Television sitcom star Warren Mitchell

Warren Mitchell, who famously played the loudmouthed, chauvinistic, homophobic, sexist, racist Alf Garnett in the celebrated television series Till Death Us Do Part, was in reality a left-wing socialist, the antithesis of the character he immortalised.

Even 40 years after this successful and racy BBC sitcom was running, Mitchell continued to be stopped in the street by people who really thought he was the working-class, anti-Semitic Tory bigot he portrayed, even though he himself was Jewish.

The British public warmed to Alf Garnett, probably because he could be identified with the kind of reactionary and prejudiced figure found all over the country.

Sometimes the satire of the show was lost because people regarded Garnett as a loveable old rogue whose views were quite acceptable.

Even so, he once admitted he was “a bit” like Alf Garnett himself.

“Opinionated male chauvinistic pig at times, I suppose. As my wife Connie once said to me, ‘You are like that awful Alf Garnett, only he’s funny and you’re not’.”

Warren Mitchell was born Warren Misell in Stoke Newington, north London, on January 14 1926.

He served in the Royal Air Force and completed his navigator training just as the war ended.

He had been reading physics at University College, Oxford, but quit that before completing the course, and became a professional actor in 1951 after two years at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

For a time he sold socialist newspapers in the street, crying out with his polished, actor-trained voice. That was when he developed his “working class” voice, which, he claimed, helped him sell more papers.

But his big break did not come until 1965 – 14 years after he became a professional actor – with the role of Alf Garnett in a Comedy Playhouse play, which developed into the TV series.

The character, although a Tory anti-socialist through and through, was no fan of Margaret Thatcher, believing a woman’s place was “chained to the bloody kitchen sink”, and blaming her husband Denis for not telling her “to keep her place”.

Warren Mitchell was the antithesis of his famed character Alf Garnett.