As an actor, Pertwee appeared in many comedy roles, including four films in the Carry On series, and he became widely known for spending 18 years (1959–1977) playing Chief Petty Officer Pertwee (and three other roles) in the sitcom The Navy Lark on BBC Radio. On television, Pertwee starred as the third incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running British science fiction series Doctor Who (1970–1974), hosted the game show Whodunnit? (1974–1978), and played the title character in Worzel Gummidge (1979–1981 and 1987–1989). Towards the end of his life he maintained a close association with Doctor Who by appearing at many fan conventions related to the series and giving interviews. He also performed a one-man show called Who Is Jon Pertwee?
Born in Chelsea, London, and having French Huguenot ancestry (his surname was an Anglicisation of "Perthuis"; the origins of his surname being "de Perthuis de Laillevault", the family being Counts descended from Charlemagne), Jon was the son of screenwriter and actor Roland Pertwee and distant cousin of actor Bill Pertwee. Pertwee's mother, Avice Scholtz, separated from his father Roland when Pertwee was young. His father remarried, and his mother found a new partner, Louis Auguste De La Garde, with whom Pertwee did not build a relationship; she died in 1951, leaving Pertwee's older brother Michael as her executor. Avice's sister Daphne married Captain Philip Cecil Clowes and became the mother of Pertwee's cousin, the writer St John Legh Clowes (1907–1951). Actor Henry Ainley, a close friend of his father, was his godfather. Coincidentally, Ainley's son Anthony appeared as the Master – a renegade Time Lord who was The Doctor's greatest enemy – alongside Pertwee in the Doctor Who anniversary story The Five Doctors (1983).
Pertwee was educated at Frensham Heights School, an independent school in Rowledge, near Farnham in Surrey, at Sherborne School in Dorset, and at some other schools from which he was expelled. After school, he applied to the Central School of Speech & Drama, but was denied admittance because of his lisp. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), graduating in 1939. He was accused of writing graffiti about the tutors on the lavatory walls.

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