However, his mother's income was insufficient to fund his further education and after a period working with a north London builders' merchants 18-year-old Procktor was conscripted into the Royal Navy where, during his National Service, he learned to speak Russian.
[1] Subsequently, while working as a Russian interpreter with the British Council, Procktor began to paint and draw in his spare time, and was accepted by the Slade School of Fine Art in 1958.
A year later, Procktor was featured in Bryan Robertson's New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery – a show that also raised the profile of fellow artists David Hockney, Bridget Riley and John Hoyland.
An obituary in The Independent said of his death: The annual dinner at the Royal Academy will be much duller for his anarchic absence, that tapering six-foot-six frame, topped by a fez, seemingly on the verge of imminent collapse as it swayed and teetered above the throng.
And Marylebone has never been the same since the fire in 1999 that destroyed his flat and drove him from a neighbourhood he had graced with his hats and trailing scarves, velvet coats and carpet slippers for the last 40 years.