Chances are that if you happen to be British and over the age of at least 20, you'll have seen at least one Carry On film, as they're repeated incessantly on weekend afternoon TV. For the rest of you, the Carry On films were an enormous series of extremely campy British comedy films with a cast that most notably included Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor and Sid James. James was known as often being one of the focal characters of most of the films, and was the archetypal dirty old man, even long before he was old enough to be considered as such. In his final years, James was plagued with ill health and had suffered a heart attack which inspired him to quit smoking excessively and majorly cut down on alcohol intake. Sadly though, it barely prolonged his life, as in 1976, at just 62 years old, the comedian suffered a second, fatal heart attack, whilst performing in the farce The Mating Season - he collapsed on stage. His lack of responses to either scripted or ad libbed lines from co-star Olga Lowe was misinterpreted by the audience as being part of the act, and was greeted with warm laughter from the crowd. The curtain was eventually dropped in order to get medical attention to James, all to no avail. For those ghostly-inclined, it is said that James haunts the dressing room of the Sunderland Empire Theatre, thanks largely due to his close friend Les Dawson refusing to play there after feeling deeply unsettled at a performance not long after James' death.
