He and
James Bolam appeared to be good friends off-screen as well as on-screen in
The Likely Lads (1964) and
Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (1973). However in reality they had fallen out and not spoken for many years. According to Rodney Bewes' autobiography, "A Likely Story", this stemmed from the time that Bewes mentioned in a newspaper interview the story that when Bolam's wife,
Susan Jameson, broke the news that she was pregnant, as Bolam was driving, he nearly crashed his car. Bolam, a very private person, regarded Bewes' comments in the interview as an unforgivable breach of confidence, even though he had made them in good faith, believing that the story was already public knowledge. However when Bewes died in November 2017 Bolam denied there had been a falling out.
