He worked on some of the early Python episodes, then later with Cleese on Fawlty Towers. RIP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/arts/television/john-howard-davies-tv-comedy-producer-dies-at-72.html?_r=1&hpwJohn Howard Davies, who as a sweet-faced, trembling-lipped child actor played the title role in the 1948 David Lean film “Oliver Twist” and who went on to become a producer and director of some of British television’s most popular comedies, including “Fawlty Towers,” died on Monday at his home in Blewbury in southern England. He was 72.
The cause was cancer, his son, William, told The Associated Press.
John Davies was 8 when Lean chose him to play Oliver, the mistreated orphan who asks for a second helping of gruel at the workhouse (“Please, sir, I want some more”), is cast into the street and is later taken to the lair of Fagin (Alec Guinness), the needle-nosed old man who schools boys in picking pockets.