Don Estelle
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Don Estelle (May 22, 1933 - August 2, 2003) was born in Rochdale in Lancashire, and was a British actor and singer.
In the 1960s he had some cameo roles in Coronation Street and Dad's Army.
He became well known for playing the part of Gunner 'Lofty' Sugden in the 1970s British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The character was dubbed with the ironic nickname of "Lofty" on account of Don Estelle's small stature. He had a good tenor voice and as a spin-off from the series, Estelle and his co-star, Windsor Davies had a number one hit in the UK in 1975 with a semi-comic version of Whispering Grass. He also acted in the films Not Now Comrade, Private Function (1984) and Santa Claus: The Movie (1984).
In the first series of The League of Gentlemen he made brief appearances in two episodes as Little Don, keeper of the Roundabout Zoo (i.e., a zoo on the island of a roundabout intersection).
In his privately published autobiography Sing Lofty: Thoughts Of A Gemini, Estelle was extremely bitter about the state of modern-day entertainment, attacking those who refused to repeat It Ain't Half Hot Mum as "tight-crutched, white-trousered morons".
It was later reported that he was appearing at shopping malls, selling privately made recordings of him singing old standards.[citation needed]
In 2001, he appeared in one episode of Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting as a character of the same name who was in charge of the "Cockney Bollocks Mafia".
