James "Corky" Corcoran

James Corcoran (nicknamed "Corky") is the narrator or partial narrator of the short stories in the Ukridge series. A struggling freelance author, he serves as the biographer for the many escapades of his best friend, the trouble-making Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, - whether they be schemes Corky has been reluctantly coerced into helping with, or reminiscences from Ukridge's past.

Physical Appearance
Corky’s physical appearance is almost never strictly described, but much can be inferred from Ukridge’s repeated borrowing of his clothes. Given that Ukridge is described as being six foot two and stout in Love Among the Chickens, and Corky mentions in “Ukridge’s Dog College” that they are roughly the same build, we can only conclude that Corky, too, is a stout, six foot two young man. This is corroborated further by Corky expressing ire in “First Aid for Dora” that the dress clothes Ukridge pilfered from him fit him perfectly - the same story in which Corky struggles mightily to fit into the too-small clothes of a deceased “slim-boned aristocrat”. (Strangely, all official magazine illustrations that depict Ukridge at proper height and stoutness draw Corky as smaller and slighter than Ukridge, despite the fact that this would make the rampant clothes-borrowing entirely impossible.) His clothes, too, are rarely elaborated upon, but in “Dog College” Ukridge claims that his “soft collar” and “squash hat” would make his aunt think Corky was “worldly”, an allegation Corky denies. Corky also believes himself to be “not handsome”, but overall having "not such a bad sort of face" with "a sort of something about it", when assessing his appearance in Aunt Julia’s mirror in “Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner”. In "Debut", he states that he had just turned twenty-seven years old.

Personality
Corky's acerbic wit, however, is not backed up with a very strong spine, as he is just as weak to Millie and the buttercup girl’s persuasion as he is to the many, many persuasions of Ukridge.

While Corky’s frequent insults and expressions of frustration and anger, both internal and external, might suggest a dislike of Ukridge, he nonetheless never fails to call Ukridge his friend, both when talking to others and in his own narration. In "Dog College", he expresses genuine distress both at Ukridge's misery and the thought of not getting to see him, and, despite his better judgement, the idea of Ukridge being forced to settle down and become respectable saddens Corky greatly. When Battling Billson asks in “The Return of Battling Billson” if Corky had seen Ukridge recently, Corky replies that he sees Ukridge almost every day; and when George Tupper demands that Corky get Ukridge out of his accidental engagement in “No Wedding Bells For Him”, only for Corky to reply that he’s busy, George retorts that Corky only writes about once a week, and spends all the rest of his time "loaf[ing] about with Ukridge". Later stories, where Corky is present only as a framing device, still lend themselves to close friendship - seeing a movie together, or staying in Corky’s cottage together in the countryside - and even though the angel on his shoulder tells him his wallet will regret it, the very last story, "Ukridge Starts a Bank Account", has Corky deliberately approaching Ukridge in the street to say hello.