In 1958 he created his best-known role, that of Alf Larkin, the resourceful but henpecked cockney husband of battle-axe supreme Peggy Mount in the television series The Larkins, written by Fred Robinson. On television, Kossoff played the Sheriff of Nottingham in a six-episode version of Robin Hood (1953), and the following year he played Morry again in a television production of The Bespoke Overcoat. In the Peter Sellers comedy The Mouse That Roared (1959), Kossoff played Professor Kokintz, a role he reprised in the sequel, Mouse on the Moon (1963), and in John Huston's Freud (1962) he played Freud's father. In Philip Leacock's sensitive tear-jerker Innocent Sinners (1958), he and Barbara Mullen were a kindly, hard-up couple who, with the help of a lonely spinster (Flora Robson) are able to adopt an unruly teenager. His other films included Anthony Asquith's The Young Lovers (1954) and Ralph Thomas's The Iron Petticoat (1956), playing a KGB spy in the Cold War comedy starring Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn. Kossoff's flair for comedy resulted in roles in revue - Stars in Your Eyes (1960) - and pantomime - Baron Hardup in Cinderella (1971) - both shows at the Palladium. Kossoff and his co-star Alfie Bass repeated their acclaimed performances in Jack Clayton's film version in 1955, which won the best short film prize at the Venice Film Festival. At the Arts Theatre in 1953 he created one of his best-remembered parts, that of the conscience-stricken tailor, Morry, in The Bespoke Overcoat, adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from a Gogol short story. He returned to the theatre in 1952 to take over the role of Colonel Ikonenko in Peter Ustinov's comedy The Love of Four Colonels. In August 1945, the Second World War over, he joined the BBC Repertory Company, where he remained for six years, acting in hundreds of radio plays - including the cult sci-fi series Journey into Space.
He made his stage début at the left-wing Unity Theatre in the play Spanish Village (1942), about the Spanish Civil War, remaining with the Unity until 1945, during that time writing and directing many shows performed for members of the services and for people sheltering from air-raids.
After training as a draughtsman at the Northern Polytechnic, he worked as a furniture designer and aircraft draughtsman while privately studying acting. Kossoff was born in 1919 to Russian parents in the East End of London, where his father worked in a garment factory.
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