocalypse (1982).

In the 1972 film of Under Milk Wood, which starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, he played Mr Pritchard alongside his second wife, the actor Jill Britton, whom he had married in 1955. The play was his favourite and he took the same role in a West End production of it at the Mayfair theatre in 1978.

In 1996 he played Father Hopkins in the drama serial And the Beat Goes On, about Liverpool in the 1960s.

Davies is survived by Jill and their children, Glen and Nerissa, and by a son, Colin, from his first marriage, to Beryl Armstrong, which ended in divorce.