Granville (Open All Hours)

Granville was born to Arkwright's sister, who died while Granville was a young child, leaving Arkwright as his sole guardian. Granville's father's identity is not known, as his mother is implied to be a woman of loose morals, and Arkwright considers him to have likely been Hungarian. Raised alone by Arkwright, Granville is often curious and engrossed in thoughts about who his father was and saddened not to have known his mother.

Although a kind provider (as long as it isn't too stressful on his wallet), Arkwright's miserly and eccentric personality makes him withdraw Granville from school and he starts helping in his uncle's shop at age eleven. The tedious routine weighs heavily on Granville, who hates getting up well before dawn and not being free until nine at night. He is poorly paid, at £3 a week, and is made to pay for anything he helps himself to from the shop shelves, even if Arkwright gave it to him. He is curious and anxious to explore the outside world and mingle with his peers, especially girls. Granville spends most of the day dreaming of being elsewhere or doing something else, a custom which is seen as alien in the working class Yorkshire environment. Granville seems fairly sharp and quick witted, and is often quick to make satirical jokes about Arkwright's stammer or mannerisms whilst he will often flippantly make fun at customers to their faces, all of them seemingly being too unintelligent to realise this.

Unlike his uncle who is a practical, miserly man, Granville is a carefree man, yet is treated as if he is still a child. His exact age is never revealed, though in Series Two (set in 1981), one of the characters, Gordon, mentions a Hungarian man who visited the area in the late-1940s.

Granville's mundane existence is only brightened up by the milkwoman (Barbara Flynn), the only person other than Arkwright who is awake at the same time as him in the mornings. Despite his attraction to her, she is more worldly wise than he is (having previously been married) and likes men of the same calibre as herself, but she is generally sympathetic towards Granville and they have kissed on several occasions.

By the time of Still Open All Hours, Arkwright has long died and Granville has inherited the shop as promised by Arkwright, and has a son, Leroy. Despite their radically different personalities and views on life, however, Granville has become a toned-down version of Arkwright in his old age, such as light-heartedly mocking Leroy over his mother's identity, and attempting to make money out of every customer who walks into the shop, even by telling fibs about certain items such as anchovy paste. At one point, Granville opens a bottle of whisky to pour a drink for a promoter, and then charges him for the whole bottle. As a tribute, Granville keeps a framed photograph of Arkwright in the kitchen. He occasionally speaks to the photo as if speaking to Arkwright, and continues to mock his late uncle's stutter as a joke. Throughout the series, Granville attempts to pursue a romantic relationship with Mavis, one of Arkwright's more indecisive and now-divorced customers who reciprocates Granville's feelings, but they are often stopped by Madge, Mavis's bitter sister. In response, Granville tries to set Madge up with Gastric, an overweight handyman who initially repulses Madge, though she gradually warms up to him. Granville's more frequent but reluctant customers include Wet Eric, Cyril, Mrs Hussein, Mrs Rossi, and Mrs Featherstone, who now has her eyes on Granville, to his dismay, but soon starts to intrude on the life of Wilburn Newbold, failing to detect that he is not interested, though Newbold often falls for Granville's ploys to keep him and Mrs Featherstone together so she will keep her eyes off him. At one point in the series, Granville is visited by Linda, Leroy's mother, who asks about her son's wellbeing. After she leaves, however, Granville does not tell Leroy, in order to stop him pursuing his mother and possibly ending up heartbroken. In the final episode of the sixth series, Granville proposes to Mavis, who accepts.

• Open All Hours at the bbc.co.uk Guide to Comedy
• Open All Hours at the British Film Institute
• Granville at the BFI's Screenonline
• Open All Hours on IMDb