The actor Angus Lennie, who has died aged 84, found a new audience when he played the irascible, amorous motel chef Shughie McFee in the teatime soap opera Crossroads (1974-81). The role came after years of taking character parts on screen, most memorably in the 1963 prisoner-of-war film The Great Escape as Flying Officer Archibald Ives known as the Mole who is shot dead while scaling a German barbed-wire fence after the plot he has hatched with Steve McQueen's US Army Air Force captain is uncovered.
Lennie's appearance as a PR consultant in two 1972 episodes of Crossroads led Jack Barton, on being promoted from director to producer two years later, to create the role of Shughie for him. The actor joined when the ITV serial was at its height, watched by up to 18 million viewers, but panned by the critics for its wooden acting and wobbly sets.
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