Leslie Phillips ✝

Leslie Samuel Phillips CBE (20 April 1924 – 7 November 2022) was an English actor, director, producer and author. He achieved prominence in the 1950s, playing smooth, upper-class comic roles utilising his "Ding dong" and "Hello" catchphrases. He appeared in the Carry On and Doctor in the House film series as well as the long-running BBC radio comedy series The Navy Lark. In his later career, Phillips took on dramatic parts including a BAFTA-nominated role alongside Peter O'Toole in Venus (2006). He provided the voice of the Sorting Hat in several of the Harry Potter films. Leslie Samuel Phillips was born in Tottenham on 20 April 1924, the third child of Cecelia Margaret (née Newlove) and Frederick Samuel Phillips, who worked at Glover and Main, manufacturers of cookers in Edmonton. Phillips described his street as "beyond the sonic reach of the Bow Bells but within the general footprint of cockneydom." In 1931, the family moved to Chingford, where Phillips attended Larkswood Primary School. Consequently, Phillips has described himself as both a cockney and an Essex boy. In 1935, his father died at 44, having suffered from a weak heart and oedema brought on by the "filthy, sulphurous" air of the factory. After his father's death, Phillips was sent to the Italia Conti Academy at his mother's insistence. There, he attended drama, dance and notably elocution to lose his cockney accent; at the time, a regional accent was considered an impediment to an aspiring actor. Phillips took time to refine his Received Pronunciation accent, and later declared that "the biggest elocution lessons came from mixing with people who sounded right, people in theatrical circles and in the officers' mess during the war." He left school at 14 in 1938.