[6][9] He married Ivy Ruth Martin in 1941;[10] it was she who made his enormous kipper ties out of brightly coloured curtain material at the beginning of his stage career.

In 1949, while still employed in Aldershot as a painter and decorator, English and his then stage partner Jonny Carrol unsuccessfully auditioned at the Windmill Theatre in London.

His usual delivery was to tell a long rambling shaggy dog story at ever-increasing rapidity without losing clarity until, at top speed, he would end with the catch-phrase: "Play the music!

[9] He began to appear on British television in mainly comedy roles in the 1970s, and is probably best remembered for playing the truculent and somewhat bolshy (though not entirely unsympathetic) maintenance man, Mr. Harman, in Are You Being Served?

He was in several other films including For the Love of Ada (1972) as "Arthur" and Everyday Maths (1978), a British TV schools programme starring Jack Wild as English's grandson.

On 27 August 1977, English married a young dancer, Teresa Mann[19] (born 1955), whom he met while they were performing in a pantomime together at Wimbledon, and in 1981, the couple had a daughter – Clare-Louise English, the deaf mute actress director and writer who founded Hot Coals Productions, a Production company working the theatre film and TV who specialise in creating accessible content.

[21] After a funeral service at St Michael's church at which fellow Water Rat Jimmy Perry read the oration,[22] his body was cremated at the Park Crematorium in Aldershot where his ashes were later interred in a plot with those of his first wife.

An Aldershot Civic Society blue plaque was unveiled by actor and singer Jess Conrad OBE on 15 July 2017 at 22 Lysons Road where English was born in 1919.