He would warm up audiences with jokes, impressions (Maurice Chevalier was a favourite) and tap dance routines before introducing the singers and attractions on the bill.

During the late 1930s he briefly joined the Territorial Army serving with the Queen Victoria's Rifles to please a girlfriend and when war broke out he was called up for active service.

In recognition of his valuable services during these years, he was awarded a pair of drama masks, made by the Red Cross from barbed wire.

Returning to Britain after the war, Kydd auditioned for the film The Captive Heart (1946), which was about life in a prison camp, and as this was an area where he had much experience, he got a part as an advisor cum actor.

He appeared as a character actor in films such as Chance of a Lifetime (1950), The Cruel Sea (1953), Reach for the Sky (1956), The Yangtse Incident (1957), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Too Many Crooks (1959), Sink the Bismarck!

In 1963, Kydd appeared as the lovable smuggler Orlando O'Connor in Crane starring Patrick Allen as a Briton who moved to Morocco to run a cafe and had an aversion to smuggling.

[citation needed] He married Pinkie Barnes, an ex-international table tennis champion (she was World Doubles Finalist in 1948) and one of Britain's first women advertising copywriters.