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The actor Patrick Murray, who died aged 68, became well-known for his portrayal as the character Mickey Pearce, the spiv with a trilby hat who briefly partners with his former schoolmate Rodney Trotter in the classic television comedy Only Fools and Horses.

Early Introduction

He first appeared in the third series in a 1983 episode called Healthy Competition, in which Rodney's ambition to escape serving as a lookout for his brother was instantly thwarted when Mickey deceived him. Del and Rodney were reunited, and Mickey remained a recurring character throughout the last holiday special in 2003.

Character Background

The character had been mentioned several times following the program's launch in 1981, such as in plots where he took Rodney's girlfriend, but hadn't been portrayed originally. As the writer wanted to expand the supporting cast, Ray Butt remembered Murray's appearance in an advertisement, trying to flirt with two women, and recommended him for the part. He auditioned on a Friday and commenced his role within three days.

Mickey was conceived as a less savvy Del Boy, more naive but, in the same vein as Del, frequently experiencing his money-making schemes fall apart. “Mickey will try anything, but he’s not very trustworthy,” Murray once explained. “He’s always stitching Rodney up, and Del regularly warns to thump him for it.” This character consistently mocks Rodney about his lack of girlfriends while exaggerating his dating successes and changing occupations often.

On-Set Incidents

An episode from 1989 was hastily altered after an accident in which the actor stumbled over his dog at home and broke a glass pane, injuring a tendon in his right arm and losing five pints of blood. With Murray's arm in a plaster cast, John Sullivan rewrote the next episode to explain Mickey getting beaten up by neighborhood thugs.

Later Career and Life

The sitcom’s final episode was screened in 1991, but he was one of the cast members who participated in festive specials for another 12 years – and stayed in favor at fan conventions.

Murray was born in Greenwich in London, with a mother named Juana, a dancer, and Patrick, a public transport inspector. He studied at St Thomas the Apostle college in Nunhead. When he was 15, he noticed a notice for a talent agency in the Daily Mirror and within a week had been cast in a stage play. He promptly secured television roles, starting in 1973, aged 16, in Places Where They Sing, a BBC play adapted from a novel about campus protests. This was soon followed, he had a leading role in the children’s adventure serial The Terracotta Horse, shot in Spain and Morocco.

He performed in a short TV play Hanging Around (1978), about disaffected youths, and the movie The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978), featuring Glenda Jackson as a dedicated educator, prior to his major role arrived.

In Scum, a play about the brutal borstal system, he was cast as Dougan, a good-natured inmate whose skill with numbers allowed him to be trusted to deal with cash secretly introduced by visitors, that he gathered on his rounds with a trolley. He was able to lower the “daddy’s” percentage when the character Carlin became the leader.

The production, created for television in 1977, the BBC banned it for its brutal content, but it finally aired in 1991. In the meantime, Alan Clarke turned it into a movie in 1979, with Murray as one of six from the initial cast returning to their parts.

He later took small parts in the films Quadrophenia (1979) and Breaking Glass (1980), and took the role of a bellboy in Curse of the Pink Panther (1983).

Fame in Only Fools and Horses earned him numerous TV roles in that era in programs such as Dempsey and Makepeace, Lovejoy, The Return of Shelley and The Upper Hand. He appeared in two parts in The Bill.

Yet his personal life declined after he managed a pub in Kent in 1998, struggling with drink and eventually finding help from a support group. He went to Thailand, where he tied the knot with Anong in 2016. Not long after, he returned to Britain and worked as a cab driver. He briefly returned to acting in 2019 as a cockney gangster Frank Bridges in the program Conditions, yet to air.

Illness Battle

He was diagnosed with COPD in 2018 and, in 2021, lung cancer and a growth on his liver. Despite being cleared in 2022 following surgery and chemotherapy, the cancer returned soon after.

Family and Relationships

Back in 1981, he got married to Shelley Wilkinson; the union dissolved. His survivors include Anong, his daughter, Josie, and his three boys of his first marriage, Lee, Ricky and Robert, as well as three sisters and two brothers.