Deryck Guyler (
1914-
1999) was a British comedy
actor, best known for roles as an officious short-tempered middle-aged man in
sitcoms such as
Please, Sir[?] and
Sykes. He was born in
Cheshire and brought up in
Liverpool, and originally planned a career in the church. By the time the
Second World War broke out, he had already decided to go into professional acting, and
ENSA[?] gave him the opportunity to reach a wider audience. After the war, he became a regular on the immensely popular radio series,
It's That Man Again (
ITMA). His success continued into the 1960s when he starred in the gently satirical radio programme about life in the British civil service
The Men from the Ministry[?] with
Richard Murdoch.
His first television success came as one of Michael Bentine's sidekicks in the inventive and surreal BBC show It's a Square World (1960). Latterly, he appeared in numerous television light entertainment shows, in which he performed a novelty act playing the washboard. In 1983, he retired to Brisbane, Australia, where he lived until his death.