Alan Lake

Alan Lake  was an English actor, best known as the third husband of Diana Dors.

Lake was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. He studied acting at RADA, and began to work in television roles in 1964.

He met his later wife, Diana Dors, on the set of the 1968 television series The Inquisitors. Their stormy marriage produced a son, Jason David, born in 1969. The pair worked together in the early 1970s, on stage in plays such as Three Months Gone.

In July 1970 Lake was involved in a pub brawl for which he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison later that year (his friend, the musician Leapy Lee, was sentenced to three years for stabbing the pub's relief manager), although he was released after serving a year.

Lake was a keen horseman and on his release from prison Dors presented him with a mare named Sapphire. While riding the horse in 1972 he was unseated when the horse ran into the bough of a tree, and broke his back, and for a time it was thought he may spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair; In fact, he recovered and was walking again within three weeks.

After leaving hospital, unable to work while he recovered, and in severe pain, he began drinking heavily. 

Lake's once promising acting career was now reduced for the remainder of the 1970s to small parts in low-budget comedy films and television dramas, although he had a significant role as a singer Jack Daniels in the Slade vehicle Slade In Flame in 1974 and also as John Merrick in the first episode of the hugely popular TV series The Sweeney. Both he and Diana Dors attended the film premiere at the Metropole Theatre, Victoria, London on 13 February 1975.

In 1980, the pair separated for a time, although they were reconciled when Lake promised to undergo treatment for his alcoholism. In May 1984, Dors died after a long illness.

On 10 October 1984, after taking their son to the railway station he returned to their Sunningdale home and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in their son's bedroom.

His roles included  parts in Cluff, Redcap, Sergeant Cork, The Saint, Public Eye, The Avengers, Department S, Dixon of Dock Green, The Protectors, Z-Cars, Softly, Softly: Taskforce, Crown Court, The Sweeney, Angels, Target, Hazell, Strangers, Blake's 7, Juliet Bravo, The Gentle Touch, Hart to Hart and Bergerac.