Character actor best known for his role in The Italian Job
The distinctive character actor John Clive, who has died aged 79, will be best remembered by cinemagoers for his appearances in a string of films that gained cult status. In The Italian Job (1969), the British-flag-flying yarn about a daring heist in Turin using Minis as getaway cars, Clive was the garage manager gleefully receiving a wad of banknotes from the released convict Michael Caine as payment for storing his Aston Martin DB4 convertible. The scene was said to have been ad-libbed between the two actors, with Caine putting his enforced absence down to tiger shoots in India. "You must have shot an awful lot of tigers, sir," said Clive as he counted the notes enthusiastically. "Yes, I used a machine gun," retorted Caine.
Two years later, Clive was the tormentor forcing Malcolm McDowell's psychotic teenager into licking his boot while undergoing corrective treatment in Stanley Kubrick's stunning but disturbing adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange. In the 1968 animated Beatles feature Yellow Submarine, Clive provided the voice of John Lennon. Although the Fab Four made a brief live-action cameo appearance at the end, they had been unwilling to provide the voices for the cartoon characters themselves, so actors were sought. However, the film's producers went to great lengths not to publicise this fact. When Clive and his fellow voice artists received no invitations to the premiere, he threatened to take the story to the press. The studio relented and Clive recalled: "We came out and thought, 'None of these people know it's us.'"
Clive contributed to another British institution when he appeared in two Carry On films. He played the first openly gay character in the series in Carry On Abroad (1972), freezing along with the rest of the cast as he wore a T-shirt and swimming trunks on a Pinewood Studios lot doubling as a Spanish resort. In Carry On Dick (1974), he was a tailor. His scene as a court dandy in Carry On Henry (1971) ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Shortly afterwards, Clive made a brief appearance in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), as the colourfully dressed maître d' leading Peter Sellers's Inspector Clouseau to his table in a Soho club. In more sober attire, Clive was the French president's aide in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978).
After writing the million-selling historical novel KG 200 (1977) with JD Gilman (the pen-name of Douglas Orgill and Jack Fishman), about a secret second world war Luftwaffe unit, Clive had further success as an author. His other books included The Last Liberator (1980), Barossa (1982), Broken Wings (1983), ARK (with Nicolas Head, 1986) and The Lions' Cage (1987).
He was born Clive John Frederick Hambley in London. His family moved to Liverpool while he was a child and he was evacuated to Wales during the second world war. On leaving school aged 14, he worked as a page at the Shakespeare theatre, Liverpool. He auditioned for a children's show there and was given a singing role, as well as assisting the resident comic in sketches. At the age of 15, he landed the title role in The Winslow Boy. After national service in the RAF, he performed in summer shows, then revues at the Poor Millionaire theatre club, London. Having previously acted as Clive Kendall, he juggled his forenames to adopt the professional name John Clive.
He made his television debut in the BBC Wednesday Play production Wear a Very Big Hat (1965), directed by Ken Loach, and was seen regularly in dramas and comedy. He was a garden gnome in the writer Jimmy Perry's The Gnomes of Dulwich (1969), Cyfarthfa in a six-part adaptation of How Green Was My Valley (1975-76), Hinks in The History of Mr Polly (1980), and PC Emlyn Harris, one of the police officers coping with the arrival of a family of petty crooks on their patch, in The Nesbitts are Coming (1980). He also played the eccentric professor of the title in the children's series Robert's Robots (1973-74).
Clive is survived by his second wife, the actor Bryony Elliott, whom he married in 2001, and Alexander and Hannah, the two children from his marriage to Carole Ann White, which ended in divorce.
• John Clive (Clive John Frederick Hambley), actor and writer, born 6 January 1933; died 14 October 2012