The last Legg

Death of much-loved character who was in original Albert Square line-up

didn’t start hating all Germans, but he did stop going to the synagogue.”

Leonard’s grandparents originated from Eastern Europe. His father was born in London, but faced prejudice. Leonard said: “He joined the Army in 1914 with the name Feinstein.

“He was a very mild, even-tempered man, but people looked askance at him: firstly, because it was a Germansounding name, and also the fact that he was Jewish.

“And I always remember him telling me that he was frequently insulted.”

Leonard, who had three sisters and a brother who died young, was interested in the arts but never encouraged by family to pursue them. “I began life as an engineer, and I didn’t even have much encouragement to do that. I was sort of cajoled into it by a headmaster in the East End,” he said.

“I was interested in languages, music, painting, but there was no question of that during the war.

“And the headmaster said, ‘You need a good, solid job’. So I became an engineer.” Studying at King’s College London, he was “unhappy”, but joined the Army as an engineer.

He said: “When I came out of the Army I felt very guilty about wanting to stop it, so I carried on with it for five years, getting more and more depressed with it.”

He took painting and singing lessons at night and left engineering, winning a scholarship to drama school. “My teacher knew I hated my job, so he introduced me to the drama school where he taught and I spent two years there,” he said.

Dr Legg’s career choice, meanwhile, was driven by a desire to support his community. His experiences of the war, living through the Blitz, only reinforced that, and Dr Legg opened his practice in Walford in 1947.

His character history says: “He saw the air-raid casualties... it reinforced his passion for the underdog.” Those years also brought personal tragedy.

As a trainee medic he fell in love with a nurse, Judith. They wed when he was 21, moving into Albert Square. “She was in the garden when a dog-fight took place overhead.

“The German pilot dropped its bomb in order to get away,” reads his synopsis. “The corner of the Square went. So did she.”

Dr Legg never remarried. Leonard, a dad of four, once remarked: “He would have been a great family man.” The actor’s career has landed him on screen and stage, working at the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, and with Orson Welles and Samuel Beckett.

But Leonard laughed: “People still request my advice when they get ill.

“There was one amazing case of a woman who went to a friend of mine, who was in group practice, and asked them if she could change to me, and was told, ‘No, he’s an actor’. She got very shirty with him.”

Dr Legg would have known exactly how to deal with her.