After Dinner Speakers: Leslie Phillips, Senator George Mitchell, Six by Seven

Despite his long experience, Phillips was in his early thirties before leading roles came his way. Born in London, he studied for the stage at the famous Italia Conti School and was in several films and plays as a child before his first adult West End performance was rapidly followed by four years' war service with the Durham Light Infantry. Returning to stage and films, he began to get leading roles from the early 1950s. Phillips began making inroads into films from 1955, and his foxy charm was seen to good effect in Brothers in Law (1957), The Smallest Show on Earth (1957) and The Man Who Liked Funerals (1959), in which he got his first star role as a man who blackmailed the bereaved in a good cause. He became well-known for appearing in the ‘Doctor' films, and a series of fast-moving comedies that teamed Phillips with Scots comedian and impressionist Stanley Baxter. These began with the prisoner-of-war caper Very Important Person (1961), and continued with Crooks Anonymous (1962), The Fast Lady (1962) and Father Came Too (1963), about a disastrous honeymoon. Within the space of five years, Phillips had made 18 starring comedies but the output of comedy from British studios had suddenly become quite restricted during the 1960’s, however, and, after making Doctor in Clover (1966), Phillips made a disastrous career switch by starring in Maroc 7 (1967), a woeful spy thriller. He did better on television, especially with Our Man at St Mark's, and came back to films in the late 1980s in character roles.