GP and actor who played Robert Snell in The Archers, loyal supporter of his overbearing wife Lynda
GRAHAM BLOCKEY, who has died aged 66, practised the twin professions of village GP in Surrey and radio soap-opera actor, providing the voice of Robert Snell in The Archers for 36 years.
He made his debut in the Radio 4 serial in 1986, when Robert and his wife Lynda (played by Carole Boyd) moved to Ambridge, the programme’s fictional Midlands setting, from the southern commuter town of Sunningdale. Robert had a somewhat mysterious job in IT and the Snells reflected the proliferation of ageing yuppies in the mid-1980s selling up and seeking bucolic bliss.
The overbearing Lynda tried to place herself at the centre of village life despite her ignorance of rural ways, and quickly became a character listeners loved to loathe; the urban-minded Robert, meanwhile, retained for some years an air of bafflement at finding himself a countryman at his wife’s behest.
Blockey was an experienced radio actor when he joined The Archers, but had previously worked as a hospital doctor. He auditioned to play a doctor in the series, but was surprised to be told that he did not sound like one, and was cast as Robert Snell instead.
Initially his work on The Archers took up only one week every month and for the rest of the time he found himself rattling unhappily between “resting” and unsatisfactory jobs. “I was doing things like playing a tomato in pantomime and I started to think, ‘Hang on a minute, perhaps medicine is more fulfilling’,” he recalled.
He returned to hospital work in the late 1980s before deciding to train as a GP, which he saw as the best job available in medicine, as he could get to know the patients and be involved in the community. In 1993 he became a partner at the Leith Hill practice in the village of South Holmwood near Dorking.
Although he expected to be dropped from The Archers, listeners had warmed to the Snells and the BBC took pains to accommodate him, scheduling his recording sessions at weekends.
Most of his patients were unaware of his radio alter ego. He kept it quiet in case any of them might be uncomfortable with a doctor who stooped to the frivolous profession of acting, and also because he did not want to unsettle any Archers listeners who had their own idea of what Robert looked like.
Blockey was not unusual in having a second profession away from the series. Charlotte Martin, who plays Susan Carter, is a research psychologist; Ian Pepperell (Roy Tucker) is a publican.
Although Blockey’s day job often kept him away from Ambridge for months at a time, the scriptwriters were old hands at dealing with “silent” characters and contrived to maintain Robert as a presence.
Listeners were always delighted to hear Blockey’s warm, expressive voice, however, and Robert was treasured as a rare example of a soap-opera character who was sensible and well-adjusted. When trials came – for instance, when his IT business collapsed and he had to reinvent himself as a handyman – Robert was stoical. His only faults were indulgence of his daughters from his previous marriage, Coriander and the ghastly Leonie, and taking his birdwatching competitions with rival twitcher Jim Lloyd too seriously.
He shone brightest as the devoted helpmeet of his beloved “Lyndie”, backing her attempts to dragoon the residents of Ambridge into community events, artfully curbing her worst excesses, and comforting her when her well-concealed sensitivities were bruised.
It was an unshowy role demanding strong but subtle playing, but Blockey’s skilled performance helped to transform the Snells, from unpromising beginnings, into one of The Archers’ best-loved couples.
Graham John Blockey was born in Manchester on April 2 1956, the son of Noel Jackson Blockey, a paediatric orthopaedic consultant, and his wife Joyce, a nurse and physiotherapist. He grew up in Strathblane, near Glasgow, and attended Fettes College, where he flourished in school plays.
He studied Medicine at Newcastle University before spending a year as a junior doctor at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. Although he knew he would return to medicine one day, he wanted to try his hand at acting, and took a postgraduate course at the Bristol Old Vic.
He worked full-time as an actor for eight years (supplementing his uncertain wages with stints as a medical locum), in touring repertory and as a member of the BBC’S Radio Drama Company for 18 months before joining The Archers: his high point was performing a three-hander play by Don Haworth with Judi Dench and her husband Michael Williams.
He considered himself extraordinarily lucky in being able to combine his twin passions for medicine and drama. If, as a GP, he had a tendency to run behind schedule, it was because he took the trouble to listen to his patients, who adored him.
Blockey retired from practice in 2017, admitting that while he still loved the job, “complying with all the regulatory bodies and repeatedly justifying your decisionmaking … takes its toll”.
A man of action, who ran marathons and trekked in Nepal, Blockey volunteered with the Vine Trust in 2019 to join a team of medics providing care for remote communities by Lake Victoria.
In retirement he was able to devote more time to The Archers, and gave listeners an unexpected insight into the Snells’ hidden life in 2019 when Robert asked Lynda if she was in the mood for them to push their beds together for “magic time”.
The following year he extended his range superbly to capture Robert’s fury and despair, in a dramatic storyline that saw Lynda grievously injured in a gas explosion at Grey Gables hotel.
Last heard in The Archers in June, Graham Blockey described Robert as “loyal, hardworking, resilient … but to make up for that, he’s quite funny”.
Colleagues in both of his professional lives attested that the character reflected the performer.
He married, in 1987, Christine Ingram, a cookery writer and sometime Archers scriptwriter. She survives him with their son and daughter.