Actor won renown in Boys from the Blackstuff
Michael Angelis actor b April 29, 1944 d May 30 2020
Michael Angelis, who has died aged 76, was a Liverpudlian actor whose lugubrious style proved equally effective in both drama and comedy; he won his greatest acclaim in the 1980s in the searing television drama Boys from the Blackstuff, and later succeeded Ringo Starr as the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine.
He first gained wide recognition in the long-running BBC sitcom The Liver Birds, joining the cast in 1975 as Lucien, the downbeat, philosophising brother of Carol Boswell (Elizabeth Estensen). Lucien was promoted to the central character in a spinoff film called Me You and Him (1979), and Angelis returned when The Liver Birds was briefly revived in 1996. Carla Lane, the writer of the series, called Angelis ‘‘my favourite Scouser’’, and said of his technique: ‘‘He didn’t have to do funny things to make people laugh, he just had to sit there and sing the words to his own tune.’’
In 1980 Angelis was cast as Chrissie Todd in Alan Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff, an episode of the ‘‘Play for Today’’ series focused on a group of men laying tarmac. The actors worked with a real tarmac gang beforehand: ‘‘We laid a road,’’ Angelis recalled, ‘‘very badly.’’
The characters returned in Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), set in a Liverpool floundering under mass unemployment and apparently forgotten by the government led by Margaret Thatcher.
Bernard Hill gave the most widely discussed performance, as the volatile Yosser Hughes – with his memorable catchphrase ‘‘Gizza job!’’ – but Angelis was superb in the quieter role of Chrissie, emasculated by unemployment and enduring the deterioration of his marriage to Angie (Julie Walters).
In one episode, after a dressing down from Angie, Chrissie lets his usually stoical mask slip to admit how he feels: ‘‘A second-class citizen, a second-rate man with no money, no job and no place.’’ Later on, accused of failing as a provider, he shoots the family’s pet geese.
The series was hailed as a landmark in the portrayal of the reality of workingclass life on television, and the cast were treated as heroes in Liverpool: ‘‘It was like being a pop star,’’ Angelis said.
Angelis had grown up in the Liverpool neighbourhood of Dingle, a few streets away from Ringo Starr, and in 1991 took over from the former Beatle as the narrator of the animation Thomas and Friends, based on the railway stories of the Reverend W Awdry.
Angelis matched Starr’s deadpan but expressive style perfectly and provided voices for every character from the Fat Controller to Toby the Traction Engine, continuing in the job for more than a quarter of a century.
He was born in the Liverpool suburb of Paddington in 1944 (some sources say 1952; Angelis was reticent about the details of his private life). His father was a Greek immigrant; his mother Margaret died when he was small.
Michael’s older brother was the actor and writer Paul Angelis, who became known for his role in Z Cars and, by coincidence, was the voice of Ringo Starr in the Beatles animation Yellow Submarine. In 1985 Michael starred in Paul’s radio play Where Are You Now Margaret McCulla?, inspired by their mother.
Michael returned to Liverpool to work at the Everyman Theatre after studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama in Glasgow. In 1972 he went to London in search of better opportunities and never returned permanently to Liverpool. For many years he lived in Chelsea, where he was a drinking companion of the former Manchester United footballer George Best.
Among dozens of other television appearances, Angelis had guest roles in Coronation Street, Minder, Lovejoy, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Midsomer Murders. His stage roles ranged from Willy Russell’s One for the Road (1987) to Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage in 2001.
After a brief marriage in the 1970s, he married Helen Worth, best known for her long-running role as Gail Platt in Coronation Street, although as an intensely private man he did not enjoy the tabloid press attention that the relationship brought him. After their divorce he married, in 2001, Jennifer Khalastchi, who survives him. – Telegraph Group