of the Giants!, Walker recounts a story of being awarded a medal of the Sacred Order of the Golden Kris of Abu Dhabi by a Sheikh staying in a hotel on Park Lane, London who was very grateful for Walker's efforts fixing him "up with a bird". He is supposedly allergic to corned beef, and this is given as the reason why he has not been called up for the regular army, although it is generally assumed that he has found a way to dodge the rules. This allergy was exposed in the episode The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker, which has since been lost from the BBC's archives. He was conscripted, only to be discharged when it was found that corned beef fritters were the only rations left for the soldiers to eat. Walker's final appearance was in the episode Things That Go Bump in the Night, where the platoon spent the night in a mysterious house. In fact he is only seen in the location shots, filmed some time before the studio recording. Beck was ill for the recordings of both this episode and the next episode, The Recruit, in which Walker had "gone up to the smoke" (a slang term for London) to "do a deal". After Beck's death, Walker was never mentioned in the show again (though the character survived the war; the very first episode begins with a scene set in 1968, as Mainwaring—now an alderman—launches his "I'm Backing Britain" campaign, and Walker is seen as one of the town worthies present at the launch). In the radio adaptations of the series, Graham Stark stood in until Larry Martyn gave his portrayal of Walker for subsequent shows. John Bardon played Walker in the stage production in 1976. Scriptwriter Jimmy Perry originally intended to play the part himself, but was advised against it by his co-writer David Croft. Walker was based on a spiv character created and performed by British comedian and actor Arthur English (English was in the controversial episode "Absent Friends", and starred in Are You Being Served?). Dad's Army characters Fictional spivs Television characters introduced in 1968