The comedy actor Brian Murphy was the mainstay of several hit television shows in which he was constantly outmanoeuvred by contemptuous and implacable women: Mildred Roper, Kitty McShane and Nora Batty were three of them.
The public image was of a ferret-faced and crafty-eyed loser, his thinning hair in a comb-over. Playing feeble, dim and cunning, Murphy specialised in a kind of low-level reedy grumble that could swiftly escalate into yelping panic. It was, however, somehow always clear that the weakness of his characters was firmly rooted in the strength and intelligence of his interpretation.
Murphy, who has died aged 92, became famous in six series of Man About the House on Thames Television, written by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, which ran from 1973 to 1976. Man About the House followed the fortunes of three young people (played by Richard O’Sullivan, Sally Thomsett and Paula Wilcox) sharing a flat, with Murphy and Yootha Joyce playing George and Mildred Roper, who owned the house and lived below them. The socially ambitious Mildred was flirtatious and something of a predator, while the ineffectual and petty-minded George was clearly unable or unwilling to cope with his wife’s sexuality – though he could be seedily lascivious towards the younger female characters.
He and Joyce – who had been close friends since the 1950s, when both had worked for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company – were a glorious pairing, and before long became the show’s stars, leading to a spin-off, George and Mildred – also for Thames and written by Mortimer and Cooke – which ran for five series from 1976 to 1979. At its peak the show attracted up to 20 million viewers in the UK, making Joyce and Murphy household names.
When later asked if he felt haunted by the character of George Roper, Murphy was sanguine. “I’ve long since come to terms with it,” he said. “I had sort of made a name in theatre before George and Mildred came along, so the fact that I became well known to a wider audience just allowed me more opportunities in the theatre. They were pleased to have a ‘name’ on the bill.”
George and Mildred ended when Joyce, an alcoholic, died at the age of 53 in 1980, with Murphy at her bedside.
Murphy then took the starring role in two sitcoms, The Incredible Mr Tanner (ITV, 1981), in which he played an escapologist, and L for Lester (BBC Two, 1982), as Lester Small, a driving instructor.
In 1982 there came a personal stage triumph in Alan Plater’s On Your Way, Riley, in which Murphy played the music-hall drag star Arthur Lucan, who appeared on stage and film in the 30s as Old Mother Riley.
As a child Murphy had been taken by his parents to see Lucan and Kitty McShane (“Old Mother Riley and Her Daughter”) at his local variety theatre, and he loved them all his life. So he jumped at the chance and certainly rose to the challenge of playing Lucan in Plater’s play, first presented at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He was partnered by Maureen Lipman as Lucan’s wife and stage daughter Kitty. The play was later adapted for television and shown on ITV in 1985, with Murphy and Lipman again in the main roles.
On Your Way, Riley was a real-life, backstage tragi-comedy – George and Mildred without the easy laughs. Murphy, with tremendous grace and poignancy, sank to the depths of despair as a besotted old trouper in a relationship in which his much younger wife, tempestuous and faithless, flaunted her lovers in front of him. He also recreated Lucan’s slapstick routines with great fidelity. Lipman, too, was magnificent as the woman who despised Lucan as a man while acknowledging that as a performer he was “a genius”.
Murphy was born in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, to Mabel (nee Matthews) and Gerald Murphy, who ran a restaurant. His two elder brothers, Ken and Eric, were killed on active service during the second world war. Brian was called up for national service in 1950 and worked as a clerk at RAF Northwood, near London, where he met another aspiring actor, Richard Briers, who also went on to be a television comedy star, in The Good Life.
When he was demobbed, Murphy studied at Rada and in 1955 joined Littlewood’s company in east London, appearing in Oh! What a Lovely War and Sparrers Can’t Sing. “She kept on casting me to play these funny old men,” he said. “I was young and not obviously good-looking, so it fell to my lot to impersonate old codgers.” He also played bit parts on TV in series such as Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green.
Murphy married Carol Gibson in 1957 and the couple had two sons; as he approached 40, parts became scarcer, and at one point he considered giving up acting to become an insurance salesman. But then Man About the House appeared, and he remained solidly in work for the rest of his career.
In the 90s he was in One Foot in the Grave and had parts in The Bill, Casualty and Mrs Merton and Malcolm. From 2003 to 2010 he played the timid but devious Alvin Smedley in the BBC’s Last of the Summer Wine as a neighbour of the ferocious Nora Batty (Kathy Staff), taking the place of Bill “Compo” Owen, who had died in 1999.
Theatre included the title role in Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, by Christopher Bond at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (1973); Soppit in When We Are Married, by JB Priestley, at the Whitehall theatre, London (1986) and Jim in Roll on Friday, by Roger Hall, at the Watford Palace theatre (1989).
In 2001 he toured as Al Lewis in Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, with Ron Moody. Two years later he was in the ITV comedy The Booze Cruise and in 2010 made an appearance in Hustle on BBC One. He continued working into his 80s, including appearances in Holby City and Casualty, and had most recently been filming for a comedy in late 2024.
His marriage to Carol ended in divorce; in 1995 he married the actor Linda Regan. She survives him, as do his sons, Trevor and Kevin, from his first marriage.
• Brian Trevor John Murphy, actor, born 25 September 1932; died 2 February 2025
• This article was amended on 4 February 2025. Brian Murphy was born on 25 September 1932, rather than 3 September 1932 as an earlier version stated.
