Frank Williams, actor

Williams was a member of the General Synod and the role of a fastidious bachelor clergyman was one to which he was eminently suited.

Williams maintained a parallel career as a dame on the pantomime circuit and achieved modest success in regional theatre with his own series of murder mysteries. It was also there that, as Williams would recall in his autobiography, an unnamed master used to offer him tea and toast: “I would sit next to him on the sofa. In November 1992 he voted against the ordination of women. Williams subsequently attended Hendon County School, by which time he was already planning a career in the theatre. Religion and drama were the twin pillars of his life, even though, where acting was concerned, he continued to accept modest roles, so as to avoid more mundane forms of employment. Frank Williams would never capture the public imagination on quite such a scale again, though he had appeared in Monty Python’s Flying Circus as a clerk of the court. I don’t think he was a terribly good advert for the church.” The virtues of abstinence and generosity also tended to elude him: a recurring joke in Dad’s Army was that, in scenes on licensed premises, the vicar would attempt to order large whiskies at others’ expense. It was in the chapel there that Williams received First Holy Communion. Frank John Williams was born on July 2 1931 in Edgware. His father was a Welsh draper whose own name, William Williams, earned him the sobriquet “Twice”; his mother Alice encouraged her son’s attempts at staging reviews to support the war effort. The natural tone in his high-pitched, adenoidal voice was one of exasperation. Though he did not join Dad’s Army until the third of nine series, and usually had only a few lines, many classic episodes involved the vicar, typically enduring situations of trial and adversity.