‘M’, and there are now Melvyn (aged nine), Martin (nearly five) and the four-month-old twins Meredith and Maxine. ... In the same way, because the Walls, like other couples married during the war, were eventually thrilled when they found a house with four walls of their own, they decided to call it just that, only Martin arrived and made it ‘Five Walls’." In a rare outing to the musical stage he played Hines in the original London production of The Pajama Game, which opened at the London Coliseum in October 1955 and ran for 588 performances. In that year he began an affair with Jennifer Chimes, the 1955 Miss Great Britain. He divorced his wife and married Jennifer in 1956. The relationship attracted widespread press condemnation. In 1957 Wall experienced mental health issues that affected his work. Jennifer and Max divorced in 1962. Re-emergence In 1966, he appeared as Père Ubu in Jarry's Ubu Roi, and in 1972 he toured with Mott the Hoople on their "Rock n' Roll Circus Tour", gaining a new audience. Wall re-emerged during the 1970s when producers and directors rediscovered his comic talents, along with the expressive power of his tragic clown face and the distinctive sad falling cadences of his voice. He secured television appearances and, having attracted Samuel Beckett's attention, he won parts in Waiting for Godot in 1979 and Krapp's Last Tape in 1984. His straight acting gained him this review in 1974: "Max Wall makes Olivier look like an amateur in The Entertainer at Greenwich Theatre...". He also appeared in Crossroads (as Walter Soper, 1982 to 1983), Coronation Street (as Harry Payne, 1978) and what was then Emmerdale Farm (as Arthur Braithwaite, 1978). He played ex-con Ernie Dodds in Minder in 1982, with George Cole. But the stage renaissance was offset by domestic sadness. His children were estranged from him and the taxman lost patience and declared him bankrupt. Later work Wall played one of the inventors in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and in 1977 he was seen as King Bruno the Questionable in Terry Gilliam's film Jabberwocky. In the 1970s and 80s, Wall occasionally performed a one-man stage show, Aspects of Max Wall, in which he recaptured the humour of old-time music hall theatre. On 1 April 1977, Wall's version of Ian Dury's song "England's Glory" (which featured in Dury's stage show Apples) was issued on Stiff