Bill Maynard obituary

Bill Maynard, who has died aged 89, was well known as an actor and comedian, especially as a member of the cast in five Carry On films and in the popular television series Heartbeat. Behind the scenes he had a reputation as a hell-raiser. His Carry On parts began in Carry On Loving (1970) and he appeared in four of the cruder Confessions series in the 70s. He had his own show on BBC Radio Leicester until 2008 and was still working well into his 80s.

Outside showbusiness, Maynard once said he would like to be “president of England” and he stood as an independent candidate in the 1984 Chesterfield byelection, opposing Tony Benn for Labour. Asked if the electorate could be expected to take seriously a man who had played a labourer in Yorkshire TV’s series Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt!, Maynard replied: “Quite honestly, it’s been my experience over the years that it takes someone serious to play the fool.” The electorate were not convinced: Maynard polled just 1,355 votes against Benn’s 24,633.

He relished the perks of show business and claimed that he always carried a crate of champagne in his car to help seduce whoever was available.

He was born Walter Williams in Heath End, Surrey, the son of a gardener, also Walter, and Edith, a laundry worker. The family moved to Leicestershire, where he attended Kibworth Beauchamp grammar school. At the age of 11 he was already earning more than his father by doing comedy turns in clubs.

Maynard was working as an assistant buyer for a Leicester clothes wholesaler when he met Muriel Linnett. They married in 1949 and had a son and a daughter. He worked in local repertory companies and then went to Butlins holiday camp, Skegness, where he met the comedy actor Terry Scott. In 1955 the two of them appeared on TV in Great Scott, It’s Maynard. After this he had his own comedy and music show, Mostly Maynard, which lasted five episodes.

In the 60s and 70s he found work in TV series such as Till Death Do Us Part (1969 and 1972), Up Pompeii (1970), Coronation Street (1970) and Love Thy Neighbour (1973). The Carry On films kept him occupied throughout the 70s, along with, on TV, Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt! (1974) and The Life of Riley (1975).

Maynard once said that he watched television only to see himself and that he set out to destroy anyone who tried to “stop him doing his best” while acting. His favourite book was The Power of Positive Thinking. Once, asked to describe himself in a few words, he replied: “Stand up and be counted.”

Often he was willing to do just that when others might have thought silence wiser. In 1995 he told a newspaper he was angry because, though he was paid £400,000 a year for his part as Claude Greengrass in Heartbeat, Nick Berry, who played PC Rowan, had a £1m contract. Three years later, he made his views plain when ITV rescheduled the show to end at 9.30, half an hour after the “watershed”. At its peak in 1992, Heartbeat achieved 14 million viewers, but after the time change in 1998, a million stopped watching. Maynard remarked: “It’s ridiculous. They have shot themselves in the foot and the BBC must be delighted.”

Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television, which produced the show, remained silent, perhaps so as not to offend the ITV schedulers. Maynard had no such compunction. Heartbeat ended in 2000, but he played Greengrass again in The Royal in 2003.

Muriel died of cancer in 1983. In 1990, Maynard married Tonia Bern-Campbell. When, eight years later, she filed for divorce, he said publicly that he had never really loved her.

Maynard wrote two books of autobiography, The Yo-Yo Man (1975) and Stand Up … and Be Counted (1997). He had always said he based his stage name on an advertisement for Maynard’s wine gums and that his mother often tried to persuade him to switch back to his real name. In September 1998, after his mother’s death at the age of 90, he said that he had decided to do so in her memory, since she had been his inspiration.

But by that time he was ill himself. He had suffered a mild stroke on the first day of shooting of a new Heartbeat series. Doctors told him that he would be all right if he took it easy; but, despite listing his hobbies as “lying down”, taking it easy was not really his forte.

He is survived by his children, Martin and Jayne.

• Bill Maynard (Walter Frederick George Williams), actor and comedian, born 8 October 1928; died 30 March 2018

• Dennis Barker died in 2015