Very sad to hear that that peerless actor George Cole died yesterday at the ripe old age of 90. What a life. What a career! From Flash Harry to Arthur Daley, he effortlessly personified the cockney rogue, but there was a depth to his performances that mark him out as one of our truly great actors. Even before St. Trinian’s, he had sparred with his childhood benefactor Alastair Sim, notably in the 1941 propaganda thriller Cottage to Let. He would became an almost constant talisman for Sim; playing young Scrooge, doing anything for money in Laughter in Paradise, and even popping up unannounced in An Inspector Calls and The Happiest Days of Your Life. Later the two pitted wits in the wickedly dark comedy The Green Man. With the immense success of ‘Minder’ on television, his classic British films of the fifties were often over-looked, but treasures like Too Many Crooks, Will Any Gentlemen…?, and The Intruder are personal favourites that I can re-visit time and time again. Then there was the Hammer comedy Don’t Panic Chaps, and the subsequent horror outing in The Vampire Lovers. And so, so many telly highlights: ‘Comrade Dad’, ‘Blott on the Landscape’, a tail-ender reunion with Dennis Waterman for ‘New Tricks’, to name but a few. Still, perhaps the finest of all is as The Firebug in an episode of television crime series ‘Gideon’s Way’: a truly extraordinary picture of mental obsession that will leave you gasping. Rest well, sir, the world really was your lobster!