Count Arthur Strong

Steve Delaney (born 1954) is an English comedian and character actor, best known for his comedy character Count Arthur Strong on BBC Radio 4 and then a television sitcom broadcast on BBC2 and BBC1.

Delaney was born in Leeds, where his father was a foundryman and his mother a seamstress. He left school to work on a market stall in Leeds Indoor Market, taking roles in amateur dramatics. After some theatre workshop courses, headed by David Morton, the then Leeds Education Authority Inspector for Drama, Delaney had a period at Jacob Kramer College of Art. After leaving he worked briefly for a commercial and industrial photographer and as a commercial artist. After crewing many shows at the Leeds Grand Theatre he became an assistant stage manager at the Leeds Playhouse and then Stage Manager for Leeds Theatre in Education in his native city, and then a theatre carpenter at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter. In 1979 he enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, graduating in 1982. To support himself he also worked as a carpenter and his agent would sometimes fix up the occasional carpentry job for him as well as acting roles. Whilst at Central he first hit upon the idea of a character that went on to become Count Arthur Strong.

The fictional character Count Arthur Strong is an elderly, pompous, mostly out-of-work, deluded thespian from Doncaster, Yorkshire who appears to suffer from attention deficit disorder and memory loss. He is apt to use malapropisms in his attempts to sound educated. Count Arthur played Dickie Bow, the acting pool for the entire BBC in The Remains of Foley and McColl in 2000. He appeared in Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!, a series that was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 from 2005 to 2012, and is the central character in the BBC2 sitcom Count Arthur Strong, which first aired on 8 July 2013.

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