Wilfrid Brambell - Personal and Later Life

Personal and Later Life

After the final season of Steptoe and Son was made in 1974, Brambell had some guest roles in films and on television, but both he and Corbett found themselves heavily typecast as their famous characters. In an attempt to take advantage of this situation, they undertook a tour of Australia in 1977 with a Steptoe and Son stage show. On one occasion, Brambell used bad language and was openly derogatory about New Zealand cathedrals in an interview. Despite this, Brambell did appear on the BBC's television news paying tribute to Corbett after the latter's death from a heart attack in 1982. The following year Brambell appeared in Terence Davies's film Death and Transfiguration, playing a dying elderly man who finally comes to terms with his homosexuality.

In 2002, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary film, entitled When Steptoe Met Son, about the off-screen life of Brambell and his relationship with Harry H. Corbett. The film claimed that the two men detested each other and were barely on speaking terms after the Australia tour, caused in part by Brambell's alcoholism, which led to the two men leaving the country on separate aeroplanes. This claim is disputed by the writers of Steptoe and Son, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who were unaware of any hatred or conflict. Harry H. Corbett's nephew from his second marriage also released a statement which claimed that the actors did not hate each other. "We can categorically say they did not fall out. They were together for nearly a year in Australia, went on several sightseeing trips together, and left the tour at the end on different planes because Harry was going on holiday with his family, not because he refused to get on the same plane. They continued to work together after the Australia tour on radio and adverts."

Brambell was homosexual at a time when it was almost impossible for public figures to be openly gay, not least because male homosexual acts were illegal in the UK until 1967. In 1962 he was arrested in a toilet in Shepherd's Bush for persistently importuning and given a conditional discharge. Earlier in his life he had been married, from 1948 to 1955, to Mary "Molly" Josephine but the relationship ended after she gave birth to the child of their lodger in 1953. In 2012 he was accused of abusing in the 1970s two boys aged 12-13 backstage in the Jersey Opera House. One of the boys was from the Haut de la Garenne children's home.

Brambell died of cancer in Westminster, London, aged 72. He was cremated on 25 January 1985 at Streatham Park Cemetery, where his ashes were scattered.