Clive Dunn

Dad's Army: Permission to laugh, sir!

Clive Dunn, who died last week, was just one of the reasons Dad's Army is still as loved today as ever.

How Clive Dunn & Co made Dad's Army the finest sitcom

10 secrets of how Clive Dunn, who died this week, and his fellow Home Guards made Dad's Army our finest sitcom.

Clive Dunn and the art of playing older people

The late Clive Dunn specialised in playing much older characters than himself. It's an art perfected by a small group of actors. What are the secrets of appearing elderly on screen?

Obituary: Clive Dunn

Clive Dunn played old men for most of his long acting career and was best known as Lance Corporal Jones, the butcher in Dad's Army.

Clive Dunn in Dad's Army: stoicism, charm & sausages

As Corporal Jones, Dunn was Meursault with a dash of Mr Magoo and one of the sweetest characters ever to grace a sitcom.

An affectionate tribute to a man described as 'one of those actors who worked all the time but never became a big star', whose knack of stealing the show playing detached authority figures made him the perfect choice for Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army. Family, friends and Dad's Army cohorts Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender recall not only Le Mesurier's charm but also his remarkable relationships with Hattie Jacques (who left him for a younger man) and actress Joan Malin, who cheated on him with best friend Tony Hancock.

Those recalling Robert Bathurst's portrayal of John Le Mesurier in BBC4's Hattie might have thought him too good to be true. Au contraire. No one - from Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender to Michael Palin and JLM's third wife - has a bad word to say about a man who endured repeated cuckolding, perpetual career disappointments and terminal illness with a half-smile and drifted through life with an ineffably British sense of opaque understatement and vague melancholy. Much time is understandably spent on Dad's Army, but this doc also serves as a frustrating 'what might have been' for an underrated actor who ambled through a stop-start career with the same unknowable civility as he did his life. He's the man for whom 'keep calm and carry on' might have been invented.

Julian Rhind-Tutt narrates this in-depth profile of the beloved actor, best remembered for his role as the genteel Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad's Army. Friend Michael Palin and Dad's Army co-star Clive Dunn offer fulsome praise, and help dissect Le Mesurier's three marriages and legendary fondness for a tipple (or 10). "It's all been rather lovely" were his final words before slipping into a cirrhosis-induced coma - an appropriate epitaph by all accounts.