Private James Frazer is a fictional Home Guard platoon member and undertaker portrayed by John Laurie on the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army.

Personality

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Private Frazer is a trouble-stirring, exaggerating, wild-eyed Scottish undertaker. He is notoriously miserable, even to the extent that in the episode If the Cap Fits..., Captain Mainwaring once let Frazer (or 'Taffy' as he is often called by Private Walker) take charge of the platoon for a few days, which made him even more exceedingly arrogant than before.

He has a Machiavellian tendency to doubt people and their situations, and when (if) they triumph, he will alter his position with "I never doubted you for a second", just to make sure he's never wrong. A prime example of this is his attitude in the episode Branded, where he coaxes the others into ignoring Private Godfrey because he sees him as a coward, but changes his position when it turns out he was a hero.

He was a Chief Petty Officer (and cook) in the Navy during WW1, and since then has become an Undertaker (it was a skill he had on his hands), he hails from the "wild and lonely" Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.

His main rivalry is with the other ageing members in the platoon, notably Corporal Jones, who fights back, and Private Godfrey, who doesn't. He has a tendency to make up potentially interesting and long winded stories that end disappointingly such as "The Story of the Old, Empty Barn" and about his unfortunate friends, Wally and Jethro, who met their dooms at the hands of a giant squid, and a witch doctor's long-lived curse respectively. He is also a master of changing mood, for instance in Menace from the Deep when he gives a frightening speech about how the wind in the pier girders sounds like the "lost souls of ancient mariners drowned in the deep", then announces that he did that speech at the Amateur Dramatics Society, and that he was "the best thing in it".

He will often find the time to mention in predicaments that it is "a terrible way to die", when his friends are in peril, and "we're doomed" when peril is awaiting them - much to Mainwaring's annoyance.

Dad's Army characters | Fictional Scots