Sgt. Arthur Wilson

Sergeant Wilson is Captain Mainwaring's deputy in the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, though you'd never guess it from his manner — languid, apologetic, forever prefacing orders with "would you mind awfully." Well-spoken and faintly posher than his boss, he drifts through parade ground chaos with raised eyebrows and no visible urgency, wanting mostly to be left alone.

The joke is structural: a socially superior man taking orders from his social inferior, and Le Mesurier plays it with such unbothered, sleepy charm that the class comedy never curdles into cruelty. His whole performance is done in murmurs and pauses — the funniest thing he does is barely react at all, which somehow makes Mainwaring's bluster funnier too.