Harry Fowler

Harry Fowler, MBE was an English actor in film and TV. Over a career lasting more than sixty years he made nearly 200 appearances on screen.

Fowler was born in Lam­beth, south Lon­don, on Decem­ber 10, 1926.

Fowler made his on-screen debut as Ern in the 1942 film Those Kids from Town, a propaganda piece about wartime evacuee children from London. This role was given to him after film company executives heard him speaking on the radio about his experiences in wartime London. After a screen test at Elstree studios, Fowler was given the part to star alongside George Cole

His early juvenile roles included Hue and Cry (1947), usually considered the first of the Ealing Comedies. Fowler later married Joan Dowling, one of his co-stars in the Ealing film. Dowling committed suicide in 1954.

During the Second World War he had been an aircraftman in the RAF, and played a cheerful cockney character with the same job in the film Angels One Five (1952),[3] a portrayal he used in other contexts, often with a humorous slant, mostly especially during his year in The Army Game (1959–60) TV series.

His familiar voice was regularly used for TV commercials. He was awarded an MBE in 1970, as part of Harold Wilson's Resignation Honours. In 1975, Fowler took the part of Eric Lee Fung, described as "a Chinese cockney spiv", in The Melting Pot, a sitcom written by Spike Milligan and Neil Shand.