Born into a Hoxton family of a printer and a florist, he left school at fourteen, worked in printing, building repair, and later trained as a Royal Air Force pilot before serving in the Merchant Navy as an oil trimmer on the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. A chance meeting with Dudley Sutton at thirty-five led to his debut with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, appearing in Fings Ain’t Wot They…
