to his later reputation in sitcom. He appeared in television dramas such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (as four characters in episodes between 1957 and 1960) and Police Surgeon (1960). He also worked and studied Stanislavski's system at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, London. In 1962, scriptwriters Galton and Simpson, who had been successful with Hancock's Half Hour, invited Corbett to appear in "The Offer", an episode of the BBC's anthology series of one-off comedy plays, Comedy Playhouse, written by Galton and Simpson. He played Harold Steptoe, a rag-and-bone man who lives with his irascible widower father, Albert (Wilfrid Brambell) in a dilapidated house attached to their junkyard and stable for their cart horse, Hercules. At the time, Corbett was working at the Bristol Old Vic, where he appeared as Macbeth. The programme was a success and a full series followed, continuing, with breaks, until 1974, when the Christmas special became the final episode. Although the popularity of Steptoe and Son made Corbett a star, it damaged his serious acting career, as he became irreversibly associated with Steptoe in the public eye. As a result, severe typecasting forced him to come back to the role of Harold Steptoe over and over. Before the series began, Corbett had played Shakespeare's Richard II to great acclaim; however, when he played Hamlet in 1970, he felt both critics and audiences alike were not taking him seriously and could only see him as Steptoe. Corbett found himself receiving offers only for bawdy comedies or loose parodies of Steptoe. Production of the sitcom was stressful in the last few years, as Brambell was an alcoholic, often ill-prepared for rehearsals and forgetting his lines and movements. A tour of a Steptoe and Son stage production in Australia in 1977 proved a disaster due to Brambell's drinking. The television episodes were remade for radio, often with the original cast; it is these that were made available on cassette and CD. After the series of Steptoe and Son had officially finished, Corbett and Brambell played the characters again on radio (in a newly written sketch to tie in with the Scottish team's participation in the 1978 World Cup), as well as in a television commercial for Kenco coffee. The two men reunited in January 1981 for one final performance as Steptoe and Son in a further commercial for Kenco. Other work Steptoe