Reg Varney won worldwide success with a number of television series, but he was best known for his portrayal of Stan Butler, an irrespressibly cheerful bus driver in On the Buses, a long-running 1960s situation comedy.

Butler and his buck-toothed sidekick Jack Harper, the conductor or “clippie”, played by Bill Grant, laughed and joked their way along a bus route through a fictional Essex town. They ducked and dived as Inspector Blakey, played by Stephen Lewis with popping eyes and toothbrush moustache, was forever trying to get them sacked for lateness, untidiness and chatting up attractive young females.

Varney’s character struck a chord as much for looking after his family and being loyal to his mates as for his cheek. And much to the delight of audiences he almost always got the better of the inspector, eliciting Blakey’s famous catchphrase at the end of each show: “I ‘ate you Butler.”

There were 74 episodes of On the Buses on ITV from 1969-1973. The show was panned by the critics but proved popular with audiences because, as one admirer put it, “it was about working-class people who were proud to be working-class.”

Hammer Productions tapped into the success by making three spin-off films — On the Buses (1971), which was the biggest-earning British film of the year, surpassing Diamonds are Forever. Mutiny on the Buses followed in 1972 and Holiday on the Buses in 1973. Of the three feature films made, the first brought a complaint from the British Safety Council, which feared emulation of a compressed-air tube put inside Varney’s trousers.

The format of the show was sold to NBC in the US where it was remade as Lotsa Luck between 1973-74. A stage version of On the Buses toured Australia in 1988 and a reprieve of the series, to be called Back on the Buses, was mooted by London Weekend Television in 1990. The original cast even appeared on a chat show hosted by Terry Wogan to promote it but it was never made. The enduring popularity of the characters was seen as recently last month, however, when Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse created a spoof sketch of the sitcom on their show Harry and Paul.

Reg Alfred Varney served a thirty-year apprenticeship in the vanished world of the variety circuit before going on the buses. He was born in Canning Town in the East End of London in 1916 with a heart condition that was worsened by double pneumonia when only nine months old.

During one period of convalescence at Seaford, East Sussex, he delighted the nurses by playing the piano — and surprised himself, as he had never been allowed near so sacred an object in the parlour at home. If there were moments later in life when he felt troubled about not having received any formal musical training, he was always able to tell himself “So what? Neither had Art Tatum and Erroll Garner.”

The child was in demand at the Saturday-night parties where friends and relations gathered, each chipping in for the food and beer to fortify choruses of Whistling Rufus and Indian Queen. Money was tight, and the threat of unemployment increasing, so education was a matter of living by one’s wits. As Varney recalled: “When nearing school-leaving age, which in those days was 14, we were taught to compose a letter to apply for a job.” Varney’s letter writing skill got him a job as a messenger in the Imperial Wireless and Cable Company, near a music shop with an array of piano-accordions in the window. His parents bought him one and soon Reg became an adept player. Social club bookings followed and his ability to weather mishaps revealed a gift for comedy, and increased his earning power.

With the offer of a week at the Queen’s Hotel, Southend, he was set for a professional debut — until he and a tuberculous saxophonist arrived to find that it was a fleapit where the resident banjoist and a couple of heavies pinched most of the takings. Varney nearly went straight home. Instead he and the saxophonist went busking. A week later, and £20 to the good, Varney went back to London and played workingmen’s clubs before winning an audition to join the variety circuit.

Varney was invariably in work, despite the economic woes of 1930s Britain, with an act that revolved around a piano, an accordion, good jokes and some well-received sketches. A break came with a stint at the Windmill but it was promptly halted by war, during which he served first in the reserved hand-lacerating occupation of metalworker. He was called to join the artillery in 1942 and emerged a fully fledged comedian, as, among others, did Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan.

He married in 1943. “Reg never proposed,” his wife, Lily, later recalled. “People didn’t. They just took marriage for granted when you had been going steady”. To start with the couple lived in two rooms above her parents’ home and, to be sure of regular income, Lily clubbed together with some relations to buy an old house in Ramsgate which they renovated and ran as a boarding house. Meanwhile Varney was heading for the top of the bill in an act with Benny Hill. There were four years of this, and seasons of panto at venues including the Golders Green Hippodrome and the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, where, in a version of Dick Whittington, he was knocked out by a mistimed punch.