He is aged 17 when the series begins, and as such, he is not old enough to join the army, although presumably he has reached, or is nearing, his 18th birthday when he is about to receive call-up papers in When You've Got to Go; in the event, it is revealed that he has a rare blood type that excludes him from military service.

He lives in the shadow of his bossy and over-protective mother, Mavis Pike, who is in a relationship with Sergeant Wilson.

He is frequently found with confectionery, is upset in "The Big Parade" to leave a cinema early because "I haven't seen the Donald Duck yet" and can be petulant to superiors.

This annoys Captain Mainwaring, who refers to him as a "stupid boy" due to his carelessness and mistakes and his bouts of childish humour.

Mainwaring also treats Pike as a dogsbody, and gives him menial, demeaning, dangerous or undignified tasks, refusing to "mollycoddle" him.

In "Things that Go Bump in the Night", he is stripped several times and has to run naked through a field to escape dogs.

Although Pike comes up with sensible solutions to problems encountered by the platoon, he treats "everything as if it's a game", to quote Mainwaring in "All is Safely Gathered In".

"), spelling his doom should the Germans win the war; however, as Pike had sung a childish song about Adolf Hitler in front of this officer, it is his own fault in refusing to take the situation seriously.

Despite all this, in the episode "When You've Got to Go", he is certified fit for military service and is set to enter the RAF (to his mother's horror).

Pike's name is a reference to the spear-like weapons issued to the Home Guard in 1942, generating "an almost universal feeling of anger and disgust from the ranks".