John Forgeham, who has died aged 75, was a hard-living actor who brought some of his off-screen qualities to his best known television roles, which were often unsympathetic. As the loud-mouthed car mechanic Jim Baines in Crossroads, he was in the long-running soap at the height of its popularity, when the series was watched by some 18 million viewers (though loathed by the critics). For four years (1974-78), at one time with a curly perm redolent of the era, Jim belittled his wife, Muriel, whom he called “Mu” (played by Anne Rutter), and cheated on her with the motel garage’s secretary-turned-manager Sharon Metcalfe (Carolyn Jones). Despite the storylines, Forgeham was hugely popular, particularly with female viewers.
He continued to appear on television over the next two decades. However, by 1999, roles were drying up and he was working on the fairground rides on Brighton Pier for £3.50 an hour. Forgeham bounced back to gain a new legion of fans with the part of Frank Laslett, the wheeler-dealing chairman of the fictional Earls Park football club, in the first three series (2002-04) of the hit TV drama Footballers Wives.
As an England schoolboys triallist and Aston Villa under-16s footballer in his youth, the actor related to the role of Frank. “He just loves the game and all the trappings that go with the game – the power, the women, the money, the lifestyle, the clothes,” said Forgeham. “Frank wears these three-quarter-length coats, the sort of thing that men my age wear when they want to be one of the boys again.” In the third series, the divorced Frank married Tanya Turner, a scheming WAG, played by Zöe Lucker, who then deliberately caused his death in a Viagra-induced sex romp – although his “revenge” came with the news that it had left her pregnant.
The actor was born John Forgham in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, the son of Julian, a factory worker, and his wife, Dora (nee Burgess), and grew up in the Birmingham suburb of Erdington, where he was educated at Moor End Lane school.
He studied first at what is now the Birmingham School of Acting and, while working in a factory, performed with a local amateur dramatic society, before gaining a scholarship to Rada, where he trained between 1962 and 1964. He added an “e” to his surname after people frequently mispronounced it. As well as experience at repertory theatres in England and Scotland, Forgeham was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (1965-69), where his roles included the Earl of Surrey in Henry VIII (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1969), and he understudied Donald Sinden and Richard Pasco.
Staying on in Australia after a 1969 world tour with the RSC, he was artistic director of St Martin’s theatre, Melbourne (1970-71), and, in 1972, became a founder member of the Globe Shakespeare theatre company in Sydney. Sporting a beard, he also had a starring role on Australian television as the flamboyant women’s fashion magazine publisher Saxon Wells in Catwalk (1971-72), a development of the character Jason Werner, which he had played in a 1970 episode of Dynasty (a decade before the American series of that title).
Forgeham’s British television appearances had begun with one-off character parts in popular series including No Hiding Place (1963) and The Avengers (1965). That continued on his return from Australia, but Crossroads gave him his big break and, shortly after he was written out in 1978, he stopped drinking, after years of alcoholism. Television roles kept on coming.
He played Alf Bayley in the sitcom L for Lester (1982), Sergeant Major Lejaune in Beau Geste (1982), McMorris in Final Run (1988), Tim in Casting Off (1988) and Brian Everthorpe in Nice Work (1989). In the first Prime Suspect miniseries (1991), Forgeham was cast as DCI John Shefford, the bent detective suffering a fatal heart attack, resulting in a female officer, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), taking over the investigation into a prostitute’s murder and facing sexism in a male-dominated workplace.
He was Frankie, husband of the shop steward Pauline (Rachel Davies) in the comedy drama Making Out (1989-91), portraying women workers in a factory, his character memorable for unsuccessfully attempting The Joy of Sex’s seduction techniques in his marriage. Forgeham also played fathers – to Lloyd Owen’s English footballer in Spain in All in the Game (1993), based on Gary Lineker’s experiences at Barcelona, and to Frank Skinner’s wannabe pop star in the sitcom Blue Heaven (1994).
Other roles included Phil Elkins, a shady business executive and boxing promoter suspected of burning down his own gym, in the ninth series (1996) of London’s Burning.
On screen, Forgeham was most proud of playing Frank, the radio operator, in the 1969 film classic The Italian Job. In other movies, he portrayed the cold-hearted leader of the Black Berets, hired to kill Tanya Roberts’s Queen of the Jungle, in Sheena (1984), the pimp Max in the martial arts thriller Kiss of the Dragon (2001), alongside Jet Li and Bridget Fonda, and the prison “gaffer” in Mean Machine (2001), with Vinnie Jones playing a jailed footballer.
In 2004 he appeared in the reality TV series Celebrity Fit Club, but his career subsequently declined and he had mental health problems. He was married three times, to the actor Georgina Hale in 1964, to another actor, Fiesta Marjot (stage name Fiesta Mei Ling), in 1970, and to Arlene Garciano in 2004; all three marriages ended in divorce.
He is survived by Jason and Jonesta, the children of his second marriage, and his sister, Irene.
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