The World Was His Lobster

Derek Lamb looks back over the the long career of versatile and popular actor George Cole

- Derek Lamb

George Cole will be fondly remembered by many readers. He played innumerable roles on stage, screen, television and radio but is best known for just three characters: George Bliss, Flash Harry and, most famously, Minder’s Arthur Daley.

Born into poverty in 1925, George Cole was adopted at 10 days old. It was the first of several examples of good fortune that punctuated his life. He was due to start a job as a butcher’s boy on leaving school but was keen on a theatrical career.

Perhaps making his own luck, he scanned the London evening papers he delivered and successfully applied for the part of an understudy in the musical White Horse Inn.

Sufficiently established, by 1941, he was cast as an evacuee in the film Cottage to Let, which starred Alastair Sim. Not only did Sim effectively adopt George, he coached and mentored him, ensuring he lost his cockney accent. George acknowledged the great debt he owed and continued to live with Sim and his wife until he was 27.

They appeared together in 11 films. Among the best known were the first two St Trinian’s films, The Belles of St Trinian’s and Blue Murder at St Trinian’s, in 1954 and 1957 respectively. George played Henry Cuthbert Edwards, better known as the spiv Flash Harry, complete with pencil moustache, trilby hat and long overcoat. Although originally the school’s boot boy, he develops into a confidante of the feral pupils and helps to sell their homemade gin and place their bets.