Whatsisname Smith

Whatsisname Smith turns up in the world of Rentaghost as one more spectral hire at Hindenberg Studios' ghost-staffing agency, a figure whose very name is the joke: nobody, least of all him, seems quite sure who he is. He drifts through scenes with the mild bewilderment of a man perpetually one beat behind his own introduction.

The character works because the premise does all the heavy lifting before he even opens his mouth — a ghost whose identity has been reduced to a shrug is a tidy piece of English music-hall silliness. Kenneth Connor, a veteran of exactly this kind of confident befuddlement, plays him with the comic conviction that makes a throwaway gag feel like a fully formed person.