Rossiter’s film and television career was wide and varied with appearances in “Billy Liar” with Julie Christie, “A Jolly Bad Fellow” with Dennis Price, “The Long Ships” with Gordon Jackson, “Hotel Paradiso” with Alec Guinness, “The Wrong Box” with Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Irene Handl, “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” with Peter Sellers & Herbert Lom, “Machinegunner” with Kate O’Mara, and alongside John Thaw in “Redcap” and “The Life and Death of King John”, and Michael Caine in “Deadfall” and “Water”, Rossiter’s final film appearance.

One of the few actors to appear in one than one Stanley Kubrick films, Rossiter appeared in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Barry Lyndon”.

He was also in The Avengers episode “Dressed to Kill” with Honor Blackman & Patrick Macnee (the plot of which was reused in a later episode of The Avengers called “The Superlative Seven” with Donald Sutherland, Brian Blessed, and Charlotte Rampling).

For some, Rossiter’s most memorable role was in “Rising Damp” as the miserly landlord Rupert Rigsby. Enamoured of his tenant Miss Ruth Jones, played by Frances De La Tour, he encounters competition for her affections from a new tenant, played by Don Warrington, who catches her eye. The successful sitcom spawned a film version of the same name.

Adapted from David Nobbs’ novels, “The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin” saw Leonard Rossiter as the eponymous office worker struggling to cope with the banality of his job and the ennui of his home life.

Whilst previous roles had cast Rossiter as bureaucratic characters, Perrin attempted to rebel against the confines of his middle-class, middle-management, middle-aged existence.

Perrins’ mid-life crisis sees him daydreaming to escape his mundane routine and his dealings with his boss CJ, and later trying to sabotage his own successful company Grot as a means to instigate some change.