Ian Lavender death: Dad’s Army Private Pike actor, dies aged 77

Ian Lavender, who played Private Frank Pike in BBC sitcom Dad’s Army, has died aged 77.

The actor. who died on Friday (2 February), was cast in the show in 1969, when he was just 22, and played the role for 10 years. His cause of death is yet to be disclosed.

Lavender’s foolish Pike was the youngest member of the platoon depicted in the sitcom, and the series made him a household name in the UK. Just years before, he was training at the Bristol Old Vic.

Over the decades, he would often appear at Dad’s Army fan conventions and reunions alongside his fellow cast members. In 2016, he made a cameo appearance as Brigadier Pritchard in the film version of the sitcom, which starred Toby Jones, Bill Nighy and Tom Courtenay.

Lavender was the last surviving star of the British sitcom following the death of Frank Williams, who played Reverend Timothy Farthing, in 2022.

He also appeared in several other sitcoms, namely Yes Minister, Keeping Up Appearances and Goodnight Sweetheart in the 1980s.

Lavender joined the cast of EastEnders in 2001, playing Derek Harkinson, the best friend of Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard). He left the series in 2005 and returned briefly in 2016.

Ian Lavender as the foolish Pike in ‘Dad’s Army’ (Michael Fresco/Shutterstock)

As well as screen credits, Lavender performed on stage numerous times throughout his career, appearing alongside Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman in a production of The Merchant of Venice in the early 1970s.

He also played Monsignor Howard in the West End theatre production of Sister Act, which first launched at the London Palladium in 2009, and starred as the Narrator in a touring production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In 2013, he led a production of of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado in three performances, which occurred in London, Birmingham and Manchester, and made his Edinburgh Fringe debut that same year, in a stage adaptation of 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.

The actor had some tough bouts with sickness throughout his life. In 1993, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, which was operated on successfully, and he also survived a heart attack in 2004.

In 2017, while filming Channel 5 series A Celebrity Taste of Italy alongside Rula Lenska, Johnny Ball, Judith Chalmers and Diana Moran, Lavender contracted sepsis.

Ian Lavender as Monsignor Howard in ‘Sister Act’ at the London Palladium (Alan Davidson/Shutterstock)

Lavender was married twice – to actor Suzanne Kerchiss, and then Miki Hardy, whom he wed six days after his cancer diagnosis. At the time, he said: “We had been living together for 16 years and it was something I should have done a long time before, these things change you, they help you to see what is important in life.”