From The Guardian

Felix Bowness, who has died aged 87, was often third or fourth down the variety bill and his best known television role, in the BBC sitcom Hi-De-Hi!, was a supporting one. But what made him indispensable within television for decades was his skill in "warming up" studio audiences, Morecambe and Wise's producer John Ammonds describing him as "the best in the business".

He appeared in all 58 episodes of Hi-De-Hi! (1980-88) as Fred Quilly, a suspended jockey working at the fictional Maplin's holiday camp. In the show, Quilly looked after the horses and shared a chalet with the cantankerous Punch and Judy man Mr Partridge. Bowness described the show as "the best thing that has happened to me professionally", and was astutely cast not only because off-stage he owned a racehorse called Live Ballad, but also because he had regularly appeared at Pontin's holiday camps during the 1960s.

Born in Harwell, Berkshire (the village is now in Oxfordshire), to French Canadian parents, he had an improbable early stint as a bantamweight boxer, before second world war service as a signalman with the Royal Berkshire Regiment. He made his professional acting debut in 1946 and after two years was taking out ads in the trade press as: "Comedian, Impersonator, and Compere … Own Car."

Despite his later success on television, he never abandoned summer seasons, his first being in Ilfracombe in 1949: in 1977, he estimated that he had done 25 such shows consecutively. Bowness began his radio career, billed as That Irresponsible Young Man, in 1950 on Variety Bandbox, followed by Workers' Playtime (1953-59) and Mid-day Music Hall (1954). For BBC TV, he was in the black-and-white sitcom Hugh and I (1964), with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd, and The Benny Hill Show (1965), in Hill's pre-smut days. Bowness was also in Frankie Howerd's 1966 BBC series.

Bowness having appeared on Sykes in 1964, Eric Sykes retained him for several minor roles between 1972 and 1979, in addition to warm-ups. Bowness explained that one problem was "to avoid falling into the trap of 'stealing' the show in these warm-up periods".

His only film was Queen of the Blues (1979), which was atrociously made even by the standards of 1970s British sex films. He turned up in Porridge (1975), as an inmate called Gay Gordon, and was a regular on the popular game show 3-2-1 (1978-88). Then, in 1980, the writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had used him in Dad's Army, cast him as Quilly in Hi-De-Hi!

He continued to warm up audiences for Terry Wogan's chat show Wogan (BBC, 1985-92) – around 3,000 episodes – and Croft reused him, together with some of the cast of Hi-De-Hi!, in You Rang, M'Lord (1988-93) and Oh, Doctor Beeching! (1995-97). He said one of his proudest moments was receiving the This is Your Life red book in 1985.

For many years Bowness lived in Reading, in a house called The Struggle. He is survived by his wife, Mavis, son Robert, three grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.

• Felix Bowness, comedian and actor, born 30 March 1922; died 13 September 2009

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