Roy Skelton, the actor who died on June 8 aged 79, provided the voices for many characters on British television over nearly 50 years, notably Zippy and George, the much-loved puppets in the popular children’s television show Rainbow; he was also one of the original Daleks in Dr Who.
Created by Pamela Lonsdale for pre-school children and presented for most of its run by Geoffrey Hayes, Rainbow centred around the antics of Zippy, a loud-mouthed creature of indeterminate species with a rugby ball for a head and a zip for a mouth; George, a shy, pink and slightly camp hippopotamus; and Bungle, a nosy brown bear (played by John Leeson, then Stanley Bates). The episodes usually involved some kind of squabble between the puppet characters and Geoffrey Hayes’s attempts to calm them down.
Skelton joined the ITV show in the 1970s, performing Zippy and George for 22 years until it came to an end in 1992; he also wrote many of the scripts. He claimed to have based the voice of the domineering Zippy on a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Ian Paisley and remembered many hilarious moments — “like when Bungle had a terrible wind problem and tried to blame everyone else”. Hayes recalled Skelton as being particularly good when Zippy and George were having an argument: “It sounded like he’d double-tracked it as they seemed to be talking over each other. It was a wonderful technique. ”
Although Skelton’s voices were familiar to millions, as his real identity remained hidden behind layers of cardboard, foam and fur, he never became a celebrity. “I can walk down the street and no one knows who I am,” he told an interviewer. “People don’t say, 'There’s Zippy’, or ask me to say, 'Exterminate!’ I sometimes wish they did.”
Born in Oldham on July 20 1931, Roy Skelton joined the National Association of Boys’ Clubs Travelling Theatre straight from school and worked at the Oldham Coliseum before training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. After repertory work in Bristol, he appeared in several plays in the West End (including Oh! My Papa! and Chrysanthemum) and got his first television role as Lampwick in Pinocchio. He went on to appear in repertory theatre all over the country before landing parts in Music for You and Quick Before They Catch Us, on the BBC.
An opportunity to voice the grumpy Mr Growser character in the BBC’s rod puppet version of Toytown led to his career providing voice characterisations. Among other roles, he was Sossidge the dog in Picture Book and the Lord Chamberlain and King Boris in Gordon Murray’s Rubovian Legends. Beginning with The Evil of the Daleks, he was a Dalek between 1967 and 1988, uttering such classic lines as “You will be exterminated!” and “That is an order! Obey!” He also provided voices for the Cybermen and the Krotons.
No comments:
Post a Comment