“Ah don’t want you, ah want Mister Farnon” was a common refrain facing James Herriot, played by Christopher Timothy, in early episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, the long-running TV series based on the books of Thirsk vet Alf Wight.

The exasperated young Herriot had to cope with the suspicions of many dour Yorkshire farmers. Unhappy with his inexperience, they wanted his boss, the cantankerous, but supposedly older and wiser, Siegfried Farnon, to tend to their animals.

And tend to them he would, all the while dishing out pearls of wisdom in his own opinionated, eccentric way.

Constantly exasperated by his feckless younger brother Tristan, played by Peter Davison, Siegfried had a cutting wit, and a furious temper.

Those who knew Donald Sinclair, Wight’s real-life veterinary partner, say Robert Hardy, who died on Thursday aged 91, captured him perfectly – and Wight’s daughter, Rosie Page said her father actually toned down Sinclair’s character, as no-one would have believed it otherwise.

Hardy was reported as saying he did not meet Sinclair until after he had settled on his own interpretation of the character.

“I always wished I’d known him before,” he said. “It would have helped me to perfect a much more interesting character.”

The pair became friends, and Hardy was a frequent house guest of Sinclair – even answering the door to callers, who were surprised and confused to find themselves face to face with the vet’s television alter ego.

TIMOTHY Sydney Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham on October 29 1925, the son of Jocelyn and Henry Harrison Hardy.

Studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, were interrupted by service in the RAF before he returned to gain an English degree he would later refer to as “shabby” during an appearance Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

Shabby perhaps, but it included tutoring from two of the finest writers of their generation in CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

Launching his career as a stage actor, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1949 at the age of 24 and continued treading the boards until recent years.

He ventured into cinema in 1958 as a naval officer in Torpedo Run and seven years later was reunited with university friend Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

A year later he was given his first continuing role of cut-throat businessman Alex Stewart in series The Troubleshooters.

A cameo in the finale of Upstairs, Downstairs as wealthy and influential bachelor Sir Guy Paynter followed before he landed his role as Siegfried Farnon.

All Creatures Great and Small, with Thirsk as Darrowby (in reality, Askrigg), became a huge hit.

Hardy originally thought the series would not be a success, saying it would “bore the town and annoy the country”. However the countryside escapism attracted audiences of about 20 million, running for seven series from 1978 to 1990.

1981 brought Hardy the appointment of a CBE, but also launched his four-decade affair with the role of Sir Winston Churchill, a responsibility he once called “undoubtedly the greatest challenge of my acting career”.

In 2013 when – performing as Churchill for the eighth time – he was forced to pull out of The Audience opposite Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth II after a fall.

Eighty-seven at the time he appeared in a week’s worth of previews with cracked ribs but was eventually replaced by Edward Fox.

His final, and perhaps record breaking, ninth performance as the wartime leader came in the 2015 ITV drama Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain.

In later years he endeared himself to a younger generation of viewers with his role as the Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter.

A keen historian, Hardy sold off an enormous collection of antiques in 2015 as part of a £100,000 auction and was a leading specialist on the longbow. He was also part of the team that raised the great Tudor warship The Mary Rose.

Hardy was married and divorced twice, and had three children – a son Paul and daughters Justine, a journalist and activist, and Emma, a photographer.

  • Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy born October 29, 1925, died August 3, 2017.