Trevor Bannister’s precise comic timing gives the cheeky junior salesman his place among grander personalities. We enjoy his Mr Lucas in Are You Being Served?, though affection for the cast sometimes has to cover for the writing.
Fi1m perspective
In Are You Being Served? (1972), Mr Lucas is low in the department-store hierarchy and disinclined to be impressed by it. Trevor Bannister makes that cheek useful: the junior salesman’s wisecracks give the stuffier company someone to contend with. His timing matters, but so does his ability to work among actors with equally firm claims on our attention. We rate him as a good ensemble comedian, even when the programme leaves its cast to compensate for a worn joke.
His television breakthrough was Heavy Breathing in The Dustbinmen (1969), the part that led to Are You Being Served?. The department-store comedy was originally conceived as a vehicle for Bannister, then became an ensemble programme in which his role diminished. That change need not count against him. He helps make a crowded staff worth watching, and the programme benefits from having several people who can plausibly consider themselves the most important person present.
Mollie Sugden’s Mrs Slocombe and Wendy Richard’s Miss Brahms contribute to that effect, as does Arthur Brough’s Mr Grainger. We warmed to this company because their competing claims to importance made them feel like colleagues rather than assistants to a star. Bannister’s rebellious junior has a clear place among them. The womanising wisecracker is a limited sort of part, however, and precise delivery cannot make every old joke worth another hearing.
His stage work included farce and decades as a pantomime dame, useful context for the attention to timing and to fellow performers. Stage commitments took him away from Mr Lucas after seven series. His later recurring work as golf captain Toby Mulberry Smith in Last of the Summer Wine, from 2001 to 2010, put him in another long-running comic company. Start with a half-hour of Mr Lucas; there is no obligation to forgive every joke.
Biography
Trevor Gordon Bannister (14 August 1934 – 14 April 2011) was an English actor. He was best known for playing the junior salesman Mr Lucas in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? (1972–1979) and Toby Mulberry Smith in Last of the Summer Wine (from 2001 until the series ended in 2010).
Bannister trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and began his career in repertory theatre. Early television roles included appearances in The Avengers (1961), The Saint (1962) and Steptoe and Son (1972). He also starred as Heavy Breathing in The Dustbinmen (1969–1970) and later appeared in Wyatt's Watchdogs (1988), Keeping Up Appearances and New Tricks (2011). His final screen role was in the latter series.
