Barrel-chested British actor who can look as thick as two short planks but still give a sensitive performance - so says Halliwell's Television Companion about Michael Elphick, who has died at the age of 55.
It is a verdict as inadequate in its praise as in its description of him; he was, in fact, an intelligent and masterly screen actor. The offending entry was written when Elphick was newly occupying his most popular - and populist - role, as the eponymous hero of the long-running ITV series Boon, from 1986. He played a Birmingham fireman, forced to retire early because of illness, who had become a motor-bike courier, was available as a tough guy for hire and was, of course, a bit of a Galahad. It was a worthy format, but one that made rather obvious use of Elphick's stocky physique and ready scowl.
His great performances came when these attributes were deployed in less predictable outlets - notably as the extravagant showman Wallace Parnell (brother of Val) in The One And Only Phyllis Dixey (Thames, 1978), and as the bully-boy Pete in Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (BBC, 1979), in which a cast of grown-up actors played seven-year-old children.
There was a wonderful little scene in which Pete's principal victim, Willie (Colin Welland), hit upon a ruse to discomfit the bully by spinning a tale that the apple he was eating might be poisoned. As Pete began to half-believe him, and lose his self-assurance, Willie scuffed casually along a fallen tree-trunk that first put him on a level with the taller Pete, then look down on him - a brilliant stroke of highlighting by director Brian Gibson.
Then came Private Schulz (BBC, 1981), a bizarre wartime comedy derived by Jack Pulman from an actual, but unrealised, Nazi plot to flood Britain with forged five-pound notes, thereby wrecking the economy. Schulz was the minor fraudster who was released from prison and parachuted into Britain to carry out the scheme. Elphick delivered a funny, sly and stoical performance, while staying firmly in character.
Elphick was born and brought up in the Sussex town of Chichester. According to his mother, he had hankered to be an actor since the age of 10, but, on leaving school at 15, the nearest he could get to the stage was an electrician's apprenticeship at the local theatre.
Laurence Olivier, who was then running the Chichester festival before launching the National Theatre in 1963, encouraged him to try for drama school. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Bit-parts in films and established television shows offered Elphick most of his initial earnings. The first series to give him prominence was Arthur Hopcraft's The Nearly Man (Granada, 1974), set in the world of flagging socialist politics. In John Finch's This Year, Next Year (Granada, 1977), about a jaded townie (Ronald Hines) trying to regain the peace of the Yorkshire Dales, Elphick was the brother who had never left that idyllic region. Three Up, Three Down (BBC, 1985-89) was a foray into mild situation comedy.
After the prolonged success of Boon came, ominously, the Central TV series Harry (1993) - ominously because its journalist hero had a drink problem, and, in real life, Elphick was in the same plight. He had first sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous in 1990, and though by 1993 he reckoned that he had the demon under control, he lost it again when his much-loved partner of 30-odd years, Julia Alexander, became ill with cancer and died in 1996.
His last prominent television role was in the BBC's EastEnders in 1985, playing the evil Harry Slater (not to be confused with the journalist Harry Salter, of Harry).
He had a quiet but impressive presence.
He is survived by his mother and his daughter, Kate.
Michael John Elphick: born September 19th, 1946; died September 8th, 2002