Brian Jackson
Character actor who became famous as ‘The Man from Del Monte’ in television advertisements
BRIAN JACKSON, who has died aged 91, was a character actor who played villains and police officers on screen for more than half a century and took dozens of roles on stage while never becoming a household name – but a commercial made him a household face in more than 30 countries.
Millions of TV viewers and cinema audiences saw him as “The Man from Del Monte” – the fruit inspector wearing an immaculate white suit and Panama hat – as he seeks the finest juice. In a couple of dozen ads for the canned fruit giant made between 1985 and 1992, and translated into 29 languages, Jackson was seen but not heard as he assessed the quality of the goods on offer.
A voiceover commented on his quest for the best as he, variously, travelled by car across the desert, dropped in by helicopter at a plantation or took a biplane to a remote island, before giving his seal of approval.
“It was very funny, really, because the different countries interpreted the advert in different ways,” Jackson said. “The original tagline was, ‘Say yes to the best,’ so in Italy they made it sound all macho and sexy, while in Japan it was rattled out like an order – ‘You will eat it and you will like it!’”
John Cleese parodied the popular commercials in a 1999 Sainsbury’s advert. More politically, Republicans in Northern Ireland during the Troubles responded to the Unionist slogan “Ulster says no!” with the words: “But the man from Del Monte says yes!”
Osmond Brian Jackson was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on April 6 1931, to Gwladys (née Hughes) and John Jackson, a mechanic who was wounded at Dunkirk during wartime Army service.
While attending Thornleigh College, Bolton, Brian had a weekend job at a local Co-op photographic shop, taking pictures at weddings.
Eventually, he left school to train as a photographer and joined the Royal Navy School of Photography. He was a photographer with the Fleet Air Arm (1949-54) before working commercially.
He also acted with Farnworth Little Theatre, an amateur company in Bolton, where Frank Finlay was one of his aspiring fellow thespians.
He turned professional as an actor aged 27 and gained classical stage experience in small roles with the Old Vic (1958-99) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (1962-64).
He trod the boards on the West End stage as M Lindsay Woolsey, book publisher and the eccentric bohemian’s love interest, in the musical Mame (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1969-70), starring Ginger Rogers.
Early television roles, following his screen debut in 1958, included George Loveless, one of the Tolpuddle martyrs, in Six Men of Dorset (1962) and Ben Field in the Sunday teatime serial Smugglers’ Bay (1964).
He then settled into life as a character actor, playing everything from naval attachés and bookies to prison governors and professors. His film parts included one of the army recruits in Carry On Sergeant (1958) and a police chief in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), alongside Peter Sellers.
Jackson also had a career in BBC radio drama, starting in 1966 in the title role of Micah Clarke, a seven-part adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical adventure. He also played Carver Doone in Lorna Doone (1977) and James Hammett, another martyr, in Alan Plater and Vince Hill’s musical Tolpuddle (1982).
In 1966 he showed an entrepreneurial streak by taking a bank loan to found Hampden Gurney Studios, converting a former school into a photographic studio. It expanded to provide facilities for film processing and a soundproof studio where commercials and documentaries were made.
It was also where, in 1975, the Greek musician Vangelis created his “sound laboratory” Nemo Studios. The soundtracks for the films Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner and The Bounty were recorded there.
Jackson brought his business head to presenting a BBC television series, Hardy Heating International, in 1970. He also tried producing feature films, but Rider, starring Orson Welles and Oliver Reed, was unfinished when stock market fluctuations left him and the cast and crew cashless on location in Athens in 1974.
In more recent years, Jackson played Private Godfrey in the touring stage show Dad’s Army – The Lost Episodes (2007-08) and brought his distinguished look to commercials for brands such as Gucci.
Off-screen he was a keen cricketer with the Lord’s Taverners and, for more than 50 years, the Stage Cricket Club, which he chaired until 2020.
Jackson’s first marriage, to Irene Berry, was dissolved. In 1968 he married the actress Eunice Gayson, the first “Bond girl”, Sylvia Trench, in Doctor No and From Russia with Love.
They divorced in 1977, with him blaming her taste for high living. “As a star, she was earning £175 a day for a time,” he told a divorce court. “I couldn’t keep her in that style, although I did my best.”
Brian Jackson is survived by his third wife, Ann (née Barker), their daughter, a son and daughter from his first marriage, a daughter from his second, and a son from a previous relationship.