Comedy writer Jeremy Lloyd dies aged 84 | Television & radio | The Guardian The news on TV Comedy writer Jeremy Lloyd dies aged 84 Along with writing partner David Croft, Lloyd created hit shows including Are You Being Served? and ’Allo ’Allo! Jeremy Lloyd was given an OBE for services to comedy in 2012. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA Tuesday 23 December 2014 11.18 EST Last modified on Tuesday 23 December 2014 19.32 EST Close This article is 2 years old Jeremy Lloyd, the creator of beloved British sitcoms ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Are You Being Served, has died age 84. Lloyd, who had worked in British comedy since the sixties, was admitted to hospital on Monday evening with pneumonia and died on Tuesday morning. His agent, Alexandra Cann, said: “[He was] a great wit and always a mass of original ideas.

He had a wonderfully original mind and will be greatly missed.” Vicki Michelle, who played Yvette Carte-Blanche in ‘Allo ‘Allo, paid tribute to the comedy writer on Twitter, writing: “So sad to hear of Jeremy Lloyd’s passing. Such a wonderful talent, mentor & friend. A complete joy to work with. RIP Jeremy I’ll miss you xx.” Michelle was echoed by Sherlock and Doctor Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss, who said: “Farewell to Jeremy Lloyd and thanks for years of naughty laughs.” Lloyd was born in London to a mother who had been a Tiller girl who danced with Fred Astaire in Evergreen and Blue Skies in 1928 and 1929, and a petroleum engineer father. As a child he was sent to live with his grandmother in Manchester and rarely saw his parents, who he said had seen him as a failure. Before his first break into the world of comedy, Lloyd worked as a paint salesman, a metal sorter and even a road digger while writing his first film script, What a Whopper!

Recalling how he got the film made, Lloyd said he had simply called up Earl St John, who was in charge at Pinewood Studios, and demanded he read the script. Lloyd’s first onscreen break came in School for Scoundrels in 1960, and he would go on to appear in over 30 films after that, including uncredited roles in The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Help! He then took on a role as a writer on the popular US sketch comedy show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, writing for people such as Goldie Hawn, Roger Moore, Sammy Davis Jr, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, as well as often performing himself, his plummy British accent proving popular with American audiences. It was on his return from America in the early 70s that he and David Croft , whom he had met on the Billy Cotton Band Show, wrote and created Are You Being Served?, based on Lloyd’s past experiences working at Simpsons of Piccadilly. The BBC series, set in the fictional Grace Brothers store, ran for 13 years becoming one of Britain’s best loved sitcoms.

Pinterest Carmen Silvera, Gorden Kaye and Vicki Michelle, who starred in ‘Allo ‘Allo!, which was co-written by Lloyd. Photograph: Rex Features The pair would then go onto create ‘Allo ‘Allo!, a sitcom set in a small-town café in Nazi-occupied France during the second world war, which would runbetween 1982 and 1992. He also went on to write music and lyrics for children’s character Captain Beaky, with a song performed by Keith Michell making the UK top five in 1980. Lloyd was married three times, including briefly to Absolutely Fabulous actor Joanna Lumley . Lumley later wrote about their fleeting marriage, saying “He was witty, tall and charming – we should have just had a raging affair.” Six months ago he married his third wife, Elizabeth Moberly. Lloyd was given an OBE in 2012 for his services to British comedy. David Croft obituary | Television & radio | The Guardian David Croft obituary Comedy writer behind TV hits such as Dad's Army, Hi-de-Hi! and Are You Being Served?

David Croft, left, next to a statue of Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, and Bill Pertwee. It was unveiled in Thetford, Norfolk, which was used as the fictional Walmington-on-Sea in the TV series. Photograph: Albanpix/Rex Features Tuesday 27 September 2011 13.53 EDT First published on Tuesday 27 September 2011 13.53 EDT Share on Messenger Close David Croft , who has died aged 89, was a survivor of an almost extinct breed in British television: a comedy producer and writer who did not need a marketing survey to tell him what would make audiences laugh. If he found a comedy idea or script funny, he reckoned that it might well amuse others. The axiom came to seem old-fashioned among television executives hungry for ratings, but during a period of more than 30 years, the shows he and his co-writers created – Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served?, 'Allo 'Allo and Hi-de-Hi!

– confirmed his view that, for a writer or producer of comedy, it helped to have a sense of humour. Croft once said with pride that he had never been commissioned to continue an existing comedy series. Specific ideas or scripts were always submitted, so that they could be taken elsewhere if they were not welcomed. The idea of supervised hack work on other people's ideas was foreign to him, and the result was a string of long-running comedy successes. Born in Sandbanks, in Poole, Dorset, David was the youngest son of Anne Croft, a former musical comedy star and theatre manager, and an actor, Reginald Sharland. The marriage ended when the boy was nine, after which he took his mother's name. Croft had first wandered on to the stage at the age of four, and said later that from then on he never wanted to do anything else. He went to St John's Wood prep school, north London, and Rugby school, Warwickshire. At the age of 16, he became the BBC's youngest juvenile lead when he was cast as the hero of the musical Charing Cross Road.

Roy Speer, the director in charge of the audition at which Croft presented himself with square-jawed confidence, had not expected the candidate to be so young and cast him with some hesitation. The second world war fed his taste for the absurd. He was adjudged too old to go into the Home Guard before his call-up, and became an ARP – Air Raid Precautions – warden before the army claimed him. After service in North Africa, he went to India and Singapore as an officer, and rose to the rank of major. On being demobilised in 1947, he worked in repertory, where he met and married his wife, Ann Callender, an actor and later a theatrical agent, with whom he soon had a son, Nicholas, and a daughter, Penelope, the first two of his seven children. Red-haired and dapper, Croft appeared often in West End musical comedies and at the BBC, where he was a singer with the orchestra that provided the backing for many stars in The Billy Cotton Band Show.

Writing pantomime scripts for the theatrical producers Howard & Wyndham was followed by a collaboration with his lifelong friend the composer Cyril Ornadel , providing the lyrics for a musical about the record industry commissioned by the impresario Bernard Delfont, and starring the husband-and-wife musical comedy team Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert. Croft said of their working regime that it was strictly a nine-to-six job: "None of this experimental waiting for inspiration or sitting up half the night for us." Showbiz columnists asked if they were the British Rodgers and Hammerstein, and eventually received the definite answer: no. The arrival of independent television in 1955 proved more promising. Croft became a script editor for Rediffusion, and was then a light entertainment producer for Tyne Tees, writing many jingles. In the late 1960s he was still fascinated by the idea of musical comedy, and turned HG Wells's novel about a liberated woman, Ann Veronica, into a musical produced by Harry Homer.

But it was not until he teamed up with the writer Jimmy Perry and created the first episodes of Dad's Army, that joyous look at the British class system and eccentricity through the keyhole of a Home Guard platoon, that he found his niche, as writer, encourager and enabler of television comedy. After the show began in 1968 the first two series were not immediately popular: a viewers' survey showed that few were positively in favour. Croft, by then a BBC executive, suppressed an internal report, and soldiered on regardless. In 1970, he and Perry won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for best British TV script. They co-wrote 81 episodes, which ran until 1977, with a feature-film version in 1971. The winning duo went on to co-write 56 episodes of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, the saga of a British army concert party in the tropics (1974-81), 58 episodes of the holiday camp romp Hi-de-Hi (1980-88) and 26 episodes of the stately home farce You Rang, M'Lord?

(1988-93). That was only one of Croft's co-writing partnerships. He also teamed up with Jeremy Lloyd for 69 episodes of Are You Being Served? (1973-85), the department store series in which John Inman made an impact as the over-solicitous and over-the-top sales assistant. At first, BBC executives were not convinced of its appeal and were fearful of being politically incorrect. "You can't have the poof," said Bill Cotton, Billy Cotton's son and the head of BBC light entertainment, subsequently relenting with: "Oh, get on with it, then!" Croft always disliked the PC straitjacket, especially as his non-discriminatory policy was to send up everybody. There were also, with Lloyd, the first six of the nine series from 1984 onwards of 'Allo 'Allo, managing to quarry comedy from the Nazis and their truculent populace in occupied France during the second world war. Lloyd got the idea late one night, after he and Croft had spent the day vainly trying to bring another idea to fruition. Lloyd telephoned Croft at once. They began working on it the next day.

As ever, he even-handedly gave every devil his due. "Our Germans are insensitive, nest-feathering and kinky, the French are devious, nest-feathering and immoral, and the British are real twits," he explained. Croft's working methods varied. For the first series of Dad's Army, he and Perry wrote two episodes each, turn and turn about. Usually he and Lloyd worked closely together on each script. Either way, the arrangement depended on trust and his belief in the repertory principle: he always preferred to work with people he knew, believing that a craving for "new faces" was a journalistic rather than artistic preoccupation. Croft claimed that his comedy harked back to a gentler era: "I write ordinary, non-controversial comedy which gives families a good laugh. They know nobody's going to say, 'shag'. If you took all the swearing out of Billy Connolly's act, what would be left of it?" He was appointed OBE in 1978. His wife and children survive him.

• David Croft, writer, actor and producer, born 7 September 1922; died 27 September 2011 Comedy writer and producer also created It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Hi-de-Hi! with Jimmy Perry. By John Plunkett Published: 27 Sep 2011 ‘Are You Being Served?,’ ”Allo ‘Allo!’ Writer Jeremy Lloyd Dies at 84 ‘Are You Being Served?,’ ”Allo ‘Allo!’ Writer Jeremy Lloyd Dies at 84 Leo Barraclough Pin it Share LONDON — Jeremy Lloyd , who co-created British hit TV comedies “‘Allo ‘Allo!” and “Are You Being Served?” and also appeared on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” has died at the age of 84, the BBC reported Tuesday. Lloyd died in hospital after being admitted for pneumonia, his agent Alexandra Cann said. Lloyd penned “Are You Being Served?,” which was set in a department store, with David Croft, who died in 2011. The show was partly based on his time working as a suit salesman in a London store.

The series ran on the BBC from 1972-85. The show had two spinoffs, “Grace and Favor” and “Come Back Mrs Noah,” both co-written with Croft. The duo’s other TV hit was the BBC’s “’Allo ‘Allo!,” which was set in Nazi-occupied France. It ran from 1982-92. Lloyd appeared regularly as an actor on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” where his upper-class British accent was popular with U.S. audiences. He also wrote for the show. Lloyd was married three times, including to the actress Joanna Lumley for a short period in 1970. He married his third wife, Lizzy Moberly, six months ago. Related stories 'Allo 'Allo | Culture Northern Ireland allo1.jpg I remember ‘Allo ‘Allo from my childhood, as I’m sure many TV addicts do if they were raised in an age when they were trapped by access to a mere four channels.

It was broadcast on BBC One over ten years, from 1982 to 1992 – a whole seven years longer than the Nazi occupation of France, during which period it is set. 'Allo 'Allo was created by David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd who, together or separately, also produced Dad’s Army, Hi-De-Hi and Are You Being Served?. These were some of the most popular sitcoms in post-war British comedy, defining the form for a generation. Much like other cornerstones of the era, however, such as the the Carry On series, for example, they have not aged so gracefully. This stage version was also written by Croft and Lloyd, and was performed by the cast of the original television series over a number of years after the show was cancelled. The plot condenses some of the more salient points of the show, which viewers may or may not recall. Essentially Rene Artois, a bar owner in the French town of Nouvion, is caught at the centre of a web of intrigue and suspicion spun around a plundered painting, the ‘Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies’, which he has hidden in a sausage in his kitchen.

In addition to this, Artois is concealing a pair of British airmen in his basement. In true farcical style, Artois attempts to keep everyone happy – the Resistance, the occupying Nazis, the Gestapo – while also keeping his affairs with his two waitresses from each other and from his wife, the sharp-tongued Edith. Artois's struggles make for lots of to-ing and fro-ing, many mix-ups and misunderstandings. 'Allo 'Allo the stage version, therefore, is a quintessential British farce with lots of laughs and plenty of innuendo thrown in for good measure. This current version is being staged by Showcase Productions NI, a cross-community organisation that has been touring for over a dozen years. They previously produced musical projects exclusively, such as the much-loved Blood Brothers, but have been branching out in recent years to non-musical projects such as this. Aside from a couple of old hands in the main roles, the cast is entirely populated by newcomers or novices. The performances are, in the main, strong and energetic. Those with less experience occasionally lack projection and confidence. No doubt further performances will smooth these issues out.

The staging is simple but effective, ensuring that the pace only flags in the second half. The whirlwind script demands so many transitions between rooms, basements and boudoirs that momentum in the individual scenes is inevitably lost during the numerous set changes. My only real, lasting gripe with the show is with the script. As mentioned, the tropes of the show have not aged well. This style of comedy verges on the archaic, which can be tiresome, and the unreconstructed attitude (to put it lightly) toward some of the female characters leaves a particularly sour taste in the mouth. During this performance in Downpatrick’s Down Arts Centre, the older crowd don’t seem to have any such qualms with the content, so it’s possible that my concerns could be ascribed to generational differences. Not that I don't laugh in certain parts – Croft and Lloyd were great comedy writers, after all. Despite such qualms, the actors, experienced and otherwise, acquit themselves well, which is satisfying to see.

When smaller venues like the Down Arts Centre are having to compete with larger venues in nearby cities – and their glitzy international productions – surely giving young actors the opportunity to gain experience in front of a paying audience is to be lauded. 'Allo 'Allo visits Iveagh Movie Studios , Banbridge on February 28, Waterside Theatre , Derry~Londonderry on April 5, Braid Arts Centre , Ballymena on April 6, Riverside Theatre , Coleraine on May 18 and Courtyard Theatre , Ballyearl on July 5-6. Topics David Croft | Are You Being Served? Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Are You Being Served? Wiki 27 September 2011(2011-09-27) (aged 89) Death Place 1971 Best Comedy Script Dad's Army Desmond Davies award (1981) Major David John Croft OBE (7 September 1922 – 27 September 2011), born David John Andrew Sharland, was an English writer, producer and director.

He is particularly noted for producing and co-writing a string of popular BBC sitcoms including Dad's Army , Are You Being Served? , It Ain't Half Hot Mum , Hi-de-Hi! 'Allo 'Allo! and You Rang, M'Lord? . Contents Edit Croft was born into a showbiz family: his mother, Annie Croft (1896-1995), was a famous stage actress and his father, Reginald Sharland (1886-1944), had a successful career as a radio actor in Hollywood. His first public appearance was at age 7, when he was seen in a commercial which aired in cinemas. [1] After that, his acting career in films "began and ended" [2] with his uncredited appearance as Perkins in the film Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). Croft was educated at St John's Wood Preparatory School and Rugby School in Warwickshire . [3] He married theatrical agent Ann Callender on 2 June 1952, and they had seven children. [4] Croft enlisted in the Royal Artillery] in 1942.

He served during the Second World War in North Africa, India and Singapore. After contracting rheumatic fever in North Africa, was sent home to convalesce and then underwent officer training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst . He was posted to India, arriving as the war in Europe ended, and was assigned to the Essex Regiment, rising to the rank of Major . When his military service ended he began working in the entertainment industry, as an actor, singer and writer, eventually settling as a TV producer. Croft relocated to the Northeast of England to work at Tyne Tees Television , where he produced many editions of the variety show The One O'Clock Show. For Tyne Tees Croft also directed and produced the admags Ned's Shed and Mary Goes to Market, as well as producing his first sitcom, Under New Management, set in a derelict pub in the North of England. [5] Career Edit After leaving Tyne Tees Television to work at the BBC in the mid-1960s, he produced a number of the Corporation's popular sitcoms such as Beggar My Neighbour , Further Up Pompeii! and Hugh and I .

It was while producing Hugh and I that he was introduced to actor Jimmy Perry , who handed him an unsolicited script for a pilot called The Fighting Tigers about the British Home Guard during the Second World War. Croft liked the idea. The two men co-wrote nine series of the show, which was retitled Dad's Army, as well as a feature film and a stage show based on it. [6] While Dad's Army was still running, Croft began to co-write Are You Being Served? with Jeremy Lloyd . He was to continue both writing partnerships for the rest of his career in several hit series including It Ain't Half Hot Mum , Hi-de-Hi! , 'Allo 'Allo! and You Rang, M'Lord? . His last full series Oh, Doctor Beeching! , broadcast from 1995 to 1997, was co-written with Richard Spendlove . He created a television pilot in 2007, entitled Here Comes The Queen, with Jeremy Lloyd. This pilot starred Wendy Richard and Les Dennis , but because of Wendy Richard's death the show never went to a full series.

[7] As a producer, Croft's regular practice was to signal the end of an episode with the caption "You Have Been Watching ...", followed by vignettes of the main cast. Death David Croft died in his sleep on 27 September 2011, at his home in Portugal, twenty days after his 89th birthday. [8] Awards and honours Edit Croft became an Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire with Jimmy Perry in 1978 for services to television. He also received the 1981 Desmond Davis award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts , for his outstanding contributions to the industry. [9] Croft's awards include: David Croft - Telegraph TV & Radio Obituaries David Croft David Croft, who died on September 27 aged 89, was the joint creator of some of BBC Television’s best-loved and most enduring situation comedies. David Croft (left) with Jimmy Perry Photo: BBC Image 1 of 3 The cast of Dad's Army, with Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring on the left.

Photo: BBC Image 1 of 3 A scene from the stage show of 'Allo 'Allo at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1986 Photo: REX 5:35PM BST 27 Sep 2011 With his writing partner Jimmy Perry, Croft devised and wrote Dad’s Army (1968-77), the whimsical, affectionate lampoon of the wartime Home Guard which, thanks to unceasing repeats, continues to draw viewers, old and new, a decade into the 21st century. After Dad’s Army ended its original run, two more of Croft and Perry’s classic series — It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum (1974-81) and Hi-de-Hi! (1980-88), with Croft producing — enjoyed huge success. With a new writing partner, Jeremy Lloyd, Croft created and scripted Are You Being Served? (1972-85) and ’Allo ’Allo (1982-92), and (again with Jimmy Perry) You Rang, M’Lord? (1988-93).

In his seventies, Croft collaborated with Richard Spendlove, a former railwayman, to produce Oh, Dr Beeching! (1995-97). A nostalgic preoccupation with class ran throughout Croft’s work, intertwined with repeated references to campness, an echo of his early theatrical background. His characterisations of gays often proved controversial; one BBC eminence took one look at Mr Humphries, the mincing menswear assistant portrayed by John Inman in Are You Being Served? and declared: “The poof will have to go.” Inman, stoutly supported by Croft (“If the poof goes, I go”), quickly achieved stardom and weathered the long-running controversy fomented by gay lobbyists who complained that Croft and Lloyd had portrayed the character in a stereotypical and offensive way. Related Articles Pamela Cundell, actress 17 Feb 2015 Croft’s work frequently placed him at odds with his masters at the BBC. Paul Fox, as controller of BBC One, objected vehemently to the basic premise of Dad’s Army .

“You cannot,” he told Croft, “take the mickey out of Britain’s finest hour.” Neither was Croft’s inversion of the old class divides in tune with the 1960s cultural revolution and talk of a classless society: the portrayal of the pompous Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) as a petit-bourgeois snob and Sgt Wilson (John le Mesurier) as a languid patrician was a stroke of genius. Inspired by Jimmy Perry’s real-life wartime exploits in the Watford Home Guard, Dad’s Army became one of the most popular comedies ever screened on British television, relished as much by those who had served in the wartime auxiliary services as by viewers still unborn when the 1940s sirens sounded. Yet initial reaction was mixed. Sean Day-Lewis in The Daily Telegraph identified a “nervous sense of humour” in the portrayal of events which, in 1968, remained well within the memory of most of the viewing audience.

At a pre-transmission screening of the first episode organised for the BBC by a market research company, one woman complained: “Haven’t we had enough of this old wartime rubbish?” Even John le Mesurier predicted it would be “an absolute disaster”. But when Croft received the firm’s report — most of it critical — he simply slipped it beneath the pile in his in-tray and forgot about it. In the event, an initial audience of eight million in 1968 had more than doubled by 1972, and there was critical as well as popular acclaim. When the original series ended in 1977, The Guardian lamented its passing, saying it had “given us finer farces, straighter faces, richer characterisations and a good deal more social observation than most of the more pretentious dramas.” Despite his patrician air (he arrived for the first day’s filming of Dad’s Army in his 1954 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith), Croft was ever alert to the spirit of the age. As the historian Dominic Sandbrook observed: “[Dad’s Army’s] gaze was firmly fixed on the past.

It celebrated a lost era of austerity and collective endeavour, but its appeal depended on the domestication of leisure and the new individualism of the affluent society.” Against the grain of the times, Croft wove in few references to sex, and his early work with Perry was largely male-dominated; the women in Dad’s Army, for instance, were all marginal and either boot-faced or tarty. But in Are You Being Served? such types moved centre stage in the shape of the middle-aged Mrs Slocombe (Molly Sugden) continually lamenting the state of “my pussy” to the young Miss Brahms (Wendy Richard). Set in a fading department store called Grace Brothers and launched in 1973, Are You Being Served? was Croft and Jeremy Lloyd’s metaphor for the parlous state of a once-great nation of shopkeepers.

“Grace Brothers was Britain,” noted the journalist Stuart Jeffries , “a disunited kingdom that had started crumbling during the war and, against all the odds, against all the laws of physics and of good taste, still kept going, supplying a dwindling bunch of customers with things that they surely could not want.” In Hi-de-Hi!, Croft’s next collaboration with Jimmy Perry, female characters continued to loom large, notably the terrifying Gladys Pugh (Ruth Madoc) setting her cap at her boss Geoffrey Fairbrother (Simon Cadell), and the poignant figure of Peggy Ollerenshaw (Su Pollard), the would-be Yellowcoat doomed to perpetual servitude as a chalet maid. Another Croft and Perry series set in a man’s world, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum, featured characters criticised as racial as well as gay stereotypes, and the series — now fettered by modern constraints of political correctness — has never been repeated.

Set in a Royal Artillery depot in India in 1945, it followed the fortunes of an Ensa concert party, a collection of oddballs and misfits overseen by a homophobic battery sergeant major (Windsor Davies) and two ineffectual officers (Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles). Croft rebuffed criticism of some of the characters, pointing out that the concert party’s female impersonator “Gloria” (Melvyn Hayes) was not homosexual but a transvestite. In You Rang, M’Lord? Croft introduced the first recurring lesbian character in a British sitcom in the shape of Cissy (Catherine Rabett). One of Croft’s biggest rows within the BBC was over ’Allo ’Allo, the outrageous farce which poked fun at the French Resistance, the German occupiers of wartime France and the airmen of the RAF, investing everyone with appalling cod accents. Asked how he could countenance equating the heroic French with the evil Gestapo, Croft would patiently explain that ’Allo ’Allo was not intended as a comment on either.

“What we are sending up,” he told an interviewer, “is a whole genre of stiff upper-lip films and TV series like Colditz and Secret Army in which people actually did utter, in deadly earnest, lines like 'Listen vairy carefully, I will say thees only once.’” Despite frequent complaints about its political incorrectness, ’Allo ’Allo found favour with many heavyweight fans, among them Lord Rees-Mogg and (it was rumoured) the Queen Mother. Even more remarkably, the BBC succeeded in selling the series to more than 40 countries, eventually including France and Germany. Croft’s style of comedy derived from an ensemble of instantly engaging characters and the creation of an enclosed arena in which their antics could be varied almost ad infinitum. In close on 500 scripts, Croft prided himself on never having ventured into the “domestic comedy” field; neither, he maintained, had he written more than a handful of “gags” .

Instead his scenarios exploited the potential of what he described as a “trapped environment”, sending the valiant geriatrics of Dad’s Army on a never-ending round of futile manoeuvres, and the grotesques of ’Allo ’Allo on a series of bizarre missions which everyone knew would end in catastrophe. Many Croft-Perry-Lloyd characters were caricatures, at least in part, of the actors who played them. Croft himself admitted that Captain Mainwaring was “an extension of Arthur Lowe”; the actor could be as prickly as his character, and often arrived in the studio without having learned all his lines. “He never used to take his script home,” Croft explained. “He’d say: 'I’m not having that rubbish in my house.’ So he’d read it for the first time in the taxi and would finish learning it on the set. I used to field complaints from the rest of the cast.” Croft was born David John Sharland on September 7 1922 at Poole, Dorset, and brought up in Finchley, north London.

His father, Reginald Sharland, was an actor and his mother, Anne Croft, a popular theatrical star of the 1920s and 1930s, who ascribed her fine singing voice to the precaution of swallowing a raw egg in a glass of sherry before every performance. Reginald Sharland went to Hollywood shortly after his son was born and became a radio star in the United States. David was sent to Rugby, but owing to financial constraints left before his 16th birthday. He took courses in shorthand, typing, singing and dancing, helped out in his mother’s production company, and took bit parts in films . He was planning to join his father in California when the Second World War broke out and the family moved to Bournemouth, where David served as an air raid warden — an experience which would provide much material for Dad’s Army. In 1942, aged 19, he joined the Royal Artillery. After contracting rheumatic fever in north Africa, Bombardier Croft was sent home to convalesce and then underwent officer training at Sandhurst.

Posted to India, he arrived as the war in Europe ended, and was assigned to the Essex Regiment at the Urulli camp outside Poona. He was made brigade entertainments officer, and as a major helped to oversee the evacuation of Japanese PoWs from Singapore. Demobbed in 1947, Croft produced summer shows at Butlin’s holiday camps, took small television roles, joined the BBC Show Band Singers and wrote songs, sketches and even pantomimes for stars such as Tommy Steele and Norman Wisdom . With the launch of commercial television in 1955, Croft joined Associated Rediffusion as a light entertainment script editor, and in 1959 moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne as a producer for Tyne Tees. It was there that he first worked in situation comedy, producing Under New Management, set in a derelict northern pub, and writing a musical sitcom called Sunshine Street. He remained in light entertainment when he moved to the BBC in London and produced The Benny Hill Show before Hill (whom he could not abide) decamped to ITV.

He produced Hugh and I (1962-68), with Hugh Lloyd and Terry Scott, and Beggar My Neighbour (1966-68), in which he cast his future writing collaborator Jimmy Perry as Reg Varney’s flamboyant brother. When Dad’s Army earned him fame in the late 1960s, Croft was a BBC staff producer, but he soon reverted to being a freelance, although almost his entire television career was spent working for the BBC. In later life he reflected that, had he stuck to his staff job, he would have been retiring at about the time he was writing the pilot programme for ’Allo ’Allo. Like most successful comedy writers, Croft was happiest working office hours in collaboration with a regular partner. They would sit on opposite sides of a table, tossing dialogue ideas at each other. Then one of them would pace the room while the other made notes. At half time, they would change places. The essence of Croft’s comedy style was rigorous discipline. Farce, he believed, depended on painstakingly worked-out detail and perfect timing.

Even the apparent gibberish of Corporal Jones’s flights of fancy, or the ludicrous mispronunciations of Officer Crabtree in ’Allo ’Allo, were worked out to the last syllable. More than 30 years on, the appeal of Dad’s Army endures. Repeats attract more than 10 million viewers, and the famous “Don’t tell him, Pike!” scene has repeatedly been voted the funniest television moment of all time. Polls continue to name it the nation’s favourite comedy, and in 2000 the British Film Institute, ranking it 13th in its list of the best television shows of the 20th century, declared that “purely in terms of its sustained popularity the show is without equal”. Among Croft’s many honours were Bafta’s Desmond Davis award in 1981 for his outstanding contribution to television, and a Royal Television Society silver medal in 1991. In 1978 he was appointed OBE for services to television. His autobiography, You Have Been Watching..., appeared in 2004.

David Croft married, in 1952, Ann Coupland, with whom he had seven children. One, Penny, followed her father to become a highly-regarded television comedy writer. Another, Rebecca, married the star of one of her father’s comedies, the late Simon Cadell who played Geoffrey Fairbrother, the incongruous holiday camp entertainments manager in Hi-de-Hi! ‘Are You Being Served?,’ ”Allo ‘Allo!’ Writer Jeremy Lloyd Dies at 84 | Variety ‘Are You Being Served?,’ ”Allo ‘Allo!’ Writer Jeremy Lloyd Dies at 84 December 23, 2014 | 08:37AM PT English actor and screenwriter Jeremy Lloyd with his second wife, actress and model Joanna Lumley LONDON — Jeremy Lloyd, who co-created British hit TV comedies “‘Allo ‘Allo!” and “Are You Being Served?” and also appeared on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” has died at the age of 84, the BBC reported Tuesday. Lloyd died in hospital after being admitted for pneumonia, his agent Alexandra Cann said.

Lloyd penned “Are You Being Served?,” which was set in a department store, with David Croft, who died in 2011. The show was partly based on his time working as a suit salesman in a London store. The series ran on the BBC from 1972-85. The show had two spinoffs, “Grace and Favor” and “Come Back Mrs Noah,” both co-written with Croft. The duo’s other TV hit was the BBC’s “’Allo ‘Allo!,” which was set in Nazi-occupied France. It ran from 1982-92. Lloyd appeared regularly as an actor on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” where his upper-class British accent was popular with U.S. audiences. He also wrote for the show. Lloyd was married three times, including to the actress Joanna Lumley for a short period in 1970. He married his third wife, Lizzy Moberly, six months ago.

Question: Who created Are You Being Served and Allo Allo with David Croft?
Answer: Jeremy Lloyd