Mike Berry, who has died aged 82, became a familiar figure in British living rooms thanks to his role as Mr Spooner, a junior sales assistant, in the innuendo-packed BBC TV sitcom Are You Being Served? He featured in the last three of the show’s 10 series, from 1981 until 1985.
But before that, Berry had been a pop star who briefly earned the nickname of “the British Buddy Holly”, thanks to his song A Tribute to Buddy Holly. It was Berry’s first hit, reaching No 24 on the UK chart in November 1961, even though the BBC had banned this ode to Holly, who died in a plane crash in 1959, for being “morbid”.
