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Resuming his celebration of mid-20th century British film, the columnist and historian Simon Heffer turns his gaze on five hugely popular comic actors.

Alastair Sim is perhaps best remembered for a definitive interpretation of Scrooge, but Simon Heffer also recalls the run of classic comedies in which he perfected his role as a slightly ambivalent, often incompetent and occasionally threatening presence: The Happiest Days of Your Life, Laughter in Paradise, Captain Boycott and An Inspector Calls.

He concludes by revealing the little-known story of how Sim came to play the main role - or, rather, roles - in a film which has become a landmark of British cinema - The Belles of St Trinian's.

The inestimable Margaret Rutherford had been marked down to play the headmistress, Miss Fritton, but when Rutherford turned out to be unavailable, Alastair Sim offered to take on both his male part and the role of Miss Fritton, granting him the glorious lines: "In other schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world that has to be prepared."

Producer : Beaty Rubens.