The chuckling storyteller who entranced millions of children... but was so sad he couldn’t have any of his own
Bernard Cribbins was the busiest lazy man in britain. The actor whose chuckling voice was beloved by generations of children insisted he’d rather be fishing, or playing cricket, than performing.
but in an extraordinary career spanning more than 70 years, he never stopped working. From starring roles in The railway Children to the Carry Ons, as a storyteller on Jackanory and narrating The Wombles, winning critical plaudits at the national Theatre or supplying star cameos in Fawlty Towers and Tales Of The Unexpected, Cribbins — who has died aged 93 — was one of the nation’s most recognisable comic actors.
a full list of every role, since he first broke through as Tommy Traddles in an adaptation of dickens’s david Copperfield in 1956, would fill two pages of this paper.
We’d run our fingers down the columns, exclaiming, ‘Good Lord, was he in the original Casino royale with Peter sellers? i’d forgotten about new Tricks . . . and The
avengers . . . and yes, he was Wally bannister in Coronation street.’
That’s not to mention the hit singles he recorded with beatles producer George Martin, including right said Fred (decades later, the Fairbrass brothers borrowed the name for their novelty duo) and Hole in The Ground.
and doctor Who fans will always celebrate him as Wilfred Mott, the man who took on a legion of daleks with a paintball gun. He also had the rare distinction of battling the upside-down dustbins on the big screen, in the movie daleks’ invasion earth 2150ad with Peter Cushing.
Cribbinsdescribed himself in his 2018 autobiography as a ‘character actor, fisherman, former paratrooper, catwalk model and purveyor of the odd story’. He was incapable of finishing a sentence without slipping in a gag — his capacity for anecdotes was legendary.
One typical tale described a day during the blitz in 1940, when the 12-year-old bernard spotted a German bomber over Oldham in Lancashire. as the anti-aircraft guns opened up, he and the town’s children chased after the aircraft, scooping up red-hot shards of shrapnel — the main form of schoolboy currency.
For weeks afterwards, the playground was a scene of furious negotiations: ‘i’ll swap you my nose cone for a bag of sherbet and your unexploded bomb!’
That juvenile enthusiasm and streak of exuberant silliness underpinned all his performances.
He never lost his sense of kinship with children, something that made him a mesmerising reader on the bbC1 storytime programme, Jackanory.
He made 112 appearances, more than any other narrator. Memorable tales included Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and alice’s adventures in Wonderland — as well as playing bilbo baggins to read The Hobbit. ‘i used to look straight into the camera lens,’ he said, ‘ and imagine there was just one little boy or girl — just one — sitting patiently but expectantly waiting for me to tell them a story.’
The great sadness of his life was that he and wife Gill couldn’t have children. They met at Oldham’s Colisseum repertory theatre in 1952, where he was stage manager and she was his assistant — though he admitted: ‘she couldn’t stand the sight of me for the first few weeks. apparently, i was bossy. Me, bossy?
‘That’s an outrageous suggestion. Cuts like a knife, it does.’
bernard had worked there since 1943, starting on 15 shillings a week. His great pride, he said, was being able to take his wages home to his mother, who worked in a cotton mill; his father was a labourer.
He did his national service with the Parachute regiment, serving in Palestine, before returning to try his luck on stage, playing towns such as Weston- super-Mare and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
He and Gill were married in 1955, shortly before he made his West end debut in The Comedy Of errors, returning in Julian slade’s nostalgic musical salad days.
‘Very early in our marriage,’ he revealed to the daily Mail four decades later, ‘Gill had a miscarriage and then nothing happened after that.
‘For about the first 15 years, i really missed not having children. it was very upsetting. People always expect me to have lots of children of my own. i think i would have been a very good father.’
but, aged 67, he couldn’t resist cracking a joke: ‘i am the last of the Cribbins line . . . mind you, we’ve not given up trying yet!’
Gill and he were married for 66 years, until her death last year. He credited the success of their partnership to an early, conscious decision to avoid the affairs and sexual liaisons that were commonplace in the theatre.
‘There are so many temptations in this business,’ he admitted. ‘You have to rehearse with some gorgeous lady, kiss her and jump