By Tony Magee

Dad’s Army actor Ian Lavender has died at the age of 77.

Cast as Private Pike in 1968, aged just 22, he went on to appear in all 88 episodes. The series ran for nine years.

Surrounded by senior acting royalty, including John Le Mesurier (Sergeant Wilson), Arthur Lowe (Captain Mainwaring), John Laurie (Private Frazer, a Scotsman) and Arnold Ridley (Private Godfrey), Lavender absorbed a massive number of acting skills in a short space of time.

“I was a complete beginner and I suddenly joined what was probably Britain’s most experienced team of character actors. I was in a state of shock finding myself suddenly among so many great actors. When the moment came for me to speak, that funny voice of Pike just came out in a moment of panic.”, Lavender said.

Clive Dunn who played the doddering Corporal Jones was only 44 when the series began, but was made up to look well into his eighties.

Canberra had a local taste of Dad’s Army in 2007, when I wrote a script to cater for the rising number of corporate dinners booked into Anzac Hall at the Australian War Memorial, using a cast of Canberra’s best-known actors.

Ian Croker played Captain Mainwaring, David Cannell and later Geoffrey Borny played Corporal Jones, Gordon Nicholson delivered a composite character of Frazer and Wilson and Rhys Holden was Pike.

The show later shifted to the Pavilion Hotel on Northbourne Avenue.

After Dad’s Army, Lavender appeared in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, played the role of The Narrator in a touring production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, starred as the naive Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and appeared as Monsignor Howard in the West End theatre production of Sister Act The Musical.

In 2013 he starred as The Mikado in three concert performances in London, Birmingham and Manchester and made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in a stage version of The Shawshank Redemption.

Lavender cleared up a long-standing mystery from Dad’s Army, when in a 2014 interview he revealed that the shows co-creator, David Croft, told him after the show’s final wrap in 1977, that Le Measurer’s character Sergeant Wilson, whom Pike referred to as “Uncle Arthur” was in fact his father – the product of a furtive relationship with Mrs Pike. “I never knew until then. I just said the lines.” he said.

In the 1970s, Dad’s Army regularly attracted more than 18 million viewers; becoming one of the most-watched television programmes of its time. In 2018, British Royal Mail marked the show’s 50th anniversary with a collection of stamps featuring the main characters.

Lavender survived bladder cancer in 1993 and a heart attack in 2004. In 2017 he suffered sepsis while filming episodes of East Enders.

BBC’s director of comedy, Jon Petrie said: “Ian was a much-loved actor and will be sorely missed by all those who knew him. In his role of Private Pike in Dad’s Army, he delivered some of the most iconic and loved moments in the history of British comedy.”

He is survived by his wife, choreographer and stage director Miki Hardy, and two sons, Sam and Daniel, from his first marriage, to actress Suzanne Kerchiss.