Tony Melody

Jul 22 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THE appointments’ panel at a firm of undertakers, seeing him walk through the door, could have told the other applicants to go home.

The long stretch of his face embodied mourning in grey Britain, though he told people, not entirely convincingly, that he was a “joyful” chap.

Anyway, it kept him on the box constantly for half a century, as one of those faces everyone knows, while often struggling to find the name that went with it – like the quiz answer which won’t come.

Ironically, at about 6ft 4ins of misery, he was often cast in situation comedies because he looked gloomy, but he appeared in numerous TV dramas as well, often as a villain.

Tony Melody was born in London, the son of a soldier in the Horse Guards, but his family moved to Goole, Yorkshire, where they ran a pub, providing the boy with an opportunity to see life in the raw.

His first ambition was to be a crooner, a career for which he had a fine name and soon he was singing in pubs and then with the BBC’s National Dance Orchestra, for which he was also a compere.

During the war, he served with the RAF and then joined Ralph Reader’s Gang Show as a stand-up comic, touring the Mediterranean with many future stars, including Tony Hancock.

Even so, his advance into showbiz wasn’t smooth, and he worked in a factory by day while touring the working-men’s clubs in Yorkshire at night.

His break came in 1955 on radio, featuring in a show with Jimmy Clitheroe and Harry Worth. This led to him starring alongside Clitheroe’s ageless schoolboy on radio and later TV.

He was a stooge on Hylda Baker’s TV show Be Soon (1957) and quickly became one of the most familiar faces on TV, appearing in Hancock’s Half Hour, Steptoe and Son, Sykes, George and Mildred, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm, Z Cars, Last of the Summer Wine, All Creatures Great and Small and, inevitably, Heartbeat.

Rule Britannia! (1975), tells the story of an Englishman, George Bradshaw (Melody), an Irishman, a Scot and a Welshman, reunited 25 years after serving in the Royal Navy. Despite scripts by Vince Powell, the series was not a great success.

But Melody was never short of work. He married twice and had four children.

Tony Melody, actor; born December 18, 1922, died June 26, 2008.