English actor and director Christopher Hewett was BOTD in 1921. Born in Worthing, Sussex, his father was an Army officer and his mother an aspiring actress. He was educated in London and made his acting debut aged seven in a Dublin stage production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At age, 16 he joined the Royal Air Force, serving during World War Two until 1940. He spent two years in repertory theatre at the Oxford Playhouse, before appearing in West End productions of the musicals The Merry Widow and Kiss Me Kate. In the early 1950s, he appeared in TV comedy The Lighter Side with Tony Hancock, and in two Ealing Studio comedy films, Pool of London and The Lavender Hill Mob, the latter starring Alec Guinness. In 1954, he moved to New York, appearing in the original Broadway production of hit musical My Fair Lady starring Julie Andrews. He spent the next two decades in American theatre, appearing in Broadway musicals First Impressions, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Music Is and Kean, and directing the 1960 revue From A to Z. He was well-cast as camp theatre director Roger DeBris in Mel Brooks’ 1967 comedy film The Producers. In 1983, he appeared as an impeccably English butler in the final season of TV series Fantasy Island. Its success led to his best-known role in Mr Belvedere, a sitcom about an imperious butler who works for a middle-class American family. The show’s saccharine morality and G-rated comedy proved highly popular in Reagan-era America, running for six seasons. Largely retired by 1990, Hewett’s last on-screen role was a cameo in the sitcom Ned and Stacey. He never married or had children, and was described politely in his obituaries as “a lifelong bachelor”. A devout Catholic, he made recorded Bible readings for a religious record label, and served as a deacon in his local Catholic church in (super-gay) West Hollywood. He died in 2001 aged 80.