ACTOR Frank Williams, 80, is best known to television and radio audiences as the Reverend Timothy Farthing, who shared his church hall with the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon.

Speaking from his Edgware home, he recalled happy memories of Hendon County Grammar School: "While I was there the staff did a production of the play, Blithe Spirit, and I helped to do some of the stage management for that.

"Later, when we’d finished in the sixth form, we had various projects we were involved with and one of the things was producing a play. One performance for the school was called The Ghost Train. It was written by Arnold Ridley, who played Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army. It was really interesting to meet him later in life and be able to say: 'When I was at school I played the lead in one of your plays'."

He described his favourite subjects at Hendon County: "I’d think it’d have to be English. We would read plays, Shakespeare, obviously, and I remember doing some Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra. I do remember reading plays in class with Miss Munt. She was our English teacher. She inspired me in many ways."

Born in Hampstead in 1931, Frank was at boarding school in Edgware during the Second World War: "I can remember, at the beginning of the war, one or two bombs dropping in the Edgware area. But only one or two because it wasn’t a prime target but I think when bombs fell on Edgware or Hendon it was really by accident. I remember seeing a plane being shot down and the pilot coming down by parachute. I can remember seeing that, but that was really very early in the war, long, long before I went to senior school. I was still at junior school."

Living during the Second World War and playing a reverend in a Second World War comedy are very different experiences, as he explained: "Of course, Dad’s Army was set in a small seaside town which was very different from living in North London, but there were certainly things that really brought things back to me; namely the way in which everybody in the community sort of came together, was caring, looked after each other, and so on and so forth. I do have a great nostalgia for that, that period, and I think part of the success of Dad’s Army, is that other people had that type of nostalgia as well."

Frank's acting repertoire extended beyond Dad’s Army, including three Norman Wisdom films, and appearances in two Monty Python sketches.

Frank recalled: "The Monty Python crew were an extraordinary group of people and we had a lot of fun doing it. We had a fun, particularly in rehearsals. In a particular sketch I was in, they had the wives of all the people who made Monty Python. Many dressed up as men with a suit with moustaches stuck on, so it was a really fun programme to work on yes. They are great, great comedy people."

Hendon School certainly has an interesting history, much of which is unknown by many, but what is known is that Frank Williams, Reverend Timothy Farthing, is a great addition to its alumni.