Last of the Summer Wine of "Last of the Summer Wine". While presenting an OBE to Roy Clarke in 2002, Prince Charles said that his grandmother, the Queen Mother, had introduced him to the show. The Queen told Dame Thora Hird during a 2001 meeting that "Last of the Summer Wine" was her favourite television programme. A 2003 survey by "Radio Times" found that "Last of the Summer Wine" was the programme readers most wanted to see cancelled. With nearly 12,000 votes in the survey, the show received one-third of the total vote, and twice as many votes as the runner up in the poll,
Last of the Summer Wine especially for Sallis, who liked the character and agreed to play him. He was soon joined by an actor he had previously worked with, Michael Bates as Cyril Blamire. James Gilbert wanted Bates as Blamire because of his reputation as a comedy actor, and Bates loved the role. Compo Simmonite was the last role to be cast in the original trio. Gilbert had seen film actor Bill Owen playing northern characters in the Royal Court Theatre and proposed to cast him as Compo. Clarke, who initially saw Owen as an archetypal cockney who could not play as solid a northern