Obituary: Joe Melia, actor

Born: 23 January, 1935, in London. Died: 20 October, 2012, in Stratford-upon-Avon, aged 77

Joe Melia was a very familiar, cheeky, happy face in British films and television from the 1960s to the 1990s, though there was often a hint of darker qualities in his characters.

He succeeded George Cole as Flash Harry in the St Trinian’s films, appeared on television with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and The Goodies, and sang the song Good-byee in Richard Atten­borough’s 1969 film of Oh! What a Lovely War.

He was also a very accomplished stage actor and starred in the world premiere production of Peter Nichols’s landmark play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in 1967. In the play a couple, who have a child with cerebral palsy, use humour to get them through their days. Melia said it was “like playing West End comedy and Ibsen at the same time”.

The play went to the London West End, with Melia continuing in his role of Bri, and to Broadway, with Albert Finney taking over. It was later filmed with Alan Bates and was revived last year at the Citz.

Melia won an Olivier award in 1982 for his performance in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Good, CP Taylor’s play about events leading up to the Holocaust.

He is possibly best-known for his comedy work, but he was at heart a very serious man, an expert not just on Shakespeare, but on a wide range of arts. He presented the BBC television arts programme Full House in the early 1970s.

Perhaps surprisingly for an actor whose most familiar characters, including Flash Harry, were full of confidence and more than a little swagger, Melia was a very private man.

He shied away from publicity and the celebrity circle, making his home in Stratford-upon-Avon.

He grew up in Leicester and in an interview with the Leicester Mercury in 1973 he said: “I’m only doing my job. I’d like to see a situation where celebrities get no more credit for doing their job than a chef would for cooking a fine meal.

“It would greatly disappoint me if people reading this article attached the slightest significance to my opinions, simply because I appear on television.”

He was born Giovanni Philip William Melia into an Italian immigrant family in Islington, London, in 1935, but spent much of his childhood in Leicester. An outstanding scholar, he went to Downing College, Cambridge, to read languages – he spoke eight, including Russian, and did his national service in the Intelligence Corps.

At Cambridge he joined the famous Footlights dramatic society, which was just beginning to make a name for itself with its revues. He got to know Peter Cook, one of the stars of the Footlights and co-creator of Beyond the Fringe, the revue that made such a huge impact at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960.

Regarded as one of the seminal shows in modern British comedy, Beyond the Fringe originally starred Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.

It was subsequently staged in the London West End and on Broadway, and Melia joined a new cast for the London show that also included Robin Ray.

By that time Melia had already appeared in the classic comedy film Too Many Crooks in which George Cole, Bernard Bresslaw, Sid James and Melia play inept crooks who plan to kidnap and ransom the daughter of millionaire Terry-Thomas.

They kidnap his wife by mistake and he does not want her back.

Melia was still at Cambridge when he was approached to appear in Too Many Crooks and his family was very nervous about his decision to pursue a career as an actor.

In the early 1960s he worked mainly in theatre, but in 1965 he had a small part in the Morecambe and Wise film The Intelligence Men and a co-starring role alongside Roy Kinnear in the short-lived private detective comedy series A Slight Case of…

The following year he was reunited with Peter Cook on the television sketch show Not Only… But Also, performing a gloriously pointless song about Alan-a-Dale, which consisted of virtually nothing but a huge amount of passion, some whistling and the endless repetition of the name Alan-a-Dale. It is now on Youtube.

Melia went on to appear in dozens of films and television shows, including The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (as Mr Prosser), Last of the Summer Wine, Minder, A Very Peculiar Practice, The Bill, Birds of a Feather and Love on a Branch Line.

He had a great sense of irony and a wonderful ability to take a seemingly happy, often comic, character and hint at deeper torments. They were talents he perhaps developed in the surreal world of revue and which he exploited in Oh! What a Lovely War.

But that combination of comedy and pathos was apparent throughout much of his career. It was a combination that reflected the world around him.

In a 1969 episode of the classic drama series Public Eye, entitled The Comedian’s Graveyard, he played a seedy comic whose career is on the slide. One online reviewer commented: “Melia clearly has comic talent but real depth as well and is utterly convincing.”

He was Flash Harry in The Wildcats of St Trinian’s in 1980. The role had originally been played by George Cole, and would later be dusted off by Russell Brand. He also presented Jackanory on several occasions.

During the 1980s he appeared in a string of RSC productions, enjoying great acclaim as the ill-fated Jewish character Maurice in the play Good. His best friend becomes a Nazi and he ends up in Auschwitz.

In recent times Melia had had heart problems. His wife Flora died in 2008 and he is survived by their two sons, Jonathan and Joseph.

BRIAN PENDREIGH