Compo is a scruffy working-class pensioner, often exploited by the bossy characters played by Michael Bates, Brian Wilde, Michael Aldridge and Frank Thornton for dirty jobs, stunts and escapades, while their indomitably docile friend Norman Clegg, played by Peter Sallis, follows and watches with a smirk.[3] Owen served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during World War II, where he was injured in an explosion during a battle training course.He was "a spry, dry little gnome of a Ko-Ko" for Sadler's Wells Opera in their 1962 Christmas season Mikado, "skimpering through the piece and playing conventional comic tricks".[citation needed] While filming the Last of the Summer Wine French special for the millennium of 2000, Owen fell ill but insisted on continuing despite being in pain; when he got back to England, he was confirmed as having pancreatic and bowel cancer.[8] Owen is buried in the churchyard of St John's Parish Church, Upperthong, near his beloved town of Holmfirth in Yorkshire, the home of Last of the Summer Wine.