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Joan Adams writes: During the early 1980s, the actor Frank Jarvis (obituary, 29 October) brought joy into many people's lives when he did some voluntary work at a children's home in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where I was a residential social worker. Every so often he would turn up at the home and there would be delighted shouts of: "Frank's here! Frank's here!"

He was kind and funny, gentle and affectionate, and very, very entertaining. It didn't matter what he did, whether it was whistling, singing Gilbert and Sullivan or serving supper in the style of whichever character the children wanted – usually a short-tempered cockney sergeant major. Frank always made us laugh and raised our spirits, and the children and staff loved him.

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Actor best known for his role as one of the Italian Job gang

Frank Jarvis, who has died suddenly aged 69, was a prolific actor with a particular commitment to theatre. He did, however, have a minor claim to film immortality as one of the gang of cockney villains, led by Michael Caine, who pull off a robbery, but do not quite get away with it, in The Italian Job (1969). Greeted upon its initial release as merely one of many caper movies (a view that persists in the Us), repeated television screenings in Britain have given it status as a minor classic.

Jarvis's role was as a getaway driver, well-dressed and continually smoking. It was representative of his screen work during the 60s and 70s, which almost always centred on crime, whether he was cast as crook or copper. He was thin-faced and slim of build, with dark hair slicked down by Brylcreem,...