Scotsman Obituaries: Kenneth Cope, British actor who became best known as a ghost in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

At 93 Cope was one of the last surviving stars of the Carry On movies and a regular on Coronation Street in the early 1960s, playing Minnie Caldwell’s lodger Jed Stone. He was not meant to be a recurring character, but he proved so popular that the writers created new storylines for him.

Cope left Corrie in 1966 when his character went to prison, but returned in 2008 after a gap of more than 40 years. In one episode he was strangled and left for dead, but he survived the attack.

Seven years earlier Cope was told in real life that he was dying. After returning to Corrie he revealed in an interview with the News of the World that he had been incorrectly diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare and particularly lethal cancer normally linked to exposure to asbestos.

But it turned out he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He claimed his GP was informed that there had been a misdiagnosis, but never passed on the information. “For six years I lived under a false death sentence,” he said. “When I found out the truth I was shocked, angry and elated.”

The son of an engineer, Kenneth Charles Cope was born in Liverpool in 1931 and he pursued an acting career from an early age. He left school at 15, spent years in provincial theatre and impressed TV producers with a list of credits for shows he had supposedly done in Canada, though he had never even been there. This was before Google and IMDb, of course.

By the late 1950s he was turning up fairly regularly in small roles in films and on TV, appearing with Roger Moore in Ivanhoe and playing no fewer than five different roles in five years on Dixon of Dock Green.

He first appeared as Jed Stone in Coronation Street in 1961, just a few months after the series began. Jed was a former Borstal inmate who moved in with Minnie Caldwell. While shooting one scene in which he has an argument with the formidable Ena Sharples (Violet Carson), Cope apparently thought the cameras had stopped rolling and finished off by saying to Ena “Give us a kiss”. The line was kept in and Jed was developed as an amusing scallywag, a counter to some of the more serious characters. His trademark was a flat cap, which he wore even in bed.

Jed did odd jobs and pursued various dodgy business schemes. He also dated factory worker Jean Stark, played by Renny Lister, but the romance was shortlived as her parents disapproved. Real life mirrored art as Cope dated Lister and their romance proved much longer lasting – they married in 1961 and were still together 63 years later.

Jed was written out when he went to prison in 1966. By that time Cope was enjoying success as a writer. He was one of the regular writers for the landmark satirical show That Was The Week That Was and he scripted episodes for several sitcoms in the 1960s and 1970s, including a couple of episodes for Turn Out the Lights, a short-lived comic Coronation Street spin-off with Arthur Lowe reprising his turn as Leonard Swindley.

As an actor Cope’s next big role was as Marty Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). It was to provide a quirky spin on private detective pairings, with one of them a ghost.

A great joker off screen as well as on, Cope provided the perfect contrast with Mike Pratt, who played Randall and was the only character who could see or hear Hopkirk. One of the best jokes was that Hopkirk always seemed quite chipper, and Randall looked like the one who had just discovered he was dead.

Cope was always immaculately turned out in a white suit. There were five expensive silk suits from Savile Row and he had to take them off immediately after finishing a scene. He also wore a wig and apparently in early episodes had it the wrong way round. “I looked like the middle one of the Three Stooges,” he said.

Twenty-six episodes were filmed on a punishing 14-month schedule. The show was a big hit with the British public and sold to around 35 countries – Cope joked about getting royalty cheques from Tahiti for 43p. In the US it was shown as My Partner the Ghost, supposedly because too many Americans did not know what “deceased” meant.

The show remained popular when repeated and on video and DVD and was revived in the 2000s with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

Cope had appeared in a small role in Carry on Jack in 1963, but had starring roles in two films in the series in the early 1970s. In Carry on at Your Convenience he was the trade union official Vic Spanner, who wants everyone out on strike, but seemingly abandons his principles at the sight of a sexy new colleague, closing the film with the line “Carry on working”. It was a rare Carry On miss.

He played Sid James’s son in Carry on Matron, dressing up as a nurse to check out a hospital that they intend to rob of contraceptive pills. He is pursued by Terry Scott’s sex-mad doctor, and by Barbara Windsor’s nurse after she discovers he is actually a man.

Cope and his wife had three children, Nick and Mark, who were members of the rock group the Candyskins, and Martha, who also became an actress. While continuing to act and write, Cope and his wife also opened a restaurant in Oxfordshire called Martha’s Kitchen.

Cope featured in the 1981 Doctor Who story Warriors’ Gate, starred in Bootle Saddles, a short-lived sitcom about a failing cowboy theme park, and played Ray Hilton in over 100 episodes of Brookside in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2008 he returned to Coronation Street, playing the same character he played in the 1960s, this time as a pensioner. Cope is survived by his wife and their three children.

Obituaries

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