Harry Coen

Harry Coen, who has died on his 67th birthday, was a journalist whose unique career trajectory took him from the news desk of Gay News to the editor’s chair of The Catholic Herald.

Many found the latter appointment all the more remarkable because they wrongly assumed, owing to his last name, that he was Jewish. In fact, he was a convinced mystical humanist and lapsed Roman Catholic who had profound disagreements with nearly all aspects of Church doctrine.

Harry Coen

This proved no barrier to his promotion when the then Herald editor Cristina Odone took extended leave. Stepping in temporarily to smooth the transition, Coen ended up as editor for two years, striving despite his theological misgivings to produce a paper of the highest quality.

Among those who struggled to digest the announcement of his editorship was Coen’s old friend and colleague Frank Johnson. When informed by Coen of his new title, Johnson replied: “But that’s impossible, dear boy, you are an apostate pervert.”

Harry Peter Raymond Coen was born in Dublin on January 23 1945 to William and Kathleen Gray. Kathleen died when Harry was three, shortly after giving birth to his twin siblings Tom and Anne, and it was decided to farm the children out to different wings of the family. Harry was taken in by cousins, Maureen and Patrick Coen, whom he regarded throughout his life as his parents.

The Coens moved to Birmingham when Harry was 10 and he was educated at a Catholic grammar school in the city before taking a degree at Durham University. It was a holiday job on the now defunct Consett Guardian that led him into a life of journalism. He became a district reporter for the Northern Echo, and in 1970, while running its Redcar office, he met David Thornton, with whom he was to share the rest of his life.

After organising various unorthodox cultural events in the north-east (including an open-air rock concert by the counter-cultural Edgar Broughton Band which was much frowned on by the local constabulary) Coen and Thornton moved to London, where in 1979 Coen became news editor on Gay News. A tireless campaigner for gay rights, he happily appeared on a BBC news programme in the early 1980s when hysteria over Aids was at its height.

By that time he had moved to a subediting job at The Sunday Times, and such was the ignorance about Aids that when he next appeared on “the stone” (the floor of the composing room where pages were made up in hot metal), printers there refused to work with him. Coen was able to laugh off the episode, and his appearance on the show had one major upside: he made contact with his long-lost brother Tom, who saw the broadcast and traced Harry. The two were devoted to one another ever after.

Shifts at The Sunday Times led to a lengthy career in Fleet Street. Stints followed on The Observer, The Daily and The Sunday Telegraphs, and the Daily and Sunday Express.

His time on The Sunday Telegraph is famous for the manner in which it ended. Shortly after becoming editor, Dominic Lawson gave a party for staff at his home. There were two instructions: do not bring anyone and do not smoke.

Coen arrived very drunk with a busty barmaid from Canary Wharf on his arm and proceeded to drop ash all over the carpets. When fish and chips was served, wrapped in copies of The Sunday Telegraph, Coen lurched up to Lawson, jabbed him in the chest and said: “You are now the editor of The Sunday Telegraph. You should be able to do better than this.” Lawson told him to leave.

He did, and moved to The Daily Telegraph, where he became famous as a “rewrite man” – a desk editor who could take the copy of the hurried, the inexperienced or the prosaic and make it sing. He was so proud of this reputation that he often threatened to publish a book in which he would display, side by side, the unedited copy of the world’s most famous reporters, alongside the versions he had polished and sent to press.

His talents made him a vital resource for editors. But by his own admission he was not always able to work miracles. When once working with the printers on a story that was far too long, Coen was frantically trimming the excess as a deadline loomed.

“Come on, Harry,” the compositor yelled. “Get on with it.” Coen, stepping back with the outraged grimace of a sitcom queen, responded: “I may be a fairy, but I haven’t got a ------- wand.”

Beyond journalism, Coen loved Burgundy and its wines. Colleagues often pressed cash into his hands in exchange for a case or two from his frequent trips to the region. But it seems certain that the generous tasting sessions Coen held eliminated any profit he might have seen from the scheme.

Harry Coen’s broad face would often break into a smile that revealed gappy, uneven teeth the grey hair of his beard was yellowed by cigarette smoke and his love for wine and food added progressively to his girth. Despite this somewhat shambling appearance, his orderly mind was reflected by the neat italic hand in which he drew up news lists.

Harry Coen and David Thornton, himself a sub on various titles, retired to the Côte d’Or region of Burgundy in 2005. There they pursued the gentle pastimes of writing, playing music and turning a huge cow pasture into an English garden. Their small patch of vines provided sufficient even for two well-trained thirsts.

Harry Coen died of cancer in Beaune. At his adoptive village of La Rochepot, the 11th-century church tolled its passing bell three times each day in the week leading up to his funeral. David Thornton survives him.

Harry Coen, born January 23 1945, died January 23 2012

Jimmy Storie

Jimmy Storie , who has died aged 92, was the last surviving member of “The Originals”, the handful of men who first joined “L” Detachment, the unit that under the leadership of David Stirling developed into the Special Air Service Regiment.

Have pistol, will travel: Storie (right) and a fellow 'Original' in the desert in 1941 

The force’s mission was to operate many miles behind enemy lines, attack airfields and convoys, blow up planes, destroy fuel dumps and derail trains. Based at Kabrit, near the Nile, they lacked even the most basic supplies and Storie took part in an unofficial raid on another camp in which tents, stores and rations were appropriated (together with a piano and easy chairs from an officers’ cinema).

There were, however, failures of equipment and on one occasion two men jumped to their deaths during parachute training. Storie said that he did not sleep much that night.

In November 1941, Storie took part in a raid on two German airfields at Gazala and Tmimi, Libya. The men parachuted into a sandstorm. As Storie said afterwards, one man who broke his back had to be left with a bottle of water and a revolver. There was no possibility of saving him.

Barely a third of the original strength returned to base; the rest were killed or captured. In attacks thereafter, L Detachment drove to its targets in Jeeps. Storie took part in numerous raids with David Stirling and Paddy Mayne, officers whose exploits became almost legendary. In one period of two weeks, 100 enemy aircraft were destroyed.

In one raid, they dodged sentries and crept on to an airfield, placing bombs with delayed-action fuses on the fighter aircraft lined up on each side. Then they got into the hangars, which were full of Junkers, and set more charges. The door of the guardroom was bashed open and grenades thrown in.

As they made their escape, there was a series of deafening explosions, flames were licking through the high roofs of the hangars, the planes on field were alight and their cannon shells were exploding with the heat.

To counter such raids, the Germans started to deploy guards beyond base perimeters. But Stirling and his men simply switched tactics. In July 1942, in a raid on the airfield at Sidi Haneish, L Detachment took part in one of its most spectacular missions.

“The planes were all parked up on either side of the field,” Storie said afterwards. “We drove our Jeeps in a line and went in with guns blazing. Each of us singled out an aircraft, brewed it up and then we swung around and went down the other side.” These raids proved Stirling’s theory that a few highly trained men deployed in unconventional style could do more damage than a whole regiment using more conventional methods.

The hazards, however, did not all come from the enemy. Lying up before a raid on Berka airfield, Storie found himself infested with fleas and could hardly close his eyes. Then, as night fell and they finally reached the airfield, an air raid siren sounded. He threw himself to the ground as the whole area was lit up by flashes from AA guns and shrapnel from RAF bombs crashed around him.

Storie had many close shaves. One evening, after dark on the Benghazi plain, his group, seven in number, ran into a fully manned enemy roadblock. A German NCO, swinging a red lantern, stepped out into the road. His demand for a password was met with a string of swear words from the German-speaking member of the SAS unit. They had been at the front for six weeks, the man was told, they were hungry, in need of a bath and in no mood for formalities. The SAS were all in uniform. A mile away, the fires were still smouldering from their raid the night before on an airfield, which had killed many Germans. The stakes could hardly have been higher.

Mayne cocked his revolver. Storie followed suit. The German sentry heard the clicks in the stillness. He knew the men were British but he also knew that if he gave the alarm he was a dead man. He let them through.

On another occasion, Storie was returning to his lines when his Jeep was shot up by a Stuka dive bomber. Two of his comrades were killed and he and one other SAS man were stranded in the desert. They walked back to camp but found it abandoned.

Setting off again they aimed for the coastal road but after several days dodging the enemy patrols they were captured. Storie was flown to Germany.

At an interrogation camp in Munich, he feared that he would be executed because Hitler had decreed that no quarter should be given to special forces engaged in sabotage.

He managed, however, to convince his captors that he was an RAF crewman who had been shot down and was sent to Stalag VIIIB in Silesia. He was liberated by the Americans in 1945.

James Storie, always known as Jimmy, was born at Ayr on December 3 1919. He left school aged 14 and for four years worked as a tile fixer. He joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers and served with 11 (Scottish) Commando before being recruited to “L” Detachment SAS Brigade.

After the war he was demobilised and was a warder for a time at Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow. He then returned to his job as a tile fixer and eventually retired to Muchalls, Aberdeenshire. A voracious reader, Storie particularly loved Robert Burns, and was able to recite many of his poems by heart.

Jimmy Storie died on January 8. He married, in 1945, Morag Hutton, who survives him with their two sons and two daughters.

Sergeant Jimmy Storie, born December 3 1919, died January 8 2012

Nicol Williamson

Nicol Williamson, the actor, who has died aged 75, was considered “the greatest since Marlon Brando” by John Osborne and reckoned by Samuel Beckett to be “touched by genius”; but his prickly temperament helped derail what might have been one of the great theatrical careers.

Nicol Williamson in Excalibur 

Tall, lean, hungry-looking, and long-faced, with a large, eloquently-furrowed forehead, he had an authority onstage which presaged greatness. Early in his career he was lauded as “the best Hamlet of his generation” and praised for the “terrifying intensity” he brought to the role of Bill Maitland, the disillusioned solicitor in Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence.

Such plaudits suggested that Williamson should have gone on to become one of Britain’s most successful actors. That he did not was due more to his personality than to any deficiency of talent.

He had no inhibitions, for example, about voicing any irritations during a performance, on several occasions stopping plays until latecomers had found their seats before restarting. “First night audiences, I hate them,” he growled, “with their fur stoles and their boxes of chocolates, coming to the theatre because they think it’s how the gentry behave.”

His irascibility saw him likened to Richard Burton as someone who “squandered his talents”, but Williamson always denied the comparison, claiming that the reason he did not work as consistently as other actors was a result of the intensity with which he approached each project. “It would just about kill me,” he insisted, “to appear in something I didn’t like.”

But by his own admission he frequently did just that. After he moved to New York in the early 1970s, his career dwindled into an uneven mix of stage and film work. He tried to salvage his career with appearances in film productions such as Excalibur (1981, in which John Boorman, the director, cast him as Merlin opposite his former lover Helen Mirren, to the dismay of both) and The Human Factor (which he described as “just awful”).

Williamson returned to the Broadway stage in the early 1990s. But, in what seemed like a joke at his own expense, his first performance in almost a decade was as a ghost in I Hate Hamlet. He had lost none of his contentiousness and almost immediately began to disrupt rehearsals and to complain about the author.
Then, in one performance, animosity between Williamson and his co-star, Evan Handler, erupted on stage when Williamson interrupted the play to give Handler direction on how to play his role. Having urged Handler to “put more life into it”, Williamson later improvised a move in their sword fight in which he struck Handler on the back with the flat of his sword.
Handler walked offstage and did not return. Williamson, left alone in front of the audience, offered to sing a few numbers. The curtain was brought down, and the play continued with Handler’s understudy.
Nicol Williamson was born on September 14 1936 in Glasgow, the son of a factory owner. His family later moved south and Williamson was educated at the Central Grammar School, Birmingham. He left school at 16 to begin work in his father’s factory and later attended a local drama school. He recalled his time there as “a disaster” and claimed “it was nothing more than a finishing school for the daughters of local businessmen”.
After National Service as a gunner in the Airborne Division, he joined the Dundee Repertory Theatre, playing in 33 productions under the artistic director Anthony Page, who recalled Williamson as “being real in the midst of a lot of people who were obviously acting”. Page was instrumental in getting Williamson seen at the Royal Court, where he made his London debut in 1961 in That’s Us.
Williamson was an immediate success with the critics, although what Page described as “his terrific neurotic energy” made him less popular with fellow actors. After appearing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night at the Royal Court, he went on to roles in productions as diverse as Woman Beware Woman, Spring’s Awakening, The Ginger Man and Waiting For Godot.
National recognition came in 1964, when he played Bill Maitland in Inadmissible Evidence, a role which later marked one of the peaks of his career. Critics were unanimous in their praise of his performance as the “petty, snarling, pleading, despairing failure”. But Williamson remained unimpressed by his instant popularity. “Why should I be grateful to audiences for liking me?” he asked. “They should be grateful for a play like this.”
He played Maitland for two years before transferring to New York for the Broadway production, for which he won the New York Critics’ award in 1966. He remained as combative as ever, punching the producer David Merrick (during an argument about who should direct the play) and knocking him into a nearby dustbin.
In 1969 Williamson was cast as Hamlet in Tony Richardson’s Roundhouse production. He insisted he would be “the best Hamlet ever” — and both public and critics seemed to agree, one reviewer describing Williamson as “a benchmark Hamlet”. (Harold Wilson spent much of an official meeting with President Nixon describing his performance.)
Members of the audience who booked seats hoping to see displays of temper were not disappointed. Williamson interrupted one performance in the first act claiming that he was “too emotionally drained to continue”. He said he could not go on, and offered to reimburse the audience for their tickets. In the second act, however, he made a remarkable recovery and completed the play.
Williamson had surprised London theatregoers by playing the Dane with a strong Birmingham accent, a move which, although innovative, proved problematical when the production opened in New York. The American audience had trouble understanding Williamson’s nasal twang. One critic described him as sounding “like a museum guide crippled with a blocked sinus”.
Bad notices did not discourage President Nixon from inviting him to give a one-man show at the White House. Williamson’s liberal New York friends were dismayed by his acceptance, but he insisted that the performance was “not a question of political affiliation but an amazing kind of challenge”.
He recalled the surprise among guests when he arrived, not in doublet and hose, but in jeans and a T-shirt, to perform a number of country and western ballads interspersed with poems by TS Eliot and ee cummings.
Although Nicol Williamson was at the peak of his career, he remained “intense and highly strung”. He was a regular visitor to his doctor (“I’m always being thrown out because there’s nothing wrong with me”) and was described by friends as “extremely hyperchondriacal”. In spite of his intense concern over his health, Williamson continued to drink heavily and claimed that he smoked 80 cigarettes a day (“I need at least a packet before I can get out of bed”).
In the early 1970s Williamson continued to enjoy considerable success as a member of the RSC. He gave highly-acclaimed performances as Macbeth, Malvolio, Coriolanus and Uncle Vanya, and even released an LP — a collection of standards such as Misty Roses and Take the Ribbon From Your Hair. In 1972 he married the actress Jill Townsend.
By the end of the decade, however, his career was on the wane. Jill Townsend divorced him, and the Broadway musical Rex, on which he had pinned his hopes, failed at the box office. In an attempt to restart his career Williamson appeared in a series of feature films, including The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), The Seven Per Cent Solution (1976) and Robin and Marion (1976).
None was well received by the critics, and Williamson admitted that he loathed filming. He returned to the theatre in 1978 in a revival of Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court, but continued to appear in films as a way of financing his theatrical career. He took the role of a spy in The Human Factor (1979), for example, so that he could appear in another production of Inadmissible Evidence the following year.
But by the early 1980s he was appearing almost exclusively in feature films. He did return to the stage in the United States for leading roles in The Entertainer in 1982 and The Real Thing in 1983, but spent most of his time appearing in second-rate films such as I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982) and Return to Oz (1985).
Williamson lived in New York throughout the 1980s, writing screenplays and performing as a singer in various nightclubs. “I infinitely prefer the company of musicians,” he insisted. “I can’t bear the way actors only talk about themselves.”
His last film was the superhero picture Spawn (1997). Latterly he had been living in Amsterdam and concentrating on music. For the past two years he had been suffering from cancer, and was anxious that no fuss should be made following his death.
Nicol Williamson is survived by his son, Luke.

Nicol Williamson, born September 14 1936, died December 16 2011

Johnny Otis

Johnny Otis, who has died aged 90, was an important influence on early rock and roll, having decided that, although born white, he would rather be black.

Johnny Otis  

The son of Greek immigrants, he was brought up in the 1920s in a predominantly black area of California. His decision as a young man to identify with black people and their music led him to develop an instinct for finding black talent, and he discovered Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard — and Etta James.

“Yes, I chose,” Otis reflected in 1979, “because despite all the hardships, there’s a wonderful richness in black culture that I prefer.”

But he was much more than a talent-spotter. Often called the “godfather of rhythm and blues”, Otis sang, played drums and vibraphone, and broadcast as a disc jockey. He also wrote songs, notably the 1958 hit Willie and the Hand Jive. With a beat recalling the 1955 hit Bo Diddley, the number was inspired by the British craze for hand jiving, which had originated a year earlier in a coffee bar in Soho.

A trio of black American women singers called Three Tons Of Joy had appeared on the British television pop show 6.5 Special with their version of Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me. On their return to Los Angeles, they told Otis about the strange phenomenon they had witnessed in the studio, where the audience had hand jived in time to the beat.

Noting that the craze was at its peak, Otis promptly wrote and recorded Willie and the Hand Jive, which became the most successful of his many recordings. Another of his compositions, Every Beat of My Heart, became a debut chart hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961.

Johnny Otis was born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes on December 28 1921 at Vallejo, north-east of San Francisco, and brought up in Berkeley, where his father ran a grocery store in a mainly black community. “When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African-American culture that I couldn’t imagine not being part of it,” Otis said in 1991.
He started playing drums with a blues band called The Houserockers in the late 1930s. He fronted a swing-era big band in the 1940s, and had his first hit with an instrumental, Harlem Nocturne, which became one of the most distinctive numbers of the big band era. In 1955 he wrote the song that became Etta James’s first chart hit, The Wallflower, popularly known as Roll With Me Henry.
Otis also produced early recordings for Little Richard and Big Mama Thornton.
The young songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were Otis fans, and released their first record, That’s What The Good Book Says, featuring an act that Otis had discovered, Bobby Nunn and the Robbins.
In 1951 Otis invited Leiber and Stoller to meet Big Mama Thornton. “She just knocked us out,” said Stoller. “She was a very formidable person. Very large. She had some razor scars on her face and had a very salty, nasty disposition. Of course, underneath that, she was like a marshmallow. But it was her whole demeanour that sparked this kind of angry thing in the lyrics of Hound Dog, which, of course, was written as a woman’s song.”
When Thornton recorded Leiber and Stoller’s original Hound Dog in 1952 (the pair had written it in just 15 minutes), Otis was the session producer. He also sat in for the drummer, whose efforts on the song had failed to impress . In turn, Lieber and Stoller took Otis’s place in the recording cubicle, marking their debut as producers.
When the British pop invasion of the United States began in earnest with the first Beatles tour in 1964, “the white boys from England came over with a recycled version of what we created. We were out of business, man,” Otis recalled.
But he continued to make music with his own band, a lively fusion of blues, gospel, swing and jazz, before retiring in the 1970s, turning his house into the non-denominational Landmark Community Church and appointing himself pastor.
In the 1960s he stood unsuccessfully for a seat in the California State Assembly before becoming chief of staff for a Democratic Congressman, Mervyn Dymally.
Otis’s younger brother, Nicholas Veliotes, was the American Ambassador to Jordan (1978–81) and to Egypt (1984–86).
Johnny Otis is survived by Phyllis, his wife of 60 years, and their children, two of whom, Nick and Shuggie, played in his band.

Johnny Otis, born December 28 1921, died January 17 2012

Mark Hall

Mark Hall, who has died aged 75, was co-creator with Brian Cosgrove of the eyepatch-wearing children’s hero Danger Mouse, and co-founder, again with Cosgrove, of one of the most successful animation studios in Europe.

Danger Mouse comes to the rescue of Penfold 

Danger Mouse — the adventures of a rodent James Bond who lives in a postbox in Baker Street — was first shown on ITV in 1981, when it drew audiences of 3.5 million, and ran for some 90 episodes until 1992. At its peak it attracted an audience of more than 19 million. It also proved popular abroad, selling to more than 80 countries and becoming the first British cartoon to break into the American market.

Hall felt that the show succeeded because of the often absurd situations in which Danger Mouse (voiced by David Jason) and his bumbling hamster sidekick Penfold (voiced by Terry Scott) found themselves as they battled the wicked Baron Greenback, Count Duckula and sundry other baddies. (In one episode, for example, Count Duckula mind-controls Westminster MPs to make them as showbiz-crazy as he is). “The adults watched because of that kind of anarchy. The kids watched it because they just loved the stories and the absolutely stupid gags,” Hall recalled.

By the time they made their names with Danger Mouse, Hall and Cosgrove had been working together for more than a decade on cartoon and stop-motion animation. Hall was the business brains with a talent for model-making; Cosgrove was the ideas man, a storyboard wizard with a gift for traditional cartoon animation.

The success of the series gave them the financial security to embark on other children’s’ animation projects, including the highly popular spin-off series Count Duckula (1988-93), a spoof on the Dracula legend featuring a vegetarian vampire duck, and a feature-length stop-motion animated version of The Wind in the Willows (1983), with a voice cast that included David Jason (Toad), Ian Carmichael (Ratty), Michael Hordern (Badger) and Richard Pearson (Mole), as well as wonderfully evocative and elaborate costumes and sets.

The Wind in the Willows earned the two men a Bafta award and they went on to produce a series featuring the same characters which ran to more than 60 episodes. The pair won another Bafta for the short Alias the Jester (1985) and they had a further 15 nominations, including one for the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG (1989).

The son of a railwayman, Mark William Hall was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, on May 17 1936 and, as a child, enjoyed putting on puppet shows for friends. He went on to train as an illustrator at Manchester Regional College of Art and Design, where he met Brian Cosgrove, who was studying graphic design. The pair hit it off immediately, though Hall remembered that while Cosgrove was inspired by cartoons such as Mickey Mouse, he preferred more serious stories and longer films such as Snow White and Bambi.
The pair met up again when they were both recruited to work as graphic designers by Granada Television, doing title sequences. In the late 1960s Hall left to form an independent company, Stop Frame Animations, and Cosgrove joined him about a year later. Working initially in a shed in the garden of Cosgrove’s father-in-law, they made commercials and public information films and produced their first award-winning series, The Magic Ball (1971-72), about the adventures of a time travelling boy, written and narrated by Eric Thompson, in which they mixed photographs with hand drawings. They also did the title sequence and animations for Thames Television’s children’s programme Rainbow (1972).
In the mid-1970s they founded Cosgrove Hall Productions, a Manchester-based studio working for Thames Television, which specialised in both cartoon and stop-motion animation, later moving into computer-generated imagery. Early productions included Noddy (1975); Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976-79), inspired by a dream Cosgrove had about a happiness dragon chasing heads on wheels; and the Captain Kremmen cartoon sequences for The Kenny Everett Video Show (1978-80). In 1981 they won their first Bafta, for The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
In the 1990s Cosgrove Hall began a fruitful partnership with Terry Pratchett, collaborating on an animated adaptation of Truckers, the first book in The Bromeliad (which follows the attempts of a group of gnomes, marooned on Earth after their spaceship crash-lands, to return home). In 1997 they produced two series for Channel 4 based on Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, two novels from Pratchett’s Discworld series.
Although Cosgrove Hall was an independent company, Thames Television was the majority shareholder. After the company lost its franchise in 1993, ownership passed to Granada Television and ultimately to ITV. The company continued to produce cartoons and animations after Hall and Cosgrove retired in 2000, but in later years it faced increasingly stiff competition from state-subsidised productions in Canada, France and countries in the Far East. In 2009 ITV took the decision to close it down.
Earlier this year Hall and Cosgrove announced that they had formed a new company, CHF Entertainment, with Francis Fitzpatrick, creator of the children’s television hit Jakers!, and were working on a children’s series entitled HeroGliffix.
In 1961 Mark Hall married Margaret Routledge, who survives him with their son and daughter.

Mark Hall, born May 17 1936, died November 17 2011

Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill, who has died aged 75, wrote 24 bestselling Dalziel and Pascoe novels, which were the basis of 12 successful BBC television series.

Reginald Hill 

Hill called himself a crime novelist, but his work owed nothing to the hard-boiled tradition of the genre. His approach was cerebral, his plots labyrinthine, his characterisations sharply etched, and his dialogue richly laced with humour. His novels bristle with shrewd perceptions and whimsical wit.

It was this capricious streak, combined with Hill’s unflinching treatment of crime’s darker side, that marked him out as a distinctive writer.

“But to this mix of the amusing and the alarming,” noted HRF Keating, a one-time Daily Telegraph crime fiction reviewer, “he brings one of the chief gifts of the detection writer, the weaving together of an ingenious and credible plot.”

Hill introduced his two Yorkshire detectives, Supt Andrew Dalziel and Sgt Peter Pascoe, in his first novel, A Clubbable Woman (1970). More than one critic has seen in them echoes of Falstaff and Hal, while Hill himself characterised them as a subtle variation on the traditional Holmes-Watson partnership. But, as Keating noted, neither is Holmes and neither is Watson.

Instead, the two men learn from each other in a continuing clash of temperaments. “They respect each other,” observed Hill’s fellow crime writer Martin Edwards, “but have irreconcilably different outlooks.”

Hill featured them again in the follow-up, An Advancement Of Learning (1971), which drew on his own experiences as a college lecturer.
It was in this second novel that Hill began to develop the long-term relationship between his two protagonists, with Dalziel, the overweight, old-style pugnacious cutter of corners, contrasting with Pascoe, slighter of build, a sociology graduate and liberal thinker.
Hill’s structural devices included presenting parts of the story in non-chronological order, or alternating with sections from a novel supposedly written by Pascoe’s feminist wife, Ellie, who also features in the novels. With a fourth member of the cast, the gay Sgt Wield, Hill trod a fine line between modern liberal values and the earthy wit of Dalziel, who accepts the junior officer despite delivering a barrage of crude jokes.
Sometimes Hill chose one writer or one oeuvre to use as a central organising element of a given novel, so that one book was a pastiche of Jane Austen, while another featured elements of classical Greek myth.
His novella One Small Step (1990) — dedicated to “you, dear readers, without whom the writing would be in vain, and to you, still dearer purchasers, without whom the eating would be infrequent” — was set in 2010, then 20 years in the future, and found Dalziel and Pascoe investigating the first murder on the moon.
A writer of prodigious energy and output, Hill also wrote more than 30 other novels under the names Dick Morland, Patrick Ruell and Charles Underhill; many of these have since been republished under his own name.
As Reginald Hill, five of his books feature Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned amiable private detective in a fictional version of Luton. Hill also wrote short stories and ghost tales.
Reginald Charles Hill was born on April 3 1936 at West Hartlepool, Co Durham, the son of a professional footballer, and brought up in Carlisle. At Stanwix primary school “I was always scribbling,” he recalled. It was from his mother, a voracious reader of Golden Age crime fiction, that Reg discovered the genre.
He passed the 11-plus and at Carlisle Grammar School excelled at English, confirming his own suspicion, held from an early age, that he would become a professional writer.
After National Service between 1955 and 1957, he went up on a scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he played rugby; in his first term he was in the second row with a man whose name was pronounced “Dee-ell”.
“It took me a little time to realise this chap, who I was putting my arms around in the scrum, was the same as the person listed on the team-sheet as 'Dalziel’. Later, when I was looking for a gross Northern copper, I thought how amusing it would be to call him after my rather smooth middle-class friend. Forty years later, we’re still friends.”
Having graduated in English Literature in 1960, Hill became a schoolmaster and later lectured at Doncaster College of Education before deciding to become a full-time writer in 1980.
Hill was the recipient of many awards, including Gold and Diamond Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. In 1995 he won the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
His last Dalziel and Pascoe novel, Midnight Fugue, appeared in 2009.
Reginald Hill was married for 51 years to Patricia Ruell, who survives him. There were no children.

Reginald Hill, born April 3 1936, died January 12 2012

Richard Hopkins

Richard Hopkins, who has died aged 47, produced Big Brother and was the co-creator of Strictly Come Dancing, Britain’s most popular television programme; as such he fundamentally changed not just what we watch but also who we consider a “star”.

Richard Hopkins weith his second wife, Katy 

Hopkins started spearheading the “reality revolution” in British television in 2000, when he produced the Bafta award-winning first series of Big Brother.

The programme featured a group of ordinary people thrown together for two months, under the constant surveillance of cameras which recorded every ill-judged hissy fit or snatched kiss. By moulding such developments into compelling storylines, Hopkins caught the attention of a huge audience. A whole new category of “celebrity” was defined, spawning in turn a subsidiary industry of gossip magazines and websites.

But Hopkins’s most significant contribution was still to come. For the format behind Strictly — as the programme’s millions of devotees prefer to call it — has come to dominate popular television around the world.

The show matches celebrities with professional dancers, who each week are challenged to learn a different dance. A flamboyant judging panel and the voting viewers then decide which couple should be eliminated. Viewing figures for the first series in 2004 soon topped seven million, making it the BBC’s most successful light entertainment launch for more than a decade.

Garlanded with awards, Strictly Come Dancing is now recognised as Britain’s most successful reality television format, overshadowing its Saturday night ITV rival, The X Factor. As a flagship brand for the BBC, it has been sold to more than 30 countries, including America where, as Dancing With The Stars, some broadcasts attract almost 30 million viewers. Such is the format’s popularity that audience share in destinations from Slovakia to Finland regularly reaches more than 60 per cent.

Exactly who thought up the idea, however, is a matter of some debate. Hopkins said the idea for a programme of celebrity ballroom dancing came to him as he luxuriated in a jacuzzi at the gym of the Landmark Hotel, Marylebone, in 2003. “Why not bring back Come Dancing — but with celebrities?” was the gist of his eureka moment.
The following morning he went into a brainstorming meeting at the BBC with the idea still forming in his head. He had already thought of a working title: Pro-Celebrity Dancing. But his pitch was rejected.
The idea got traction only after a trawl of old television shows to see if any could be revived or revisited. When Fenia Vardanis, an entertainment executive, suggested revamping Come Dancing, first broadcast in 1949 and noted for its taffeta, tangoes and tears, Jane Lush, then head of BBC entertainment, remembered Hopkins’s idea, and told him to work it up into a detailed proposal. Hopkins and Fenia Vardanis are now credited as the show’s co-creators, with its eventual title melding the glamour of Come Dancing with the maverick approach of the young dancers in the 1992 film Strictly Ballroom.
Richard England Hopkins was born on December 15 1964 at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, where his family ran a scrap metal business. He was a boarder at Bedford School and went on to University College, London, where he graduated in English Literature. After briefly working for a publisher, he moved into radio, starting as a reporter for Kiss FM, then a pirate station, before moving to the South of France and a presenter’s job on Sunshine Radio at Antibes. He stayed on the Cote d’Azur as a presenter at Skyrock Radio before returning to Britain to work on the black music station WNK.
His break into television came in the early 1990s, as a producer on The Big Breakfast, made by Planet 24 for Channel 4. Such was Hopkins’s success that Planet 24 sent him to run its office in Los Angeles, where he also conducted live red carpet interviews with Hollywood film stars at premieres and launches.
Joining the independent production company Endemol, Hopkins was executive producer on Fame Academy. But it was after the company’s Dutch subsidiary came up with Big Brother that his career really took off . As his reputation grew he was headhunted in 2003 by the BBC, taking the helm of the format entertainment department, in charge of such programmes as The Weakest Link, Mastermind and A Question Of Sport.
In 2006 Hopkins left the BBC to launch his own company, Fever Media, with David Mortimer. Over the past six years the company has made programmes for broadcasters in Britain and around the world.
Richard Hopkins, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour last June, was divorced from his French first wife, Cecile Couillet, with whom he had two daughters. They survive him, as does Katy McLachlan, whom he married last year, and with whom he had a third daughter.

Richard Hopkins, born December 15 1964, died January 7 2012

Harry Fowler

Harry Fowler, who has died aged 85, was a quintessential Cockney actor and made many film and television appearances, notably in the ITV comedy series The Army Game (1957-61).

Harry Fowler (left) as Corporal 'Flogger' Hoskins, with Dick Emery 

He joined the show in 1958 as Corporal “Flogger” Hoskins in a large ensemble cast playing a motley group of reluctant Army conscripts all seeking to dodge the column as they struggled to adjust to military life.

The show was at the height of its popularity when Fowler arrived, part of a new intake following the departure of many of the original cast after the first two series. In 1958 its theme tune reached No 5 in the pop charts, and the same year saw the release of a spin-off film called I Only Arsked! — one of the programme’s many catchphrases. (Fowler himself had one such well-worn slogan — “Follow Flogger!”)

He was cast as a skiving Cockney wide boy to replace Michael Medwin, who had played the departed Corporal Springer. Like many of the actors, Fowler could draw on his personal experiences as a wartime conscript, having served as an aircraftman in the RAF.

Originally broadcast live, the show was at the mercy of practical jokers among the cast. Once, Fowler had to exit and return quickly equipped with a haversack. But the others had loaded it with a stage weight, and Fowler had to stagger on with an extra 25lb on his back.

Although it seems dated now, The Army Game was a television phenomenon in its time; when it started, National Service was still compulsory, and wartime memories were fresh.

Henry James Fowler was born on December 10 1926 in Lambeth Walk, south London, and educated at the Central School in Lollard Street, Kennington. His childhood was hard: his grandmother, who had brought him up, was killed in the Blitz in 1940 when Harry was 13, and thereafter he had to fend for himself.
A year later he left school to take over a news-stand in Piccadilly Circus selling the now-defunct evening newspaper The Star. The job taught him how to use his lungs and larynx to full effect as he hawked his wares over the roar of London’s traffic.
Selling his papers at the gentlemen’s clubs nearby, he found that by warbling a few sotto voce lines from the Victorian Cockney song My Old Dutch he would get “half a dollar for a penny paper”.
After one such encounter a BBC official got him to “chat away on the wireless about the vicissitudes of an itinerant newspaper vendor in the metropolis” on the radio programme In Town Tonight.
This led to a film director offering him the part of a brash Cockney evacuee in Those Kids From Town (1941). Fowler followed this with an appearance in the morale-boosting Salute John Citizen (1942).
During the war years Fowler appeared in other propaganda films, notably Went the Day Well? (1942). He was later called up by the RAF, and would reprise his role as an aircraftman in the film Angels One-Five, released in 1952. By the time he was demobbed the late 1940s he was playing juvenile leads, notably the insouciant street kid in Hue and Cry (1947).
Starring Alistair Sim and Jack Warner, this was the first of the Ealing comedies and concerned a gang of street boys who foil a master crook. Unknown to the writer or to the printer of a weekly comic strip for boys, the criminal sends coded orders for robberies by cunningly altering the strip’s wording each week.
Despite the improbable plot, the film proved a critical and commercial success — “an adventure relating the fantasy of popular 'penny bloods’ to a credible situation in reality,” declared one reviewer, “the story of a schoolboy thriller which comes to life”.
Fowler’s other film credits include A Piece of Cake (1948), The Pickwick Papers (1952), Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956), Lucky Jim (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (1990).
On television he appeared in Dixon of Dock Green, Z-cars, Minder, Doctor Who, The Bill and Casualty. He also played Harry Danvers in the clerical comedy Our Man at St Mark’s (1965-66), and his voice was often used in television commercials.
A Labour supporter, Fowler considered standing for Parliament, but decided against it: “I found there was little room for laughter in politics.”
He was appointed MBE in Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list of 1970.
Harry Fowler’s first wife, the actress Joan Dowling, his co-star in Hue and Cry, committed suicide in 1954. His second wife, Catherine, survives him.

Harry Fowler, born December 10 1926, died January 4 2012

George Robb

George Robb, who has died aged 85, was a gifted Tottenham Hotspur winger in the 1950s; he made his international debut in England’s humiliating 6-3 defeat by the Hungarians at Wembley in 1953, and was never picked to play again.

George Robb scoring for Spurs against Middlesbrough at White Hart Lane in 1953 

Alongside the likes of Stanley Matthews, Len Shackleton and Tom Finney, Robb was part of the great flourishing of English wingers after the Second World War. Facing a back line of only three defenders, as opposed to today’s four, these skilful wingmen would twist and turn defences, ruthlessly exploiting the extra space at the fullback positions. It was an era that was short-lived, however, as the English game encountered a new-style collectivist football that emerged from the Communist bloc.

Robb was one of the few players to have seen the Hungarian team play before their famous visit to Wembley. He had been part of Britain’s team at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, where Hungary had stepped from the shadows of the Iron Curtain to sweep aside all competition, displaying a growing swagger on their way to the title. “Oh, how they sparkled,” Robb recalled later. “They had all the suggestions of greatness.”

Having turned professional and become a regular feature on Tottenham’s left flank, Robb was selected to play for England against the “Mighty Magyars” on November 25 1953. Despite the reputation of the Hungarians, led by Ferenc Puskás, England were confident of victory; they had, after all, never lost to a foreign team on home soil, a record stretching back to 1863.

Within 90 seconds England found themselves one down. By the end of the match, they had conceded six. Robb’s only impact on the match was to be bundled over in the penalty box, winning a late penalty which took the final score to 6-3. He never got another England cap.

George Robb was born on June 1 1926 in London. Joining Finchley FC as a teenager, his assured performances as an inside forward soon attracted the interest of Tottenham, who signed him as an amateur in 1944. Yet Robb failed to earn a full-time contract and instead decided to train as a schoolmaster, eventually joining a primary school at Crouch End.

He continued to play football during the 1940s, however, turning out for Finchley and appearing in the England Amateur XI (receiving a total of 18 caps). In 1951 Spurs came calling again. Robb signed, scored on his debut and within 18 months was offered a full professional contract.
Throughout the 1950s, Robb delighted White Hart Lane with his aggressive wing play. Impressive with either foot, he was most dangerous when cutting inside off the touchline, sharing neat passes with Eddie Baily, the man he had often played with at Finchley. Robb also had a mean shot, scoring 58 goals in 200 games for Tottenham.
Yet Robb’s proficiency in front of goal never won him a major trophy. Arriving just after Tottenham’s league triumph in 1950-51 and retiring before they repeated the feat in 1960-61, he came closest to silverware in Spurs’ 1956 FA Cup run. Having scored three times on the way to the semi-final, Robb was about to score a later equaliser against Manchester City when he was bought down by the goalkeeper, Bert Trautmann. No penalty was given, Spurs lost 1-0 and City went on to lift the cup.
Robb had already begun to lose his starting place when a crocked knee forced him to retire from football in 1960. He continued to teach at Christ’s College, Finchley, where he had been a sports master throughout his time at Tottenham, before moving to Ardingly College in Sussex in 1964. He spent the next two decades there, often fondly recounting the time when he faced the Mighty Magyars at Wembley. He retired in 1986.
His wife, Kate, whom he married in 1960, survives him.

George Robb, born June 1 1926, died Christmas Day 2011

Bob Anderson

Bob Anderson, who has died aged 89, brought his prowess as a British Olympic fencer to the Hollywood screen as a stunt double for Darth Vader in two of the three original Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).

Bob Anderson with swords from Zorro and Lord of the Rings  

During fight scenes, Anderson pulled on Darth Vader's black helmet and plunged into action with his light sabre. While the arch-villain was played by a 6ft 6in former weightlifter, David Prowse, and voiced by James Earl Jones, Anderson's role was not publicised at first.

But Mark Hamill, the actor who played the series hero Luke Skywalker, said in an interview in 1983 that "Bob Anderson was the man who actually did Vader's fighting".

"It was always supposed to be a secret, but I finally told [the director] George [Lucas] I didn't think it was fair any more," Hamill told Starlog magazine. "Bob worked so bloody hard that he deserves some recognition. It's ridiculous to preserve the myth that it's all done by one man."

It seems that Anderson was denied recognition for his work partly because David Prowse was praised so much for his portrayal that Lucas did not want to detract from the boost it gave to Prowse's career. But he was not particularly adept with a sword, and Anderson, as the film's fight director, was unable to get him to perform the necessary moves. So Anderson put on the costume and did the fighting himself.

Robert James Gilbert Anderson was born at Gosport, Hampshire, on September 15 1922. He joined the Royal Marines before the Second World War, teaching fencing aboard warships and winning several Combined Services titles in the sport.

During the war he served in the Mediterranean, and later trained as a fencing coach, representing Britain at the 1952 Olympics and at the 1950 and 1953 World Championships.
In the 1950s Anderson became the coach of Britain's national fencing team, a post he held until the late 1970s. He later served as technical director of the Canadian Fencing Association.
His first film work was staging fights and coaching Errol Flynn on the swashbuckler The Master of Ballantrae (1952).
Anderson went on to become one of the industry's most sought-after fight directors and sword masters, working on films including the James Bond adventures From Russia With Love (1963) and Die Another Day (2002); The Princess Bride (1987); The Legend of Zorro (2005); and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Bob Anderson is survived by his wife, Pearl, and their three children.

Bob Anderson, born September 15 1922, died January 1 2012

Tony Marchington

Tony Marchington, who has died aged 55, was a leading biotech entrepreneur – co-founder of Oxford Molecular, once valued at £450 million – who was forced into bankruptcy by his ownership of the steam locomotive Flying Scotsman, which cost him millions.

 

Marchington combined a shrewd scientific brain with a passion for steam. He once owned 25 traction engines, including the star of the 1962 film The Iron Maiden, which sought to create the aura around them that Genevieve had done for vintage cars.

He bought his first steamroller at 22, building with his father a collection that included a working Victorian funfair; a road locomotive built in 1900 which he claimed was the world’s first armour-plated vehicle; a Wall of Death from the 1930s; and a seagoing steam tug. He once had the 160-ton Flying Scotsman driven on a low loader along twisting Peak District roads to the family’s traction engine rally. As it pulled into the field, he told the crowd: “I’m saying to myself 'Marcho, you’ve arrived!’”

Many railway enthusiasts believed that, but for him, Flying Scotsman might never have returned to the main line. In 1996 he had stepped in to purchase, for £1.5 million, the ageing A3-class Pacific from Sir Bill McAlpine and Pete Waterman, whose own restoration plans had run into difficulties.

He then spent £1 million over three years restoring Flying Scotsman at the Southall Railway Centre – a task originally priced at £200,000. It emerged in 1999 in pristine condition to haul a £350-a-head special train from King’s Cross to York.

Yet within seven years he would be the latest victim of what has been described as the “curse of the Flying Scotsman”. Taking the historic locomotive to America had ruined Alan Pegler, its first private owner, and Waterman lamented that the Scotsman had cost him even more than his divorce.

For Marchington things had started well. In 2002, for example, he secured a contract for Flying Scotsman to haul Orient Express Pullman train excursions, floating Flying Scotsman plc on the Ofex market and hiring the former Conservative MP Peter Butler to run the company. But then Edinburgh City Council rejected Marchington’s proposal for a “Flying Scotsman Village” to capitalise on the brand. In late 2003 he was declared bankrupt, and his collection of traction engines sold.
With Flying Scotsman plc £474,000 in the red (on top of debts owed to banks totalling £1.5 million), the locomotive itself was put up for sale, with the National Railway Museum purchasing it for £2.5 million in response to a campaign by enthusiasts. It is currently undergoing a further lengthy and costly restoration.
Anthony Frank Marchington was born at Buxton on December 2 1955, and raised on the family farm in the Peak District. Showing a boyhood flair for science, he gained a BA in Chemistry and a PhD in Bioinformatics at Brasenose College, Oxford.
There he lodged with the American Walter Hooper, the last personal secretary of the theologian and children’s author CS Lewis. Marchington lectured with Hooper in the United States, and co-wrote Through Joy and Beyond, a 1977 life of Lewis.
Marchington joined ICI Agrochemicals in 1983 as a project manager, becoming marketing manager for South Ameria in 1986. At ICI he found a way of using a computer to help a molecule dock with the active part of an enzyme, a breakthrough that enhanced the fortunes of Zeneca when it was launched as a separate company.
In 1988, with his tutor Prof Graham Richards, he co-founded Oxford Molecular, a drug design software house. The company thrived, being floated in 1994 and earning £10 million for the city’s university as it acquired the pioneering French company Biostructure and built partnerships with companies such as Glaxo Wellcome.
Worth £450 million at the height of the biotech boom of the late 1990s, Oxford Molecular was sold for £70 million in 2000 to Pharmacopeia Inc – and is now part of Accelerys, whose European headquarters is in Cambridge.
Marchington bounced back from bankruptcy as an after-dinner speaker. He went on to run Marchington Consulting and Savyon Diagnostics and co-founded Venture Hothouse Ltd. For the last year of his life he was chief executive at Oxford Medical Diagnostics, developing advanced methods of gas analysis, in particular breath analysis for the screening of diabetes.
He was a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and a former member of the Department of Trade & Industry’s Competitiveness Advisory group. He joined the Freemasons in 1991, becoming a Provincial Grand Steward and Assistant Provincial Grand Master for Oxfordshire. He was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1997.
Tony Marchington was twice married. He is survived by his second wife Caroline, whom he met when he gave her a lift to the local pub on his steam engine, and two children from each marriage.

Tony Marchington, born December 2 1955, died October 16 2011

Leopold Hawelka

Leopold Hawelka, who has died aged 100, founded, with his wife Josefine, Vienna’s celebrated Café Hawelka, an institution once described as the city’s answer to Paris’s Deux Magots.

 

Founded on the central Dorotheergasse in 1939, Café Hawelka became – after the war – the favourite haunt of the angry young men of the Fantastic Realist school of Viennese painting . Regular patrons from overseas – Henry and Arthur Miller, Andy Warhol, the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt – came to swap ideas, drink strong Viennese coffee and indulge themselves with a plate of Josefine’s famous Buchteln, a type of Bohemian dumpling served with plum jam.

In the café’s smoky gloom, dog-eared posters of long-forgotten art exhibitions jostled for wall space with nicotine-stained photographs of 1950s operetta stars and matinee idols, graffitied messages and the odd sketch left by some impoverished artist in exchange for a cup of coffee. Waiters in shabby tuxedos, precariously balancing multiple silver trays, would weave a path through a jumble of sagging sofas and worn marble tables scarred with cigarette burns, under the ever-watchful eyes of the Hawelkas.

Leopold, trim, bow-tied and dapper, would supervise the café until the afternoon and, until her death in 2005, Josefine would take over until the early hours of the morning.

In later years, inevitably, the café became something of a tourist destination. But the Hawelkas were never tempted to update; Leopold’s sole concession to modernity was the installation of an espresso machine.

Leopold Hawelka was born on April 11 1911, the son of a Bohemian cobbler from Mistelbach in Lower Austria. When he was 14 the family moved to Vienna where found work at Deierl, one of the best restaurants of the pre-war period. There he met Josefine Danzberger, the daughter of a butcher. They married in 1936 and opened their first café, Kaffee Alt Wien, on the Bäckerstrasse two days after their honeymoon.

As there was little money, they slept on the floor among the beer barrels and it was at this time that they established the “shift” routine that would last until Josefine’s death. By all accounts the marriage was a happy one. In an interview given a few years before his wife’s death, Leopold said: “The most important thing for a landlord is to have a competent wife, and Mrs Hawelka, she is unique.”
In 1939 the rent at the Alt Wien went up and in June they decided to move to a former café in Dorotheergasse which they opened as the Cafe Hawelka. A year later Leopold was called up into the Wehrmacht and the café was forced to close. He returned five years later, having somehow survived Stalingrad unscathed.
In the immediate post-war period, when Vienna was split into Soviet, American, British and French zones, the Café Hawelka was one of the few buildings in central Vienna that still had glass in its windows. Because of its proximity to the Chancellor’s palace in the Ballhaus-Platz, it also had electricity, so the Hawelkas were able to reopen in the winter of 1945.
Some of their best stories stretched back to the immediate post-war years when, attracted by the smoke curling out of the café’s stovepipe, ragged Viennese citizens would crowd into the establishment and, over a free glass of water, escape the cold of their bombed-out homes. Leopold recalled getting up before dawn, walking for two hours to the Vienna Woods and trudging back with sacks of firewood to keep the stove burning.
It was a period when Austrian royals pawned priceless carpets, paintings and other family treasures . “They needed money as badly as the rest of us,” Josefine recalled. While the Hawelkas struggled to find food to serve, one regular customer, a Soviet officer, brought his own lunch, which consisted of thick slices of ham which he wolfed down in front of hundreds of pairs of hungry eyes.
Josefine and Leopold Hawelka ran their café for 60 years together until she died aged 91. It was subsequently managed by their son and grandson, but Leopold continued to spend the occasional morning watching over the waiters and left no one in any doubt who was really in charge when he did drop by.
Leopold Hawelka is survived by a son and daughter.

Leopold Hawelka, born April 11 1911, died December 29 2011