Gerald Campion, who has died aged 81, had one of the best-known faces on British children's television in the 1950s. As cake-munching, pop-guzzling Billy Bunter, he starred in the BBC series set in Greyfriars public school from 1953 until 1961, spanning 120 episodes, and was getting on for 40 when he stopped playing author Frank Richards's boastful, greedy boy. He first got the part at the age of 16, when he was still at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, after a screen test at Elstree, but the company went bankrupt and the film was never made.
Some actors become so closely identified with one role that all other work is overshadowed - the Long John Silver of Robert Newton, the Ernie Bilko of Phil Silvers. So it was with Campion; after his stint as Bunter he acted far less frequently, and devoted more time to running restaurants and West End clubs. He did score one other notable television success, as Mr Toad, but Toad, in his portliness, vainglorious delusions and self-absorption, is something of a batrachian Bunter.
Frank Richards (the pseudonym of writer Charles Hamilton) created Bunter in 1908. The "Fat Owl of the Remove" found fame through comics and dozens of novels, and the indefatigable Richards scripted all the television shows, although he was by then in his 80s. The series died with him in 1961.
Even in the 1950s, Greyfriars School seemed to represent a lost world, and this perhaps took some of the harm out of a central idea that would be unacceptable as comedy today, other than in ironic terms - a cowardly, cunning, mendacious, friendless boy, the object of continual derision, who is defined by his obesity. Grange Hill it wasn't. The snobbery was as gross as Bunter's belly; his parents were nouveau riche, which also set him apart from the other boys at Greyfriars.
That said, Campion was marvellous in the role, with his pince-nez, check trousers, bow-tie and yelps of "Yaroo!" and "Oh crikey!" and "Leggo, you beasts!" as he was tormented by snooty fellow-pupils Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry and Hurree Jam Ram Singh, impersonated by, among many others, fresh-faced lads Michael Crawford, David Hemmings, Anthony Valentine and Melvyn Hayes. Bunter's nemesis, schoolmaster Mr Quelch ("Bend over, you wretched boy"), was played by, among others, Kynaston Reeves.
Gerald Campion was not a particularly overweight man, but he had a perfectly round face and, padded-up, was nimble enough to perform energetic chases and slapstick falls. He mostly eschewed pathos, playing his waddling wastrel as a grimacing, pratfalling pantomime character. One remembers him sharing a large cream cake with another boy - Campion delicately cutting off a modest sliver, then leaving it on the plate while he crammed the rest into his mouth.
Each episode in the 1953 series was live and enacted twice, at 5.40pm for younger viewers and then again at 8pm for the more mature. According to Michael Winner, Campion used amphetamines - then called "purple hearts" - to get through the ordeal.
Campion made a number of other film and television appearances. In 1958 he had a showy part in Carry On Sergeant, but was not retained for the rest of the series. He was in The Pickwick Papers (1952) as, of course, the Fat Boy, and he had small parts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and Half A Sixpence (1967). On television he played Shada in a 1992 Dr Who series and was Mr Raymond in Great Expectations (1989).
In the 1950s he opened the Key Club on London's Dean Street, a discreet watering hole for fellow actors, and a little later Gerry's Club on Shaftesbury Avenue. His daughter, Angelica, runs the cult monthly club Pinky Poo's Experience at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill.
Last year an 80th birthday party in London was planned, but Campion, who had undergone heart surgery, was too frail to make the journey from the south of France, where he lived with his second wife, Susan, to whom he was married for 40 years.
· Gerald Campion, actor, born April 23 1921; died July 9 2002