Yorkshire-born actor who starred as a Likely Lad

Rodney Bewes was one half of The Likely Lads (19641966), a sitcom about two working-class young men in the northeast of England. In the 1970s, Bewes, who has died aged 79, and his co-star a were reunited for Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, which attracted up to 27 million viewers. The two actors had been close. But at some point after that, Bolam decided he wanted to have nothing more to do with the show and the pair never spoke again. Bolam resisted all attempts to revive The Likely Lads; he refused to allow reruns on terrestrial TV (thus depriving Bewes of repeat fees) and when Bewes was the subject of This Is Your Life, in 1980, Bolam was notable by his absence. Growing up in Bingley, the son of a clerk, Bewes was a sickly, asthmatic child who took refuge in make-believe and read voraciously. Aged 12, he responded to an advertisement in his father’s Daily Herald for boys to audition for the role of Billy Bunter in a BBC adaptation. He didn’t get the part, but it led to others, and by the age of 15 he was living alone in a basement flat in London, working long shifts in the kitchens of the Grosvenor House Hotel by night, and going to a preparatory academy for Rada by day. He was later expelled from Rada (for partying too hard, he claimed), yet managed to get jobs in rep – and did his best to befriend actors who were on their way up. One of them was Tom Courtenay, then starring on stage in Billy Liar. The two ended up sharing a flat, where he found Courtenay’s script for the film version – and decided to put himself up for the role aof Billy’s friend Arthur. It was on the back of this performance that Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement offered him the part of the aspirational Bob, to Bolam’s more cynical, proudly working-class Terry, in The Likely Lads.

In between the sitcom’s two series, Bewes found other film and TV roles – including Mr Rodney in The Basil Brush Show – but, unlike Bolam, he struggled to carve out a separate career, said The Times, and he was rarely seen on screen after the 1980s. “Jimmy must be very wealthy,” he said. “Me, I’ve just got an overdraft and a mortgage.” Yet he tried not to be bitter. The Likely Lads, he admitted, “is the only thing I am remembered for. But at least I am remembered for something.”