Colin Gordon

Colin Gordon (27 April 1911 – 4 October 1972) was a British actor born in Ceylon. He was educated at Marlborough College and Christ Church, Oxford. He made his first West End appearance in 1934 as the hind legs of a horse in a production of Toad of Toad Hall. From 1936 to 1939 he was a director with the Fred Melville Repertory Company in Brixton. He served in the army during the Second World War for six years. His performance in 1948 as Rupert Billings in The Happiest Days of Your Life won the Clarence Derwent award. Gordon had a long career in British cinema and television from the 1940s to the 1970s, often playing government officials. His films include The Pink Panther and Casino Royale (both with Peter Sellers, alongside whom he made five films). In the ITC series The Prisoner (1967) he portrayed Number Two twice, in "The General" and later in "A. B. and C.". Gordon was a regular in another ITC production, The Baron, playing civil servant Templeton-Green opposite Steve Forrest. He also played the host and occasional narrator of the 1969 London Weekend Television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain, which arose from a pre-Monty Python collaboration between Michael Palin and Terry Jones; and was the Airport Commandant in the 1967 Doctor Who story The Faceless Ones. He was also in Bachelor Father and made two notable guest appearances in Steptoe and Son, once in "The Holiday" and again in the 1972 episode "Live Now, P.A.Y.E Later" as a tax inspector whom Harold and Albert manage to get drunk when he calls with a query about the old man's income tax return. In 1961 he appeared as the Doctor in the "The Lift" episode of Hancock's Half Hour.