played Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol. This was adapted for radio the same year, and appeared on Radio 2 on Christmas Eve. Brambell's booming baritone voice surprised many listeners: he played the role straight, true to the Dickens original, and not in the stereotype Albert Steptoe character. In 1971, he starred in the premiere of Eric Chappell's play, The Banana Box, in which he played Rooksby. This part was later renamed Rigsby for the television adaptation called Rising Damp, with Leonard Rossiter replacing Brambell in the role. Brambell also played Bert Thomson, an Irish widower, in the film Holiday on the Buses; the character in question started a close friendship with Stan Butler's mother, Mabel. Steptoe and Son and A Hard Day's Night It was this ability to play old men that led to his casting in his best remembered role as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father in Steptoe and Son, a man who – when the series began – was said to be in his sixties, even though Brambell was only aged 50 in 1962 (thirteen years older than Harry H. Corbett, who played his son Harold). The series began as a pilot on the BBC's Comedy Playhouse, and its success led to the commissioning of a full series. It ran from 1962 to 1974, including a five-year hiatus. A constant thread throughout the series was Albert being referred to by Harold as a "dirty old man"; for example, when he was eating pickled onions while taking a bath, and retrieving dropped onions from the bathwater. There were also two feature film spin-offs, a stage show and an American incarnation titled Sanford and Son, some episodes of which were almost exact remakes of the original British scripts. The success of Steptoe and Son made Brambell a high-profile figure on British television, and earned him the supporting role of Paul McCartney's grandfather in the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964). A running joke is made throughout the film of his character being "a very clean old man", in contrast to his being referred to as a "dirty old man" in Steptoe and Son. In real life, he was indeed nothing like his Steptoe persona, being dapper and well-spoken. He notably spoke with a distinct received pronunciation accent, in strong contrast to both his Steptoe cockney accent, and his native Irish accent which he