Sid James, the crimper who became Carry On’s king

For three decades in postwar Britain, his lascivious antics and dodgy wheezes brought smiles to the faces of millions, making him one of the country's best-loved, most prolific comic actors.

From the phenomenally successful radio show Hancock's Half Hour to the long-running Seventies TV sitcom Bless This House, Sid James was a permanent fixture in British entertainment.

His popularity was further enhanced by the Carry On film series, which was the ideal vehicle for his lewd, wise-cracking persona. Though some performers such as Kenneth Williams and Joan Sims appeared in more Carry On films than he did Sid James was the biggest star of the series, his very name synonymous with its ribald humour.

This coming week sees the centenary of the birth of Sid James and so it is appropriate to recognise the rare talent that made him into a legend.

He was never a comedian in the sense that he could do stand-up routines. Gerald Thomas, the director of the Carry On films, once said: "Sid was hopeless without a script. Ask him to ad-lib and he would be lost." But James was undoubtedly a unique comic actor with an innate gift for timing, a charismatic screen presence and an ability to inhabit a character.

"A magic had been born among the team," recalled his fellow actor Leslie Phillips on James's first Carry On appearance. In fact, the morose alcoholic Tony Hancock forced Sid James out of his own show in 1959 because he feared that the brilliance of James was stealing his limelight.

A key ingredient of James's appeal was his apparent authenticity.

He was all too believable because he usually seemed to be playing himself. It is telling that, in recognition of this trait, so many of his comic roles were named Sid - like the imperial governor Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond in Carry On Up The Khyber. Certainly there were large elements of his personality that he transposed to the screen, including the rampant libido, the easy charm and the financial unreliability.

But in real life Sid James was a much darker, more complex figure than the skirt-chasing rascals and scheming dodgers that he portrayed in films or on television.

Deeply insecure, driven by obsessive passions, he was a man who went to self-destructive extremes.

As an actor he was a workaholic perfectionist, demanding complete professionalism in rehearsals and rarely turning down any job, even at the height of his fame. "I don't refuse any part, providing I can do something with it and the lolly's good," he told the Daily Express in 1960. The stress of his workload was one of the reasons he suffered from heart trouble before his premature death, aged 62, in 1976.

James had to keep going because he had a chronic gambling habit which gnawed away at his earnings. Throughout his career he wasted a fortune at the bookies, so much so that his third and final wife Valerie had to take charge of his finances and give him an allowance. "Gambling was like breathing to Sid," she once said.

His endless troubles with cash fed his epic meanness, an unattractive characteristic that stood in graphic contrast to his jovial image. "He made Scrooge look like a public benefactor," said one of his agents.

Even more extreme was his fixation with sex. Having lost his virginity at the age of 17, James revelled in spectacular promiscuity. Despite his craggy face, which the effete Kenneth Williams said was "terribly battered and very unattractive", he possessed an almost animal sexual magnetism which he exploited to the full, unrestrained by any moral boundaries in his own marriages or those of his targets.

Even his own agent's wife was not free from his advances. At one point the Carry On actress Hattie Jacques was so appalled by his behaviour that she gave him a stern lecture, only to be met with the response from James: "God, you're sexy when you're angry."

Though at times his seduction technique was based on old-fashioned chivalry there were less edifying aspects to his conduct. Fertile as well as profligate, he fathered several children outside his three marriages but took no responsibility for them. In fact when one of his mistresses told him she was pregnant he "struck her quite brutally", according to James's excellent biographer Cliff Goodwin, who recorded that James also hit his first wife, known as "Toots" after she became pregnant.

Two of his numerous affairs had an even more macabre side. One, with Eileen Gibson, occurred during his second marriage. When James tried to finish it he found himself subjected to the kind of enraged, possessive jealousy that he occasionally inflicted on others. He was free from her threatening attentions only when in October 1947 she suddenly died aboard a cruise liner while in the throes of passion with the ship's deck steward, who was eventually imprisoned for her murder.

During the investigation James was questioned by the police over his relationship with her. "She was a nymphomaniac who refused to let go," he told them. Fortunately his name never came up during the subsequent trial.

The other affair, in the Seventies with the Carry On actress Barbara Windsor, was even more damaging. Not only was there some danger in this liaison, since her husband at the time was the notorious criminal Ronnie Knight who allegedly embedded an axe in the floor of James's Buckinghamshire home as a warning against the continuance of the fling, but also James - his health already vulnerable - was left exhausted by the tempest of his all-consuming, paranoid devotion to Barbara.

"I'm the eternal dirty old man," James once frankly admitted. His epic womanising, just like his catchphrase "Cor blimey", was an integral part of his image as a cockney rebel. Yet the supreme irony of Sid James's career was that he was not an Englishman at all, never mind a Londoner.

He was actually born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on May 8, 1913. By a coincidental quirk, the birthplace was in a relative's house on Hancock Street. Showbusiness was in his blood. Both his parents were vaudeville comedians, and as an infant Sid occasionally appeared on stage as part of their act. But they also travelled overseas extensively, which meant that young Sid was sively, which meant that young Sid was often left in the care of relatives, something that fed his insecurity and wilfulness as a child.

Showing no interest in academic study, he left school at the first opportunity and took on various menial jobs including spells as a docker and a diamond sorter. But then he found a profession that gave him far more satisfaction: as a hairdresser.

It might seem bizarre that Sid James, such an archetypal masculine figure, should have enjoyed his first professional success with the curling tongs. But he had a natural skill for hair styling and was in high demand by the women of Johannesburg. At one stage he had his own salon employing a staff of 30. More importantly, the trade provided him with a rich source of attractive female company, of which he did not hesitate to take full advantage.

Despite his tonsorial and erotic success, Sid James was gripped in the late Thirties by profound frustration which led to heavy drinking and bar-room brawling. Indeed, his battered appearance was the result, not of time in the professional boxing ring as he later claimed, but of regular drunken fights.

This frustration largely stemmed from his desire to be an actor rather than a hairdresser. But it was the outbreak of war that really gave him the chance to fulfil his ambition, as he became a popular entertainer for the troops in the South African army. Inspired by this experience, he emigrated in 1946 to England where he quickly won recognition for his talent. Within a year of his arrival he appeared in five films, and the offers of work never ceased after that.

But his punishing schedule combined with his turbulent private life exacted a heavy toll. For much of his later career he was in severe back pain after a piece of scenery fell on him, while he was emotionally shattered by the decision of Barbara Windsor to end their affair.

"When he lost Babs he lost the will to live," said his agent. It is no exaggeration to say that Sid James died of a broken heart, collapsing on stage during an appearance in a typically risque farce entitled The Mating Game at the Sunderland Empire in 1976.

In a reflection of his comedic stature, the audience at first roared with laughter when he fell, thinking this was part of his act. The mood changed only when the theatre manager came out to the front to explain that the problem was serious.

There are claims that, ever since then, the ghost of Sid James has haunted the Sunderland Empire. That other comic genius Les Dawson was said to be so shaken by an encounter with Sid's spirit in 1989 that he refused to return to the venue.

Whatever the truth about the ghost, Sid James's cheeky laugh will always be with us.