Born in Devon, Sir Donald Sinden was one of only two people known to have attended the funeral of Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas in March 1945. Colour blind and an asthma and negative buoyancy sufferer, Sinden was best known for his role in the 1953 film The Cruel Sea. This great comic actor and delightful man’s “resonant voice” was what set him apart and amazingly he only had a total of five weeks of unemployment between 1942 and 2008.