Robb Wilton

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Robb Wilton, born Robert Wilton Smith (August 28, 1881–May 1, 1957) was an English comedian and comic actor who was famous for his filmed monologues in the 1930s and 1940s in which he played incompetent authority figures.

Wilton was born in Everton, Liverpool, and had a dry Lancashire accent which suited his comic persona as a procrastinating and work-shy impediment to the general public. He portrayed the human face of bureaucracy, for example as a policeman who shilly-shallies his way out of acting upon a reported murder by pursuing an absurdly contrarian line of questioning. Wilton, rubbing his face in a world-weary way, would fiddle with his props while his characters blithely and incompetently 'went about their work',

He has been acknowledged as an influence by fellow Lancashire comedians Ken Dodd and Les Dawson. The film historian Jeffrey Richards has cited him as a key influence for the TV sitcom Dad's Army (1968-1977); he made several monologues in the person of a layabout husband who wryly takes part in the Home Guard. His gentle, if pointed, manner of comedy is similar to the wistful adventures of the more famous Walmington-on-Sea platoon.

Wilton's most popular catchphrase, imitated by many a man of advanced years in a late-20th-century bar-room with the right-hand little finger-end nervously in and out of the mouth, was "The day war broke out...". Another frequently reconstructed Wilton monologue was the 'fire station sketch', in which a bumbling fire officer takes a call reporting the location of a fire, but is sidetracked into trying to remember where it is instead of taking the details of the conflagration ("Grimshaw St... no, don't tell me... oh, I could walk straight to it...").

He appeared in several films from 1934, generally in supporting comic roles. His last film appearance was in the Arthur Askey vehicle The Love Match in 1955.