Peter Sallis Farewell to the last of TV’s Summer Wine cast
LAST Of The Summer Wine star Peter Sallis has died aged 96, it was announced yesterday.
Sallis found fame playing Norman “Cleggy” Clegg in the long-running BBC comedy but then became a hit with a new generation as the voice of cheese-loving Wallace in the animation series Wallace and Gromit.
The legendary actor’s agent yesterday said Sallis died peacefully with his family by his side last Friday at the Denville Hall retirement home for actors in London.
Last night Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park paid tribute, saying: “I’m so sad, but feel so grateful and privileged to have known and worked with Peter over so many years. He was always my first and only choice for Wallace.
“He brought his unique gift and humour to all that he did and encapsulated the very British art of the droll and understated.
Fabulous
“Working with Peter was always a delight and I will miss his wry, unpredictable humour and silliness – that started the moment he greeted you at the door and didn’t stop when the mic was switched off.”
Invoking a Wallace catchphrase, comedy actor Paddy McGuinness wrote on Twitter: “RIP the great Peter Sallis. #CrackingToast.”
’Allo ’Allo! actress Vicki Michelle tweeted: “Sad to hear about Peter Sallis. Fabulous actor... Somehow ageless, a lovely man.”
In recent years the actor had been stricken by macular degeneration which forced his retirement.
He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2007 for services to drama.
His role as flat-capped philosopher Cleggy in Last of the Summer Wine made him the longest-serving cast member of the world’s longestrunning sitcom.
Sallis appeared in the first episode in 1973 and even had the final word in the last-ever show in 2010.
His death is the last of the original trio of stars. Michael Bates died in 1978 and Bill Owen in 1999.
Sallis was born in Twickenham, west London, but it was his northern accents that brought joy to millions of viewers. Having worked in a bank after leaving school, he joined the RAF at the outbreak of the Second World War where he became a wireless mechanic and taught radio procedures at RAF Cranwell, Lincs.
It was during his four years’ service that Sallis became involved in amateur dramatics when one of his students offered him a lead role.
After the war he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his first appearance on the London stage in 1946.
Sallis became an acclaimed stage actor in the 1950s and 1960s, starring with Dame Judi Dench in the first West End version of Cabaret in 1968, and appeared in numerous British films. He married Elaine Usher in 1957 and the couple had one son Crispian. She died aged 84 last year.
Sallis’s life changed for ever when he was cast in a pilot for Last Of The Summer Wine.
But he achieved fresh success in 1989 when he became the voice of eccentric, Wensleydale cheese-loving inventor Wallace in Aardman Animation’s A Grand Day Out.
The film won a BAFTA and was followed by the Oscar-winning stop motion films The Wrong Trousers in 1993 and A Close Shave in 1995.
The characters were temporarily retired in 1996, but Sallis returned to voice Wallace in several short films and in the 2005 Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit for which he won an Annie Award for Voice Acting in a Feature Production.
However it was in 2008 that the actor finally revealed a secret disagreement with his character.
He confessed: “I have to admit, I am not really a big cheese fan.
“I certainly haven’t got the passion Wallace has for it.
“I don’t even know if I’ve ever eaten Wensleydale cheese, I haven’t touched the stuff for decades. I’d much prefer a nice piece of cake.”