Patrick Cargill

Many performers who had worked before with the actor featured in an entertainment special called Patrick, Dear Patrick, An Evening with Patrick Cargill and His Guests (1972). Cargill was a friend of Patrick Macnee from their early acting days, and Macnee returned from California to make a guest appearance on the show. It included both Patricks singing "Mad Dogs and Englishmen".^{[citation needed]} Cargill's companion, Vernon Page, recounts that at the time of casting Cargill wanted to sing this duet with Sir Noël Coward and even visited him at the hotel in London where he was staying in an attempt to persuade him to appear, but Coward was either unwilling or unable to agree to the request and he died 15 months later. This one-off special production by Thames Television also guest-starred Beryl Reid, with whom Cargill sang the duet "I Remember It Well" by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (from Gigi). Cargill added a new response to the line "We drank champagne" (Cargill's line): "You gave me Coke, you drank the wine yourself, you soak!" (Reid's riposte).

In 1976, Cargill returned to the TV screens with The Many Wives of Patrick, playing a middle-aged playboy and antiques dealer, Patrick Woodford, who is trying to divorce his sixth wife in order to remarry his first.

His film appearances included An Alligator Named Daisy and Expresso Bongo; two of the Carry On films: Carry On Regardless and Carry On Jack; Help! (1965) starring The Beatles, The Magic Christian (1969) with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr and Charlie Chaplin's A Countess from Hong Kong, in which he played the part of the butler, Hudson.^[9]

Music

A lesser known detail of Cargill's showbusiness career is the handful of recordings that he made in the 1960s and 1970s. The first was an album called Father, Dear Father (1969) in which Cargill sang a medley of songs. The female voice on the album was not Noel Dyson (Nanny) but that of June Hunt, a friend of Cargill.

He followed this with three singles. One called "Father, Dear Father Christmas" and another called "Thinking Young" and the final single called "Father, Dear Father." None of these recordings was commercially successful.

Cargill appeared as Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in August 1983.^[15]

Personal life

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From the mid-1960s Cargill lived at Sheen Gate Gardens,

Cargill's private life was little known and his homosexuality was not public for decades. For many years, Cargill's companion was Vernon Page, an eccentric landscape gardener, poet and lampoon songwriter, until he married in 1984 with Cargill's blessing. Cargill was a private man, who did not relish his celebrity status, though he was always kind to fans who approached him. He would shun the awards ceremonies in favour of a quiet evening at home playing mahjong. He never made any public acknowledgment of his private life as he felt that to confirm his homosexuality would damage his professional image. Notwithstanding his reluctance to "come out" in this respect, Cargill was happy in his private life and his wit when not in the spotlight reflected that. Once, whilst lunching with Ray Cooney, the theatrical impresario, Cargill observed, when a particularly handsome waiter mistakenly removed his soup spoon, "Aah, look Ray, the dish has run away with the spoon." In the later years of his life, Cargill lived in Henley-on-Thames with his last companion, James Camille Markowski.

The love of his life was his

Cargill's many pets included a monkey, a parrot and a castrated ram. His favourites were Ra, a cross-border collie, and Charles, a cat that lived at Spring Cottage.

Death

At the time of his death at the age of 77, Cargill was suffering from a