Alf's education in Stoke Newington, where he lived and later worked, was ended by the outbreak of the Second World War. A month earlier he had been addressed at his barmitzvah by Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld at the Adath Yisrael Burma Road shul.
Eager for self-reliance, he delivered papers for WH Smith. With the £5 he saved up in his first three months he bought his first musical instrument, a George Formby banjo. At 14 he began entertaining for family and friends. During the blitz he and his brother, Les-lie, put on shows in air raid shelters.
Soon he was working for his father's clothing factory in Albion Road but after it was bombed out, the family went into scrap metal. At 16, Alf was given almost full responsibility when his father became ill and died three years later.
Some of the characters he had to deal with were extremely dodgy, if not outright villains. As normal business resumed after the war, he returned to the Albion Road factory and eventually became a director of N Fogel and Sons, making children's clothing.
Joining St John's Wood Jewish Youth Club, he played in its football team in 1951. The club started a weekly in-house cabaret and Alf took part in its first show, Sauce Chutzpah, in 1954. It was so successful that they put on a benefit performance at the Whitehall Theatre.
Alf developed the concept and put on Old Time Chutzpah at the Fortune Theatre in 1958, launching his alternative career and a series of characters: Reuben Hood, Grob Roy, Sinbad the Tailor and Captain Lawnmower.
He then picked up his pen and wrote 14 songs and the entire book of Mine Fair Sadie, which ran for a succession of Sundays at Wyndham's Theatre before transferring to the Royalty, Kingsway.
In 1967, following Israel's Six-Day War, he made a whirlwind tour of military bases around Israel. The highlight of the tour was entertaining 500 Israeli soldiers in King Hussein of Jordan's palace in East Jerusalem.
Beneficiaries of his shows included the forerunners of both Jewish Care and World Jewish Relief, Ravenswood (now part of Norwood), Norwood itself, the London Children's Hospital under Barts, Imperial Cancer Research, National Heart Hospital and, later, the Jewish Association for the Mentally Ill.
He appeared at fundraisers at the London Palladium, Victoria Palace and Prince of Wales. Although often asked and sometimes tempted to turn professional, he kept the day job. As he said after his daughter was born, her first words were: "I've got nothing to wear," and he wanted to supply her needs.
More recently he gathered his old troupe together to make a CD, Sherlock Hyams, to benefit Jewish Care in 2003, and The Strudel Prince in 2005.
He married Stephanie Michaels in 1969. He is survived by her, his daughter Samantha, son Robert, and two grandchildren.
A flavour of Fogel
Unassuming and brimming with ideas, Alf Fogel combined a surreal sense of situation with a rich vein of Yiddish humour.
One of his classic scenes had a man lying on a railway line, clutching a salt beef sandwich.
"My wife and children have left me, my business has gone mechulla," he moans to his friend. "But why the salt beef sandwich?" - "You can starve waiting for a train."
The Teitlebaum File starts with the phone ringing as Fogel reclines, feet up, watching Match of the Day or, at least, listening to the signature tune.
Picking up the receiver, he intones: "This is a recorded message. The cheque is in the post," then drops it and returns to his TV screen.
On Michael Freedland's radio programme, You Don't Have To Be Jewish, he dreamt up a Purimspiel stetl set in rural Hertfordshire.Its community life included an overworked midwife ("I'm too busy, I don't deliver"), the Sheitel Express service and, best of all, the village hunt.
"We don't sound a hunting horn. No, we use a shofar. One tekiah and we're off."
"You hunt foxes?" asked interviewer Freedland.
"Nah. You catch a fox and what do you get? Perhaps a fox collar. No, we hunt chickens. You get a lovely meal and lots of soup."
There was just one snag: "The shochet. He gets his kapote caught in the reins and keeps falling off."
