Accomplished stage actor best known for playing loutish lothario in Fawlty Towers
Nicky Henson, who has died of cancer aged 74, carved out a route through show business that embraced a 1960s pop band, acting in stage revues and performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but he will be best remembered for his cameo as a playboy in a 1979 episode of
Fawlty Towers.
In ‘‘The Psychiatrist’’, Henson played a hotel guest called Mr Johnson, his shirt unbuttoned to the navel revealing a hairy chest covered in gold chains and talismans, who provokes the ire of Basil (John Cleese) by flirting with Sybil (Prunella Scales).
Basil, who insists this Romeo looks like an orangutan, launches a mission to catch the guest sneaking a woman into his room. He makes a fool of himself – while his manic behaviour is observed by a psychiatrist. ‘‘Whenever there is a need in British television for a goodlooking younger man with a loutish or aggressive attitude, the part often goes to Nicky Henson,’’ wrote historian of popular entertainment Anthony Slide. ‘‘Always with a girl, and often without a shirt.’’
Show business was in Henson’s blood. He was born Nicholas Victor Leslie Henson in London, to Harriet, a music-hall dancer and actress who performed under the name Billie Dell, and Leslie Henson, a popular comedian notable in variety and farces for his croaky voice, funny faces and collection of hats.
After leaving school, Henson took a stage management course at Rada, where he formed a band, the Wombats, which included Ian Ogilvy – later known as the Return of The Saint actor – on drums. Henson then landed a solo recording deal that began in 1963 with the single Till I See You Cry on EMI’s Parlophone label.
His career continued with musical performances in cabaret before his West End break came in the revue All Square in 1963. He followed it by playing the arch-villain Mordred in the original London production of Lerner and Loewe’s hit Broadway musical
Camelot.
He then teamed up with one of his fellow actors in that show, Paul Ferris, as a singing duo, although their 1966 single Love Song,
which they also wrote, failed to chart. The pair signed a three-year contract to write songs for Cliff Richard and the Shadows.
During this period, Henson took his revue skills to David Frost’s satirical television series The Frost Report, and landed small roles in comedy films, including Doctor in Clover (1966), with Leslie Phillips.
Moving up the cast list, he played the boyfriend of Barry Evans’ dream woman in the quintessential Swinging Sixties drama
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1967). A year later, he progressed to more serious roles when he played Trooper Robert Swallow in the classic horror film Witchfinder General – alongside Ferris, who also wrote the score, and Ogilvy.
His next film was the war drama Mosquito Squadron (1969), in which he played the doomed RAF navigator Flight Sergeant Wiley Bunce, then in 1970 he was Goldie Hawn’s selfish boyfriend in There’s a Girl in My Soup, with Peter Sellers.
He landed title roles in The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones in 1976 and in the James Bond spoof No 1 of the Secret Service the following year. But he always said he took lucrative screen work to allow him to appear in his first love, the theatre.
In 1970 he had become a founding member of the Young Vic, and that year he played The Soldier in The Soldier’s Tale.
He stayed with the company until 1973 and, six years later, turned down a three-film Hollywood contract in favour of playing ‘‘Simple’’ Simon Yepihodov, providing comic relief, in a National Theatre production of The Cherry Orchard.
His RSC roles included Henry Straker in Man and Superman, Touchstone in As You
Like It and Frank Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. His final RSC role, at Stratford in 2005, signalled the end of his theatre career, five years after he was diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy.
‘‘I got my dream part as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night at the RSC, but the physical strain of the part and the side-effects of the drug meant I had to give it up,’’ he recalled. ‘‘I knew then I’d never act on stage again, which broke my heart.’’
His television career had by then embraced sitcoms, and he brought authority to cameos such as Honey Edwards’ father, Jack, in EastEnders during 2006 and the entertainer and petty criminal Charles Grigg in Downton Abbey in 2010 and 2013. In the cinema, he appeared in Mike Leigh’s back-street abortion drama Vera Drake (2003).
After the break-up of his first marriage, to actress Una Stubbs (from 1969-76), Henson had a five-year relationship with another actress, Susan Hampshire. In 1986 he married the prima ballerina Marguerite Porter.
She survives him, with their son and the two sons of his first marriage. – Telegraph Group