This week’s Icon starred in each of my three favourite films: The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) and School for Scoundrels (1960). Merry films for merrier times.

Beyond these, Alastair Sim is probably best known for playing the title role in 1951’s Scrooge, just another one of around 60 films in which he appeared, not to mention 46 West End productions.

Regularly voted among the top 10 box office stars, his comedic roles often involved portraying eccentric figures of authority, but he also excelled in more earnest works like An Inspector Calls (1954).

Tall and bald with baleful eyes, his comic characters combined bewilderment with capacity for cunning, the execution of which was invariably defeated by farcical circumstance.

Less farcically, Alastair George Bell Sim was born on 9 October 1900 in Edinburgh, just a three-minute walk from where, in a more straitened street 30 years later, Sean Connery first drew breath. So much talent in such a small space.

Notably, both had to modify their accents, the Scots tongue generally being an impediment – the mot juste – to social mobility.

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Alastair, a practising elocutionist in his early career, became kind of accentless, not even “educated Edinburgh” but leaning more towards received pronunciation. His distinctive drawl was central to his personations, so much so that he sued – unsuccessfully........

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