Larry Lamb owes his entire career to a stroke of luck.

He tells Metro: ‘I was leaving one job, and somebody had told me about auditions going on for a local theatre company. I was going to do it, and I wasn’t going to do it. I took someone out for lunch and said, “I’ll walk you back to your car.” Turned out he’d parked his car outside the theatre where the auditions were going on.

‘As I said goodbye, I thought to myself, “What are you going to do?” So I ran down the road to where I knew there was a phone box, and phoned the theatre just to see — and they said, “Can you get here right now? Somebody’s dropped out.”’

The rest is history. From there, Lamb carved out a unique 50-year career. In the last two decades alone, he’s played both one of the most hated and most loved men on British t

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