Ian Pepperell
Played hotelier Roy Tucker in The Archers and ran a real inn
IAN PEPPERELL, who has died after a long illness aged 53, not only played the hotelier Roy Tucker in the long-running Radio 4 sitcom The Archers, but in real life also ran The Star Inn in Ringwood, Hampshire. He was far from unusual in having a second profession away from the series: Graham Blockley, who played Robert Snell, was a village GP in Surrey, while Charlotte Martin, who is Susan Carter, is a research psychologist.
Pepperell joined the show in 1995, with his teenage character immediately rocking the peace and serenity of Ambridge by getting mixed up with the racist gang who attacked the solicitor Usha Gupta. Tucker was also an unlikely lothario, with a daughter, Phoebe, from a teenage fling with Kate Madikane (Perdita Avery). When Tucker discovered that Kate was planning to take Phoebe to France he obtained a court order requiring his daughter to remain in the UK, demonstrating his parenting skills as a hands-on father.
A couple of years later Tucker met Hayley Jordan (Lucy Davis), asking for her hand in marriage in an emotionally charged New Year’s Eve 2000 proposal that was marred by the return of Kate. They were married by Janet Fisher, Ambridge’s first female vicar, with their daughter Abbie making a dramatic entry when she was born 10 weeks early.
Tucker left his post at the Grey Gables hotel to become manager of Lower Loxley Hall, but a short and embarrassing affair with his boss Elizabeth Pargetter (Alison Dowling) ended both that and his happy-but-dull marriage.
Returning to Grey Gables he met Lexi Viktorova (Ania Sowinski), whose career at Ambridge began as a migrant fruit picker. After becoming a surrogate mother for Adam and Ian, Lexi returned to her native Bulgaria. Tucker then returned to the dating scene, embarking on a thrilling career of Tinder hook-ups, of which he kept track using a spreadsheet.
Pepperell was a sophisticated voice actor, able to hold conflicting emotions in play, and find humour in sad scenes and melancholy in humorous ones. “He captured Roy as both genial and anxious, funny and sad, easy-going and permanently stressed – a man who could hold down with ease a top job, yet who always carried with him Hamlet’s sense of failure,” said Jeremy Howe, editor of The Archers.
Pepperell worked on The Archers for a week out of every month, which allowed him to keep acting on stage. He was always amused that the public, when they met him in real life, expected him to have a rural accent, rather than his clear and gentle BBC tones. “They are always disappointed,” he said. “They imagine Roy to be tall and dark, and I’m small and fair.”
Ian Robert Pepperell was born in Oxford on April 15 1970, the son of James Pepperell and his wife Susan (née Gemmell). He was raised in Ringwood in the New Forest and, like his older brother Derek, was a promising cricketer but “lost my bottle” when facing fast bowlers. “The greatest embarrassment came when I ducked so dramatically I split my trousers,” he recalled.
At the Webber Douglas Academy in London he “did a bit” of radio and by 1995 had been cast in The Archers.
He also had television roles as Michelle Fowler’s drugsmoking lodger Russell for three months in Eastenders
in 1993 and in the police dramas The Bill and Pie in the Sky.
His other credits were largely in theatre, notably in the title role of Hamlet on a 120-date tour in 1996 and in Richard III (1998), which he enjoyed playing in Leicester where the real Richard III met his death. “With Hamlet everyone works around him, but Richard III motivates everything and drives the action. He is so evil and brilliant, nasty and naughty,” he said. The Times critic called it “one of the most exhilarating productions of Richard III I have ever seen”.
Ian Pepperell is survived by his wife, Nikki; they met while working at the Star Inn, becoming sole owners a couple of years ago.