Michael Coveney: 'Donald Sinden was one of the greatest comic actors of the last century'

Donald Sinden, who has died aged 90, was a mobile library of theatrical antiquity and one of the greatest comic actors of the last century.

His heroes were David Garrick, Oscar Wilde (whom he played on stage), Henry Irving and Sir John Martin Harvey rather than Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson: he was an incorrigible, fruity-voiced, florid and totally outrageous throwback, as brilliant in Ray Cooney as he was in Shakespeare.

The last time I saw him was several years ago in St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, the actors’ church, his natural habitat, in a way, and a short stone’s throw from his other nesting home, the Garrick Club. He was preparing for a concert later in the evening and I had popped in to buy my usual supply of charity Christmas cards; I took the opportunity of looking round a few of the plaques that you never have time to study during memorial services.

Donald sprung to his feet and became my unofficial guide. He had a story for every plaque and every casket. I remarked how very strange and elongated was Donald Wolfit’s dedication; "As were most of his performances, dear boy," was the inevitable riposte.

He agreed with Garrick that tragedy was easier to play than comedy. He wasn’t the greatest King Lear or Othello at the RSC, but he was surely their best ever Malvolio and Benedick, playing both roles opposite Judi Dench (as Viola and Beatrice), both productions directed by John Barton.

No-one in modern times has equalled his RSC Lord Foppington in John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse, either, a riot of frills and frippery with a livid over-rouged make-up with beauty spots modelled on Danny La Rue, a galleon in full sail of a performance, reproduced on a slightly reduced scale in his Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart, in Nicholas Hytner‘s sumptuous 1985 revival of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

An Old Vic stalwart, a Rank contract artist (he appeared in The Cruel Sea, with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner in Mogambo, and a couple of "Doctor" movies in the 1950s), an RSC associate, a television sitcom star (notably in Two’s Company as Elaine Stritch’s butler in the 1970s), a founder member of Ray Cooney’s Theatre of Comedy; Sinden did the lot, and never flagged, or stopped reeling out the anecdotes, until illness overtook him finally a couple of years ago.