For many British people of a certain age, Richard Wattis was the archetypal cog in the Establishment machine. When one imagined a Whitehall official, a Palace administrator, an Oxbridge college master or a board member of a blue-chip business, one pictured, more often than not, Richard Wattis - a man who belonged in a bowler hat.

It remains somewhat contentious as to how much this was the cause or the effect of his casting, but there was certainly an elective affinity, at least semiotically speaking, between the man and the roles he inhabited. With that balding head, those bespectacled owlish eyes, those thin pursing lips and that confident, controlled and discreetly fruity voice, Richard Wattis was more or less exactly what, and whom, one expected whenever one had cause to encounter someone billed in advance as 'an official'.

He epitomised the whirr of the wheels within wheels, the echo in the corridors of power, the clank of the iron cage, the unnamed source that spoke, as much a fixture in the traditional mise-en-scène of British authority as the dust-dimmed chandelier, the shiny black Bakelite telephone, the green-shaded banker's desk lamp, the gold-framed paintings, the crystal spirit decanters and the rows of leather-bound books. You could add him to the background in any of the old photos or footage of sober state events, from Chamberlain holding up his piece of paper to Charles muttering about his ink pot, and the picture would seem, if anything, even more plausible than before.

In countless British comedies, Wattis was the watermark of realism as far as any depiction of the powers-that-be was concerned. Whereas other actors were invited to play officials who would rather not be officials (such as Terry-Thomas, pining for playtime, or John Le Mesurier, craving peace and quiet), Wattis could be relied on to play officials who were quite content, thank you very much, to continue being officials.

He could, and did, play other kinds of roles, such as the creepy Nazi agent Theodore Feather in the 1953 crime comedy drama Park Plaza 605, but, even when his character was supposed to be administering dangerous threats, he could never quite avoid giving off the impression that he was merely querying the completion of a sub-section on a routine conveyancing form. Red tape was wrapped around him like an ambassadorial sash, a single splash of colour over what was otherwise a bland-looking éminence grise.

Think of him in the St. Trinian's movies, where he played civil servant Manton Bassett, the Deputy Director of Schools in the Ministry of Education; pin-striped, pale-faced and pill-popping, pacing around his smart and settled office, shaking his head at the very mention of yet more instances of rules being flouted ('You observe the abnormal size of the "T" File...') and doing his best to work on regardless ('My secretary just sends them routine letters and I sign them').

Think of him in Left, Right And Centre (1959), where he played the well-established Tory electoral agent Christopher 'HP' Harding-Pratt: sporting a rosette where his heart should be, he hovers over his candidate's shoulder, scowling and scheming his way through the ordeal of having to be exposed to so many unpredictable people ('This is warfare,' he drawls, advising his prospective MP to learn to look upon his constituency as a 'jungle' and send his opponents fleeing to the trees.)

Think of him in Carry On Spying (1963), where he played Cobley, the dutiful Secret Service assistant: regarding his adult environment as merely an extension of his old public school, he seemed primed only for those crises that promised to be as prosaic as possible (CHIEF: 'We've got something far more disastrous to worry about.' COBLEY: 'Oh, don't say they've forgotten your elevenses again, Chief?').

In all of these and the rest of his most memorable on-screen incarnations, he usually dresses the same, speaks the same and thinks the same, as though he's the same man, the same official, wandering from one movie to another as if they are merely different rooms in Britain's Byzantium bureaucratic system. Such sameness was not his failing; it was his strength. He helped capture comedically one of the key types of his time.

It was a type for which his upbringing had trained him. Born in 1912 at Hollies Drive, in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, Wattis (the son of a civil servant) came into the world within the very comfortable confines of upper middle-class England, being educated at two public schools (King Edward's and Bromsgrove) before becoming a trainee accountant in the family's electrical engineering firm - run by his uncle, the Conservative MP William Preston - to be groomed for a governing role.

There was one rogue element in his character, however, that drove him to resist assimilation deep into the Establishment. Always distinguished by his impish spirit, he sometimes danced on his desk rather than sat at it, and looked to movies instead of manuals to inspire his true vocation.

The actor Robert Donat was one of his early role models, and, once he had plucked up sufficient courage, Wattis sought him out backstage at a West End theatre. The star wasn't immediately encouraging when his young fan expressed an eagerness to follow in his footsteps - 'You've got the kind of face,' Donat opined, 'that's hard to cast' - but he did provide him with a way into the profession.

Donat had heard that the drama school attached to the Croydon Repertory Company was currently so short of male students that it was offering free training places. He thus advised Wattis to go there and see what, if anything, he could make of a career as a performer.

He did just that, and, within a few months, had shown enough passion and promise to be promoted to the regular company, where his contemporaries included Dennis Price, Judy Campbell (a talented performer destined to be a muse of Noel Coward as well as the mother of Jane Birkin), Ronnie Waldman (the future founder of BBC TV's Light Entertainment department) and William Douglas-Home (later a famous playwright, and the brother of Prime Minister Alec). Dividing their time between theatres in Croydon, Brighton, Frinton and Norwich, the troupe afforded Wattis the opportunity to try his hand at just about every kind of character available (he struggled with Shakespearean roles - 'They said I sounded as if I were at a Mayfair cocktail party' - but excelled in modern settings), picking up from play to play the standard technical tricks of the trade.

If anything, however, it would be his real-life experiences, rather than his early theatrical ones, that supplied him with the substance to shape his own creations. He soaked up British officialdom from within.

The first formative experience, in this sense, came during the Second World War, when he served as a second lieutenant in the Small Arms Section of Special Operations Executive at Station VI. Ian Fleming was a colleague, and while the environment would give the future novelist plenty of memories to mine for his spy stories, it gave Wattis a similar amount of inspiration for mimicking the spy masters and their assistants.

Once the war was over, and Wattis (now living well beyond his means in an apartment in Motcomb Street, Belgravia) struggled to find work back in the theatre ('I did get parts in tours and try-outs,' he recalled, 'but they never came to anything'), his old friend William Douglas-Home helped him out by taking him on as his personal secretary. This drew him once more into the kind of world he would later symbolise on the screen.

Following the writer around as he went from studies and libraries to Pall Mall clubs and West End parties, Wattis relished the role of the discreet society assistant, 'learning how it felt to move in high circles with a couple of bob in your pocket'.

'I was quite good at the job,' he later reflected, 'because I'm a methodical sort of person who likes everything to be neat and tidy'. He was also quite good at looking quite good at the job, dressing to mirror his master, nodding supportively when required to be silent in the background, and contributing confidently to the conversation when the context allowed him to be treated more as a companion than a clerk.

It was through Douglas-Home that, in 1949, he came to meet the film-maker Frank Launder, who was looking to cast the role of Arnold Billings, the world-weary mathematics teacher, in the movie he was planning called The Happiest Days Of Your Life. Wattis, with his round glasses and somewhat sombre expression, and his rather lofty but laid-back style of speaking, struck Launder as perfect for the role.

It was the breakthrough for which Wattis had been waiting. Although there had been bit parts here and there on the screen, such as a recent uncredited appearance as a barrister in Kind Hearts And Coronets, the role of Billings would be his first 'proper' cinematic performance, and it was not an opportunity he wasted.

Billings is one of those spoilt individuals who has simply shuffled through the system until he has found somewhere stable enough to settle, treating his position merely as a peg on which to rest while he watches the world go by. Devoid of ambition, he drains it from others, too, as, with frowning face and folded arms, he spreads his cynicism around like a skunk sprays its smell ('You're going to loathe it here, you know,' he tells the new English teacher, with more than a hint of smug satisfaction), but he knows his place in the pecking order, and creeps around the headmaster to keep his life reassuringly quiet and calm.

It happens to be the women billeted at the boys' school who intrude into his orderly world, but his resentment could be for anyone, or any group, who fail to stay in what he regards as their rightful social place. The expression he summons when Joyce Grenfell's character, Miss Gossage, urges him shyly but sweetly to call her 'Sausage', is extraordinary in the iridescence of its sense of offence - a spasm of alarm, disgust, fear, confusion and creeping nausea - as if centuries of unsolicited change are now echoing around in his head.

It could have been, and still could be, adopted as a British version of the Kuleshov effect - the same single image inserted to mark any and every instance of social disruption. The Reform Acts, the legalisation of trade unions, The Beveridge Report, the loss of India, the professionalisation of cricket, The Beatles getting their MBEs, the abolition of the 11 Plus, the erosion of the House of Lords - whatever the example, great or small, each one could have been accompanied by that quintessential Wattis wince. That is the face of the Establishment experiencing a sinking feeling in its stomach, hearing yet another gurgle going down the drain.

The critics loved the way Wattis captured a kind of class condescension that was still all-too common in post-war British life. There was, they agreed, anger behind the amusement - he would later admit that he hated such figures, but knew how to play them - and a refreshing satirical edge to the imitation. C. A. Lejeune, one of the leading observers of the day, called it 'a meticulous comedy performance' which suggested that he had the potential to become 'a stylist of the first order'.

Sure enough, it soon seemed as though every director in the country suddenly wanted Wattis slipped into their film after they saw him in this production. From light comedies to dark satires, from farces to dramas, if there was an office, there was Wattis, the obelisk of the order of things, an instantly recognisable symbol of an otherwise unseen Establishment machine.

He was an employment agent in The Clouded Yellow (1950); an Opposition MP in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); a vicar in Made In Heaven (1952); a diplomatic secretary in Innocents In Paris (1953); a solicitor in Hobson's Choice (1954); a TV executive in Simon And Laura (1955); an assistant manager in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); a civil servant in The Prince And The Showgirl (1957); a high class travel agent in The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness (1958); and a judge in Libel (1959). The list of professional people would go on and on.

'I just know how to be pompous,' he reflected at the time, downplaying his crafty art. 'No one ever told me how to raise an eyebrow, and I have always talked like this.'

He would be more open later on about his satirical intentions. 'I really don't think it's me,' he said of his creations. 'At least I hope not. I find very conventional people rather boring and lifeless.'

He was rarely the master, and seldom the minion, but more often the moderately important man in the middle, privy to some but not all of the most important kinds of information, and able to enter most of the right rooms but not always be invited to take a seat. Wattis was the man who passed up information and passed down instructions, the buckle of the bureaucracy, the hyphen of the hierarchy, the sober face that both sides saw.

It made him a busy actor, as well as a happy man. It's said that some actors live to work, while others work to live, and Richard Wattis definitely fell into the latter category. A cheerful bon vivant when off duty, he became, once established as an in-demand performer, a great thrower of parties (at his apartment in a grand-looking building in Chester Square, Belgravia) and frequenter of high-class restaurants, a cultured quaffer of good vintage Haut-Brion and Aloxe-Corton, an eager visitor of antique shops (collecting silver snuff boxes being one of his addictions) and an avid student of history, the arts and literature.

Due to the nature of the supporting roles that he played, however, he needed to work rather more than he might otherwise have wanted in order to live in the style that he now enjoyed. Like his contemporary (and fellow graduate of Croydon Rep) John Le Mesurier, who had a similar attitude and had similar-sized roles, Wattis often only spent a few days on each movie set, and was paid accordingly poorly, so his near-ubiquity on the screen belied the relative modesty of his means.

An imaginative bid in the late-Fifties to craft a starring role for himself on television, alongside his friend Richard Hearne of Mr Pastry fame, saw the two men collaborate on a plan for a sci-fi series about a mysterious time traveller. They wrote a pilot script and held talks with the BBC about bringing it to the screen, but, after some procrastination, the Corporation passed on the project (although the later arrival of Doctor Who caused both men to wonder if their suggestion had been its seed). Wattis, as a consequence, stepped back into the mid-distance as far as the prominence of his roles was concerned.

He was never too concerned about his secondary status, however, nor envious of others who were far more generously rewarded. He rather enjoyed the lack of pressure compared to that felt by the first rank of stars, and embraced the idea that he was one of a select group of reliable supporting players.

'We're all on an equal footing,' he once said of himself and other figures whose faces were more familiar than their names, such as Josephine Tewson, Eric Barker, Raymond Huntley, Victor Maddern, Allan Cuthbertson and Brian Wilde. 'It's like being back in a gorgeous rep,' he added, 'with none of the hardships.'

The show that would be kindest to him, in this respect, was Sykes. The BBC sitcom, starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, but also featuring Wattis alongside his fellow member of that unofficial 'rep', Deryck Guyler, would run for multiple series, during two spells, from the Sixties through to the Seventies.

He played, in effect, his usual official, but now found at leisure: Eric and Hat's snobbish, but somewhat nosy, neighbour, Charles Fulbright-Brown. Usually sporting a cravat and a cardigan, when he is not stubbornly stuck in his old suit and club tie, Mr Brown is a restless, aimless soul, a bureaucrat cut off from the bureaucracy, a functionary who no longer has a function.

It was not the easiest role to release from the stereotypical (John Le Mesurier, who had been offered it first, had passed, in part, for that reason), but Wattis played him with a casual cleverness, keeping him an amiable irritant by blending his class-based pomposity with regular glimpses of vulnerability and harmless vanity. There was often a lemon-sharp sourness about his expression upon encountering Sykes - eyes squinting and lips pursed - but also, at times, a simple sweetness, with his head tilting back and slightly to the side, like Doberman in The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt Bilko), as he fell once again for the flattery.

There had actually been pressure on Eric Sykes, early on in the show's run, to write Wattis out. Ironically enough, when the pilot episode went out, Tom Sloan, the BBC's then-assistant Head of Light Entertainment, thought that Wattis was the real star of the show, 'acting all the others off the screen', and had to persuaded to tolerate the deliberately more mannered style of comic performances by Sykes and Jacques as part of the ensuing series. The problem was that such praise prompted Wattis's agent to insist on a raise for his client before committing him to return for a second run.

This alarmed the BBC's booker for the sitcom, Bush Bailey, who (no doubt fearing that this sort of concession would encourage all of the other agents to follow suit) warned Tom Sloan that the budget was in danger of being stretched too far by such an increase. As Hattie Jacques was now considered indispensable, the recommendation to Sykes was that Wattis should be dropped and his character either re-cast with a cheaper actor or quietly cut from the show.

Sykes, however, was adamant: the cast would remain the same, he insisted, or the sitcom would stop right there and then. The accountants duly harrumphed, and the executives sulked for a while, but, eventually, Sykes got his way, and Wattis remained a regular (although, thanks to a combination of his agent returning later on with even bigger demands, and his own belated anxiety about being typecast on TV, he and his character would be 'rested' temporarily further on in the decade).

The show made him even more of a familiar figure to the British public, and won him plenty more offers of work as well. During the next few years he would pop up in isolated episodes of such popular shows as The Avengers, Danger Man and The Prisoner, usually playing lofty bosses, devious officials or sinister spies, as well as other sitcoms such as Father, Dear Father and Coppers End, and there would also be the occasional appearance on panel shows like Call My Bluff, in addition to numerous stage and film roles (he even turned up in a sex comedy, 1971's Games That Lovers Play, still in a suit, still behind a desk, as a stuffy wine merchant who resists being seduced, while fully clothed, by Joanna Lumley: 'I warned them that I wouldn't take off more than a tie or a sock').

His most lucrative engagement during this period, as well as one of the most personally enjoyable, was as Wallace the butler in the ATV/ITC production The Liberace Show (1969). Aimed at American as well as British television audiences, the lavish production complemented the campness of its star, with glamourous sets, big international guests (including Terry-Thomas, Jack Benny and Phyllis Diller) and a mixture of music and comedy routines.

Wattis, in his usual dark and smart formal attire, was there in part to serve as a contrast to the succession of bright and shiny outfits that Liberace was sporting (LEE: 'How d'ya like it?' WATTIS: 'Well...it fits'), in part to provide some 'Britishness' in what was otherwise a US-heavy spectacle, and in part to act as an all-purpose straight-man to the star and the visiting comedians. He fulfilled each task very effectively, and also established a warm rapport with Liberace that remained just as strong outside of the studio.

'I can't speak too highly of him,' he said at the time. 'He's about the most popular person I've ever worked with. He's quite exceptional, a combination of real talent and genuine niceness.'

Wattis delighted in escorting his new American friend to some of the most interesting and discreet gay clubs in London, connecting him to metropolitan networks that remained largely hidden from public view while keeping him shielded from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. The musical star was as much impressed by Wattis's off-screen urbanity as the latter was by his guilt-free extravagance, and both valued the fact that they could relax so easily in each other's company.

Wattis, more generally, made no real effort to hide his sexuality. It was an open secret among his show business colleagues (who relished the many outrageous tales of his frequently wild and reckless late-night escapades in various Soho dives, one of them climaxing, so to speak, with a threat by a furious Jack Palance to insert him up his own backside), and, while certainly never inclined to encourage an exposé, he was also, off the record, quite candid with many members of the press, telling the ones that he trusted that he couldn't bear the kind of fictions that some closeted figures felt compelled to foster about 'a long-lost love somewhere in the background [and] hordes of adored nephews and nieces'.

If a journalist asked him about his personal life, he was happy to stress that he was 'a confirmed bachelor', and that he 'knew positively at the age of twelve I was not going to be a family man'. The reporters in turn liked him enough, and knew that the public did, too, to resist digging any deeper into the details.

Having made some shrewd investments over the years, Wattis was by now living in great comfort in an elegant first-floor balcony flat at 23 Cadogan Place (telephone Belgravia 6334) in Knightsbridge, a leisurely stroll from Harrods and several of his favourite places to dine (where he often sat alone, content with his own company, and studied the other customers). Travelling widely and socialising regularly, hosting parties for the London visits of the likes of David Niven, Roddy McDowell, Vincent Price and Fred Astaire, attending more or less every major West End premiere in the offing, or simply relaxing at home resplendent in a silk bow-tie and smoking jacket, alternating between puffing on a cigarette and slurping some vintage wine, he was having fun whenever and wherever he could find it (when it came to the more intimate forms of pleasure, however, he was often heard to lament that 'I'll only get it if I pay for it').

Much loved by others in his profession, 'Dickie,' as many of his friends called him, was known for his generosity of spirit (in terms both of financial and emotional support), his sense of mischief (there would be many practical jokes backstage and at the rehearsal rooms, with Kenneth Williams being one of his long-suffering victims) and his enthusiasm for impromptu adventures. On one occasion, for example, he persuaded Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims and their mutual friend, the restaurateur Bruce Copp, to hop on a cross-channel ferry to France for the day; when the inclement weather started making the travellers feel queasy, Wattis insisted - as he usually did in most circumstances - that champagne was the only antidote, and so, by the time that they reached Boulogne, everyone was thoroughly intoxicated, and Joan Sims was found, after an extensive search of the ship, lying semi-conscious on the floor of the gentlemen's toilets, murmuring 'Oh, Dickie...naughty Dickie...'.

Such a discreetly sybaritic lifestyle did nothing to discourage him, however, from seizing on the chance to join up again with his fellow cast members of Sykes when the sitcom returned to the screen in 1972, even though he was clearly not quite so focused as before during the preparation of productions. By this stage, for example, Wattis was hardly the most earnest of line learners, and was sometimes inclined to stumble his way through a scene before corpsing ('I'm a terrible giggler'), but Eric Sykes always played it for laughs:

He was, by now, not merely just part of the cast, but also part of the family, and his occasional failings were embraced and indulged with warmth and understanding. 'At his best,' Eric Sykes would say, 'he was a delight to act with - he knew just what weight to put on a line, how to time it, when and how to react, he was such a clever and generous actor.'

It was true. He was particularly good when the carapace received a crack, Brown's composure was compromised, and he struggled to contain all of the insecurities that were squirming around inside.

In, for example, the episode entitled Uncle, in which Sykes inveigles an entrée to Brown's golf club and proceeds to embarrass him in front of his similarly snobbish, but rather more powerful, friends, Wattis expertly shows his character shift desperately from despair to desire as he falls for Sykes's boasts about having an aristocratic relation:

The fists are clenched, the shoulders stiff, the eyes darting back and forth, and then a new opportunity is scented, and suddenly he is off, sharper, smoother, sniffing around his prey, probing for fresh privileges. It is a typically gleeful deconstruction from within of an individual who is helpless and hopeless unless hiding behind an image, and few could do it as deftly as Wattis.

He stayed busy in between these popular series, taking just about any job that he was offered ('It's just that I'm scared of being broke again,' he said. 'Only to think of it makes me go cold'), but always found enough free time to pause and relax in one or another of his favourite London restaurants. It would be during such a leisurely visit, sadly, that Wattis lost his life.

On Saturday 1st February 1975, a few weeks short of his sixty-third birthday, he was hosting a lunch party for five of his friends at Berwick's, in Walton Street, not far from his home in Knightsbridge. All was going splendidly, as usual, until suddenly, midway through the main course, he seemed to choke briefly and then collapsed with his head hitting the table. He had, in fact, suffered a massive heart attack.

Greatly distressed, his friends leapt up and called for help, and he was rushed by ambulance to the nearby St Stephen's Hospital. It was, however, too late: he was pronounced dead on arrival.

One of his last television recordings, for a play called Tea At Four, would be shown posthumously later that month on BBC2. It was a more dramatic performance than usual for him, more poignant and reflective, and, by one of those strange coincidences that the medium sometimes supplies, the character he played was seen collapsing and dying of the very same condition.

The reaction to his own passing, within show business circles, was a genuinely emotional one, with many of his peers keen to point out how well-liked, as well as admired, he had been within the profession. One or two also noted that, if he had been offered a way to go, he would probably have liked the idea of it being at the dining table, mopping up a good sauce, even more than on the stage, soaking up the applause.

It would seem in keeping with his meticulous manners that, a few months after his death, the staff of Berwick's were surprised to receive a cheque from the Wattis estate, paying his final bill, for all six of his party, in full. 'We certainly didn't ask for the bill to be paid,' the manager said, 'but it does seem to be a remarkable case of honesty from beyond the grave.'

Wattis's many friends saw that he was given the farewell that he deserved when, on 21st March, they gathered at St Paul's Church in Covent Garden, known affectionately as The Actors' Church, for a moving memorial service. One star after another came forward to sing the praises of a supporting player who had become a household name.

In spite of all those years that have gone by, he remains today, in a way, as enduring in memory as the types that he played remain in life. The bowler hats may have gone, and the pinstripes not quite so common, but, for better or for worse, it is still possible to glimpse, lurking in the background of some or other scene of British officialdom, someone who reminds one of none other than Richard Wattis.

If that makes us more inclined to laugh at such figures, then that is just what Wattis would have wanted.