Davies played a key role in British television comedy across four decades, working variously as the commissioning producer, producer or director on many of the most successful comedy shows of the era, including The World of Beachcomber, Steptoe and Son, All Gas and Gaiters, The Benny Hill Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Goodies, Fawlty Towers, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Not the Nine O'Clock News, Only Fools and Horses, Yes Minister, Blackadder and Mr. Bean.
Davies was the producer of all four series of the hit BBC sitcom The Good Life, and was also responsible for ending Benny Hill's television career in the late 1980s.
He appeared in the final of HM the Queen's Prize in 1994, and represented Wales at the first Commonwealth Shooting Championships in New Delhi, where he claimed a silver medal in the 300 m rifle three positions team event.
[3] Known to his friends as JHD, his credits as a child actor include the title role at the age of nine in David Lean's production Oliver Twist (1948), followed by The Rocking Horse Winner (1949), Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951) and a few episodes of the TV series William Tell (1958).
He is also credited with the idea of having the comedic changes to the lettering on the hotel sign in each episode, as well as the slapstick device of having Basil hit Manuel on the head with a spoon.
He told Hill's biographer Mark Lewisohn, "It's very dangerous to have a show on ITV that doesn't appeal to women, because they hold the purse strings, in a sense.