He appeared at my local watering hole years ago (it was big on overseas entertainers) where he appeared as "Alf Garnett" . Told everyone that he'd just got in from a place called Invercargil (New Zealand) where the big attraction was the one set of traffic lights in the town and everyone would turn out once a day to watch them change. Reckoned he switched his electric toothbrush on an all the lights in the town dimmed. We were sweet with the owner and used to stay behind for a few drinks after the show and Warren Mitchell joined us. He had a beautiful speaking voice and did a lot of Shakespeare in his early days. Said he would like to be remembered as a good actor but had resigned himself to the fact that he was now 'typecast' as Alf Garnett and that is what people would remember him for. Told some lovely stories and he was wonderful to listen to. R.I.P.
His character Alf Garnett done more to highlight racist bigotry than anything else at the time. His racist comments were always countered by commonsense replies by his "Scouse Git" son in law..
Lines like "Genuine frontier gibberish", and "We'll take the Ni**** and Chinks but not the Irish" or the Campdown Races song scene. Pure classic.
