Nicholas Smith, the actor who played the jug-eared department store manager Cuthbert Rumbold in Are You Being Served?, has died aged 81.
Are You Being Served?, which also starred John Inman, Molly Sugden, Frank Thornton and Wendy Richard, ran from 1972 to 1985 and frequently attracted audiences of more than 20 million.
Smith's roles included parts in Doctor Who, The Frost Report, The Saint and The Avengers. For 18 months he worked on radio, playing music and reading poems in a show called Poetry Corner. He played PC Yates in several episodes of the BBC police series Z Cars between 1972-75. In 1979, he appeared in Worzel Gummidge as Mr Foster, the headmaster of the school.
In an interview with American chat show host Ed Sutkowski, Smith described how Are You Being Served? got its chance only because of the chaos caused by the 1972 terrorism attacks at the Munich Olympic Games. Smith said that the show had originally been a one-off for the BBC Comedy Playhouse series and had not been shown because the BBC thought it "too trivial". But when the live Olympic feed had to be cancelled the BBC showed the episode. Smith said that "the public reaction was so enormous" that the BBC commissioned a whole series and the cast never looked back.
