[citation needed] Corbett was sent to Britain after his mother, Caroline Emily, née Barnsley (1884–1926),[2] died of dysentery when he was eighteen months old.

[3] Corbett enlisted in the Royal Marines during the Second World War,[1] and served in the Home Fleet on the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire.

After VJ Day in 1945 he was posted to the Far East, where he was involved in quelling unrest in New Guinea and reportedly killed two Japanese soldiers there whilst engaged in hand-to-hand fighting.

His military service left him with a damaged bladder following an infection, and a red mark on his eye caused by a thorn, which was not treated until late in his life.

[3] Upon returning to civilian life, Corbett trained as a radiographer[1] before taking up acting as a career, joining the Chorlton Repertory theatre.

He played Harold Steptoe, a rag-and-bone man who lives with his irascible widower father, Albert (Wilfrid Brambell) in a dilapidated house attached to their junkyard and stable for their cart horse, Hercules.

[4] In 1967 he was interviewed by Clive Goodwin, for an episode of a BBC series in which "leading young actors discussed their start in the profession, the parts that brought them success and their views on acting.

[7] A tour of a Steptoe and Son stage production in Australia and New Zealand in 1977 proved a disaster due to Brambell's drinking.

After the series of Steptoe and Son had officially finished, Corbett and Brambell played the characters again on radio (in a newly written sketch to tie in with the Scottish team's participation in the 1978 World Cup), as well as in a television commercial for Kenco coffee.

[8] Steptoe and Son led Corbett to comedy films: as James Ryder in Ladies Who Do (1963); with Ronnie Barker in The Bargee (1964), written by Galton and Simpson; Carry On Screaming!

(1966) (replacing an unavailable Sid James); the "Lust" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971); and Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977).

Susannah is an actress and author, and has written a biography of her father, Harry H. Corbett: The Front Legs of the Cow, which was published in March 2012.

[7] The television character Harold Steptoe appears as the Labour Party secretary for Shepherd's Bush West in the sixth series episode, "Tea for Two".

[4] Having appeared in several films and TV shows after production of Steptoe ended, Corbett finally seemed to be overcoming the typecasting that affected much of his career when he died of a heart attack on 21 March 1982,[1] in Hastings, East Sussex.