Bernard Cribbins

Bernard Cribbins, OBE (born 29 December 1928) is an English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian with a career spanning over seventy years. He came to prominence in films of the 1960s, and has been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid-1950s.

Cribbins narrated The Wombles, a BBC children's television programme that ran for 40 episodes between 1973 and 1975, and played the pretentious guest Mr. Hutchinson in the "The Hotel Inspectors" episode of Fawlty Towers (1975), and the belligerent barman in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). He also recorded several novelty records in the early 1960s and was a regular and prolific performer on the BBC's Jackanory from 1966 to 1991. Having appeared as Tom Campbell, a companion to Dr. Who in the 1966 feature film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., Cribbins also appeared four decades later as Wilfred Mott, a companion to television's Tenth Doctor.

Early life
Born in Derker, Oldham, Lancashire, Cribbins served an apprenticeship at the Oldham Repertory Theatre. In 1947, he interrupted his apprenticeship to undertake national service with the Parachute Regiment in Aldershot and in British-administered Palestine.

Films
Cribbins appeared in films from the early 1950s, mainly comedies. His credits include Two Way Stretch (1960) and The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) with Peter Sellers, Crooks in Cloisters (1964) and three Carry On films – Carry On Jack (1963), Carry On Spying (1964) and Carry On Columbus (1992). Other appearances include the second Doctor Who film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966) as Special Police Constable Tom Campbell; She in 1965; The Railway Children (1970, as Mr Albert Perks, the station porter) and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Frenzy (1972, as Felix Forsythe). Later films include Dangerous Davies – The Last Detective (1981), Blackball (2003) and Run for Your Wife(2012).

Narration and voice work
Cribbins was the narrator of the British animated children's TV series The Wombles from 1973 to 1975 and also narrated a BBC radio adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. He was the celebrity storyteller in more episodes of Jackanory than any other personality, with a total of 114 appearances between 1966 and 1991. He also narrated the audio tape of the Antonia Barber book The Mousehole Cat.

In the 1960s, he provided the voice of the character Tufty in RoSPA road safety films. He also provided the voice of Buzby, a talking cartoon bird that served as the mascot for the then Post Office. He also appeared reduced to OO gauge scale in adverts for Hornby model trains.

Cribbins is also the voice of Harry Bailey, the landlord of the Tabard Inn described by Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, at the Canterbury Tales Attraction in Kent, which he recorded in 1987.

Cribbins also had a short stint doing voiceovers for the Mark and Lard Show on BBC Radio 1 where he would explain made up folk traditions.

Television
Cribbins was the star of the ITV series Cribbins (1969–70). Other TV appearances include The Avengers (1968), Fawlty Towers (1975, as the spoon salesman Mr Hutchinson who is mistaken by the character Basil Fawlty for a hotel inspector), Worzel Gummidge (1980),Shillingbury Tales (1980) and its spin-off Cuffy (1983). Besides voicing The Wombles, Cribbins was a well-known regular on BBC children's television in the 1970s as host of performance panel game Star Turn and Star Turn Challenge. These programmes concluded with Cribbins narrating a detective story as recurring character "Ivor Notion", with a script usually by Johnny Ball but sometimes by Myles Rudge, the co-writer of his Top 10 singles.

Among his later TV appearances are Dalziel and Pascoe (1999), Last of the Summer Wine (2003), Coronation Street (2003, as Wally Bannister) and Down to Earth (2005).

Cribbins currently stars as Jack in the series Old Jack's Boat, set in Staithes, and broadcast on the CBeebies channel starting in 2013. This has featured Helen Lederer, Janine Duvitski and former Doctor Who companion Freema Agyeman in supporting roles. Although Agyeman and Cribbins both played companions and supporting characters during David Tennant's tenure in Doctor Who (appearing in six episodes together), Old Jack's Boat marks the first time the two actors have appeared together on screen.

On 9 May 2015 he gave a reading at VE Day 70: A Party to Remember in Horse Guards Parade, London which was broadcast live on BBC1.

Doctor Who
Having played Tom Campbell, a companion to Dr. Who in the 1966 feature film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., Cribbins returned to the world of Doctor Who in 2006, when a photograph of him and fellow Doctor Who alumnus Lynda Baron at a wedding appeared on the BBC's tie-in website for the television episode "Tooth and Claw".

In January 2007, Cribbins had a guest role as glam rock promoter Arnold Korns in Horror of Glam Rock, a Doctor Who radio play for BBC Radio 7.

In December 2007, Cribbins appeared as Wilfred Mott in the Christmas television special, "Voyage of the Damned"; he then appeared in a recurring capacity as the same character for the 2008 series, as the grandfather of companion Donna Noble. He became a Tenth Doctor companion himself in The End of Time, the two-part 2009–10 Christmas and New Year special, when his character was inadvertently responsible for that Doctor's demise. Cribbins's role as Mott makes him unique, as he is the only actor to have played two companions; and the only actor featured alongside the Doctor's enemies, the Daleks, in both the TV and cinema versions of Doctor Who.

Actors

 * Jackanory (1965-1996) - Storyteller
 * The Wombles (1973-1975) - Narrator
 * The Further Adventures of Noddy (1963–1975) - Narrator
 * The Water Babies (1978) - Mr. Masterman and Eel
 * Oliver (1988) - Additional voices
 * Oliver's Love (1988) - Additional voices
 * Oliver's Christmas Carol (1988) - Additional voices
 * Dennis the Menace (1996-1998) - Katzenburger