BBC Information
BBCTV actor Ray Brooks, who starred in a few of the UK’s best-known programmes in a profession spanning 5 many years, has died aged 86.
Brooks narrated the traditional Nineteen Seventies youngsters’s present Mr Benn and performed the male lead within the ground-breaking Nineteen Sixties BBC drama Cathy Come Residence.
He additionally starred in primetime Eighties programmes Massive Deal, through which he performed loveable rogue gambler Robbie Field, and Operating Wild, because the comedian lead Max Wild.
Brooks additionally turned certainly one of few actors to look in each Coronation Avenue and EastEnders. He performed Norman Philips within the ITV cleaning soap within the Nineteen Sixties, and arrived in Albert Sq. 40 years later to painting Joe Macer, who infamously murdered his spouse Pauline Fowler.
He died on Saturday after a brief sickness, his household instructed the BBC.
In a press release, the actor’s sons Will and Tom stated their dad thought he was greatest recognized for Mr Benn, “with folks regularly asking him to say the catchphrase ‘as if by magic!'”.
The cartoon adopted Mr Benn who, via dressing up in a magical costume store, discovered himself in a brand new journey each episode.
Brooks’s sons added: “Though solely 13 episodes have been made, they have been repeated twice a 12 months for 21 years.”
The record of TV exhibits through which Brooks appeared within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies reads like a run-down of the British small display’s largest hits of the period.
They included roles in Hazard Man, Dixon of Dock Inexperienced, Emergency-Ward 10, The Avengers, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Z Automobiles.
He additionally had quite a lot of movie successes, together with within the 1965 movie The Knack… and Learn how to Get It, which gained the Palme D’Or on the Cannes Movie Competition.
He performed Georgio, the waiter within the crumbling resort, in Carry On Overseas in 1972, and in addition appeared within the 1966 Dr Who film Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.
Brooks additionally loved appearances within the theatre, together with Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Buddies alongside Richard Briers, Peter Bowles and Phyllida Regulation. He additionally starred reverse Felicity Kendal in Tom Stoppard’s On The Razzle.
His most acclaimed position got here early in his profession when he performed Reg within the gritty BBC TV play Cathy Come Residence, which chronicled Britain’s housing scarcity within the late Nineteen Sixties.
Directed by Ken Loach and filmed in a documentary model, it adopted a younger couple’s battle with homelessness. It’s often cited as one of the influential TV broadcasts of all time.
However arguably Brooks’s largest mainstream successes got here within the Eighties, with two successive primetime main roles.
In Massive Deal, his character Robbie Field seeks to make a residing taking part in poker and betting on horses and canine – whereas making an attempt to maintain his relationship collectively together with his associate Jan, performed by Sharon Duce.
The fast-talking Londoner turned certainly one of TV’s best-loved working-class characters in an period of Del Boy Trotter and Arthur Daley
Duce went on to look in an episode of Operating Wild, Brooks’s subsequent large hit – the place he switched channels to ITV for a sitcom a few former Teddy Boy going via a mid-life disaster.
His fashionable partnership with Duce was revived by the BBC in 1992’s Rising Pains, which noticed the pair play a pair who turn into foster dad and mom.
All through his profession his unmistakeable voice noticed him land a number of roles as narrator, together with the beloved youngsters’s present Mr Benn, The Pickwick Papers and 30 episodes studying the tales to younger viewers in Jackanory.
He additionally voiced hundreds of adverts for firms together with Guinness, Whiskas, Marmite and R Whites Lemonade.
Will BrooksNonetheless, his sons stated Brooks “shunned the limelight” in actual life.
They stated: “His three true loves have been household [he also had a daughter Emma, who died in 2003], Fulham Soccer Membership, and spending time in Brighton, the place he was born.
He was among the many superstar Fulham followers who fought towards the membership’s proposed merger with QPR within the Eighties – and son Will recalled that Brooks even wore a “Save Fulham” badge throughout an interview on Wogan on the time.
The household revealed that he had spent the previous few years residing with dementia however died peacefully on Saturday together with his household at his bedside.
