He devised and co-wrote the BBC sitcoms Dad's Army (1968–1977), It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974–1981), Hi-de-Hi!

along with Derek Taverner, for which Perry received an Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 1971.

[7] The teenaged Perry partly served as the model for the mummy's boy character Private Pike in Dad's Army.

In a 2013 interview with Neil Clark for The Daily Telegraph, he said his own mother "didn't go so far as making me wear a scarf, but she came pretty near".

[9] With the outbreak of the Second World War, his family moved to Watford just outside London, his father taking over the shop of an uncle.

[11][12] Delaying call up at the insistence of his mother, he joined the First (Mixed) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery at Oswestry in 1943, and the camp concert party.

[6] Demobbed and back in the UK, he trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) on a serviceman's scholarship, where his contemporaries included Joan Collins, Lionel Jeffries and Robert Shaw.

[6] Initially working in repertory and West End musicals from 1950 after graduating from RADA,[6] during the period 1956–1965, Perry was actor-manager at the Watford Palace Theatre, in collaboration with his wife, Gilda.

[9] Perry showed Croft an outline for a sitcom derived from his experiences in the Home Guard, then entitled The Fighting Tigers, which resulted in the producer taking the idea to Michael Mills, then the BBC Head of Comedy.

Perry, credited with the original idea for Dad's Army, conceived the sitcom with the role of Walker in mind for himself, but Croft and Mills successfully dissuaded him.

[9][16][17][8] As well as the character of Private Pike, modelled on himself, an elderly man he had known in the Home Guard had served with Lord Kitchener and became the basis for Corporal Jones.

Shortly after Dad's Army began, Perry wrote The Gnomes of Dulwich (1969), which starred Hugh Lloyd and Terry Scott, who had previously appeared together in Hugh and I. Perry had always been very interested in gnomes, he originally intended it to be a short sketch for The Morecambe & Wise Show but it was his wife who persuaded him that there was a whole series in it.

In 2009, Perry said the series two leads "were two gnomes who would sit by a pond and commented on life, race, religion – everything.

[10] Inspired by his wartime experience running the Royal Artillery Concert Party in Deolali, India "it was David's and my favourite", Perry told journalist Neil Clark in 2013, who expressed regret that it "appears to have fallen victim to political correctness".

[24][25] Perry defended the series, acknowledging the language was homophobic,[25] but maintaining "those were the attitudes people had during the war".

[26] The character of bombardier Solomons (played by George Layton) is thought to represent Perry when he was working with ENSA during WW2.

The pilot was aired on 10 August 1976, and received overwhelming poor feedback from American audiences and did not develop into a series.

[27] At the end of the 1970s, Perry became involved as presenter in a BBC series called Turns, dedicated to music hall acts of the 1930s and 1940s as featured in films of the era.

The character of Spike (played by Jeffrey Holland) is thought to represent Perry when he was a Butlin's Redcoat.

Lloyd eventually conceded that he was struggling to find enthusiasm in the series and instead turned to an idea for a sitcom about the French Resistance which became 'Allo 'Allo!.

[31] The series featured many cast members from other series that Perry had worked on, including Michael Knowles and Donald Hewlett from It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Paul Shane, Jeffrey Holland and Su Pollard from Hi-de-Hi!, and Bill Pertwee from Dad's Army.

[13] Perry later said of the short radio series that "recording London Calling was the happiest week of my life.

"[20] Perry created two further short lived series without David Croft, Room Service (1979) for Thames Television and High Street Blues (1989) with co-writer Robin Carr.

According to John Oliver, writing for the BFI Screenonline website, two of Perry's later series "remain contenders for the title of worst British sitcom".

The show had a familiar cast for British television viewers, including Ted Rogers, Su Pollard, Carmen Silvera and Peter Baldwin.

After Dad's Army Perry wanted to do a show called True Brits which was to be set in Roman Britain with Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles as Roman officers and Paul Shane as a local tribes person painting 'Romans Go Home' on walls and so on.

Perry also wanted Su Pollard to feature in the series as a local Briton wearing square wooden glasses.

'[39] Actor, comedian and presenter Michael Palin once said that Perry had "created one of the most endearing of all comedy classics.