Arthur Lowe on playing Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army

Arthur Lowe famously played Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army , but there’s surprisingly little from Arthur himself on playing the character.

So, we've pulled together what he did say on the classic character and also some stories from his co-stars. One we especially like is from Clive Dunn, aka Lance Corporal Jones, who recalled Arthur giving a hard time to the comedy's co-creator David Croft when he asked the star to take the script home to learn his lines. "Arthur replied: 'Certainly not! I'm not having rubbish like that in my house,'" laughed Clive.

In the same Terry Wogan interview, Bill Pertwee, who played Hodges, remembered: "One day he came in and he didn't know the words terribly well." Clive Dunn quickly interjected: "Only one episode!" Continuing Bill said: "David [Croft] said have you got your script, Arthur? 'No, I think I left it at home'. The next day David gave him six scripts and said: 'There's one for you to leave on the bus, one for you to leave on the toilet, one for you to leave in the rehearsal room... and one for you to do whatever you want to do with it.'"

Arthur Lowe on the quality of the Dad's Army scripts

But in reality, Arthur loved the scripts and was full of praise for them. In a BBC interview, he said moving on from being Mr Swindley in Coronation Street was easy due to the quality of the scripts.

"It wasn't all that difficult because of the standard of writing of the series. That's the be-all and end of all good series. If the writing is good you've got a very much better chance than if the writing's bad. And I've been in series where the writing has been very bad. And hence they haven't lasted.

"I think from the first script I read of Dad's Army it was obvious it was going to be good. And that one could make something from the character without trying too hard really. It was there, it was self-explanatory."

Arthur added: "There's a saying in the theatre that there's two ways of playing a role. One is to act it and the other is to learn the lines because if you learn the lines you don't need to act. The writing's so good if you just say the lines the rest will come."

Arthur also explained his theory on acting: "I believe the less personality an actor has of their own the better they're able to portray the character the job demands of you. I don't think you should be very clever for a start to be a good actor. I think you should be very intelligent, but once you start being clever forget it. It's not your job to be clever it's to interpret what the man has written. Just as a pianist's job is to interpret what his composer has written."

Why did Dad’s Army end?

Arthur Lowe spoke about why Dad's Army ended, saying: "People are still asking me when it’s coming back and when I say half of us are dead anyway and the other half are too old to jump over the fences anymore they look at you in surprise. TV people don't get old. They think you have some secret of immortality. That's the only reason we stopped, we lost three of our leading characters and we were all getting rather old. We stopped while the going’s still good."

Interestingly Arthur Lowe wasn't the first choice to play Captain Mainwaring. The part was originally offered to actor Thorley Walters and then Jon Pertwee — thankfully for sitcom history both turned it down and Lowe was cast. He delivered some of the most famous lines in comedy history including "You, Stupid Boy" and "Don't tell him, Pike."

Dad's Army co-writer Jimmy Perry once wrote in The Guardian about Arthur: "His great skill was his timing. It was faultless. He could get huge laughs with such simple lines as 'Just a moment,' 'how dare you,' and 'you stupid boy.'" Arthur Lowe died aged 66 in 1982.

You can watch Dad's Army now on ITVX .