Remembering Bernard Cribbins

On 27 July 2022, Britain lost one of its great entertainers. Bernard Cribbins was 93 and had been delighting audiences on stage, record, film and television for seven decades. Cinema Paradiso bids the fondest of farwells to a national treasure.

They don't make them like Bernard Cribbins any more. He didn't just turn his hand at everything, he made a darn good job of it, whether he was playing Shakespearean twins, a hapless minion or a time-travelling grandpa. Instantly recognisable, he also had a gift for storytelling that delighted generations of children. He may be gone, but Bernard Cribbins will never be forgotten.

Coming Up the Hard Way

Born on 29 December 1928 in the Glodwick district of Oldham in Lancashire, Bernard Joseph Cribbins was the son of John, a plumber's mate, and Ethel, a corduroy weaver who worked barefoot at a local factory. His father was a champion clog fighter. But, during the Great Depression, money was always tight in what was a humble home, with a tin bath and an outside lavatory.

While attending St Anne's Catholic School, Bernard harboured hopes of becoming a carpenter. At the age of 13, however, he landed a role in a festival production of Daisy Fisher's comedy, Lavender Ladies, at the Coliseum Theatre. He was spotted by director Douglas Emery, who invited him to join the Oldham repertory company.

In return for working backstage and taking minor roles, the 14 year-old Cribbins was offered 15 shillings a week and he had no hesitation in leaving school. He was mostly restricted to parts that required little more than 'two lines and a smile'. But, during one production of Macbeth, he saw leading man Harold Norman stabbed to death, when real weapons were used during a swordfight to cut costs.

Cribbins's seven-year stay with the troupe was interrupted in 1947, when he was called up for National Service. Having trained with the Parachute Regiment at Aldershot, he was posted to Palestine, where he came to the attention of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, when the soldier standing next to Private Cribbins on parade thrust his bayonet through his hand. He later recalled his time in the mandated territory as 'Six months of getting shot at; I don't recommend it.'

When Cribbins joined the cast of Doctor Who in 2007, writer Russell T. Davies made his character a veteran of the same campaign so that he could wear his regimental badge in Wilfred Mott's woolly hat. Moreover, while appearing on Celebrity Antiques Road Trip at the Airborne Assault Museum at Duxford in 2014, Cribbins got to try on some of his old kit and was able to review his parachute jumping records.

Right, Said Fred

Back on Civvy Street, Cribbins returned to Oldham as assistant stage manager. Between stints as a prompter and scenery shifter, he started to receive significant speaking roles. By the time he followed Marlon Brando into the part of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, he was one of the company's leading players. But, while Brando won an Oscar for his performance in Elia Kazan's 1951 feature, Cribbins had to endure the ignominy of making a man on the front row sick when he peeled off his white t-shirt.

Having married assistant Gillian McBarnet, Cribbins struck out for pastures new. He spent several seasons with the Piccolo Players before relocating to London. Unfortunately, the West End wasn't quite ready for this particular jack of all trades and he had to work as a newspaper seller, a dishwasher, a navvy and a window cleaner before he got his break. In 1956, he was cast as the Dromio twins in Julian Slade's musical reworking of The Comedy of Errors that made its way on to ITV before Cribbins followed it with a slot in Slade's hit musical comedy, Salad Days.

The same year saw Cribbins follow a walk-on as a guard in an episode of the television adventure series, The Black Tulip, with the role of Thomas Traddles, alongside Robert Hardy, in six episodes of a long-lost 13-part BBC adaptation of David Copperfield. It wasn't all glamour, mind you, as Cribbins also played a giant hen on stage in The Chicken Play and a dog in Antarctica (both 1957). As the decade progressed, however, he became a West End regular in shows like Lady At the Wheel, The Big Tickle and Hook, Line and Sinker (all 1958).

In 1957, Cribbins ventured into film, with uncredited bits as a sonar operator in Michael Anderson's Yangtse Incident, a music-hall stagehand in Michael Relph's Davy (both 1957) and a thirsty soldier in Leslie Norman's Dunkirk (1958). He also drew praise for his work in a pair of stage revues, New Cranks and And Another Thing (both 1960). Co-starring Anna Quayle and Lionel Blair, the latter saw Cribbins perform 'Folk Song' in a country bumpkin accent.

It caught the ear of George Martin, a versatile producer on the Parlophone label, who had scored hits with such comic songs as 'Goodness Gracious Me', which Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren had recorded after their teaming in Anthony Asquith's adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess (1960). Under Martin's supervision, Cribbins hit the Top 10 in 1962 with 'The Hole in the Ground' and 'Right, Said Fred', just a few months before Martin brought The Beatles to Abbey Road Studios to record their debut single, 'Love Me Do'. Cribbins had less luck with 'Gossip Calypso', but he did have the satisfaction of knowing that Sir Noël Coward chose 'The Hole in the Ground' as one of his Desert Island Discs. In 2018, Cribbins joined the all-star roster singing Sir George's praises in Francis Hanly's Produced By George Martin.

The Face Rings a Bell

As the 1950s ebbed away, Cribbins began finding regular film work. Playing Jack, he helped Sid James and Arthur Askey slip illegal adverts into the television schedule in Lance Comfort's Make Mine a Million and, as Paco, he reunited with James in a bid to stage rigged bullfights in John Paddy Carstairs's Tommy Steele vehicle, Tommy the Toreador (both 1959). Sadly, it's not currently possible to see Cribbins co-star with William Holden in Richard Quine's The World of Suzy Wong (1960), Brian Rix in Darcy Conyers's Nothing Barred, or David Niven and Alberto Sordi in Guy Hamilton and Alessandro Blasetti's war comedy, The Best of Enemies (both 1961), which picked up three Golden Globe nominations.

A cameo on a stretcher in Ken Annakin's The Fast Lady (1962) has also slipped through the net. But Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy Cribbins's supporting turn as Pereira, Richard Basehart's harassed Macau contact in Michael Carreras's Hammer thriller, Visa to Canton (aka Passport to China, 1960), and as Peters, opposite Norman Wisdom, who was trying to change his image by playing a P.G. Wodehouse toff in Henry Kaplan's The Girl on the Boat (1962).

On the small screen, Cribbins made a favourable impression as Lord Fancourt Babberley in Charley's Aunt (1961) and as Sir Simon in The Canterville Ghost (1962), which both aired under the BBC's Sunday Night Play banner. In 1961, he also made the first of his two appearances in The Avengers (1961-69), as he followed Arkwright in The Girl From Auntie by playing Bradley Marler in the 1968 episode 'Look - (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers...

Back in cinemas, Cribbins found himself cast as a repeat offender. In the company of Peter Sellers, he was Lennie 'The Dip' Price in Robert Day's Two-Way Stretch (1961) and Nervous O'Toole in Cliff Owen's The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963). The former sees three prisoners do a midnight flit from their cell in order to have a perfect alibi for a diamond heist, while the latter brings rival crooks together to tackle an Australian gang that has muscled on to their turf. Still funny six decades after they were made, these unmissable comedies also feature Lionel Jeffries, who was to become a firm friend.

Having blasted off into space in a wine-fuelled rocket as Vincent Mountjoy in The Mouse on the Moon (1963) - Richard Lester's sequel to Jack Arnold's The Mouse That Roared (1959) - Cribbins returned to a life of crime as Squirts in Jeremy Summers's Crooks in Cloisters (1964), in which Ronald Fraser's train robbers lie low in a monastery on a remote Cornish island. He also played a stonemason alongside Ronnie Barker's fretful cement mixer and Peter Butterworth's short-sighted carpenter in Jay Lewis's wordless featurette, A Home of Your Own (1964).

Such was Cribbins's growing stature that he was invited to co-star with Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Juliet Mills in Gerald Thomas's Carry On Jack (1963), a lampoon of Carol Reed's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), in which Cribbins was cast as Midshipman Albert Poop-Decker. He returned the following year as Harold Crump in Carry On Spying (1964), alongside Williams, Hawtrey and Barbara Windsor (who had played Brother Bikini in Crooks in Cloisters). This Bond spoof was the last Carry On to be shot in monochrome. But any hopes Cribbins might have entertained of becoming a regular member of the gang were dashed when Thomas took exception to his outburst after some blank ammunition was detonated close to him.

Undaunted, Cribbins booked a passage across the Channel with Ronald Fraser and Diana Dors to play a policeman whose uniform is borrowed by accidental hero Robert Dhéry in The Counterfeit Constable (1964), a largely forgotten comedy of errors that the star co-directed with Pierre Tchernia. Cribbins donned uniform again to play a copper who helps get a team of underdogs a day's training with Matt Busby's Manchester United in David Bracknell's Cup Fever (1965), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of the BFI's Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box.

Cribbins was back in a military mindset in his next two assignments. In Robert Day's adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's She (1965), he played Job, the orderly joining forces with Professor Holly (Peter Cushing) and Leo Vincey (John Richardson) to go in search of the mythical central-east African realm ruled over by Ayesha (Ursula Andress). Such was the success of this Hammer escapade that Richardson returned alongside Edward Judd, Colin Blakely and Olinka Bérová in Cliff Owen's The Vengeance of She (1968).

Later in 1965, having appeared in the Driver of the Year episode of The Troubleshooters (1965-72), Cribbins was cast as father of nine Sergeant Clegg in Michael Winner's You Must Be Joking! This lively romp follows the fortunes of the four 'volunteers' selected by Major Foskett (Terry-Thomas) to demonstrate their initiative on a scavenger hunt. Lining up alongside Clegg are Sergeant Major Sidney McGregor (Lionel Jeffries), Captain Fitzroy Tabasco (Denholm Elliott) and USAF Lieutenant Timothy Morton (Michael Callan). Winner chose this comic caper over the Dave Clark Five showcase, Catch Us If You Can (1965), which was directed instead by John Boorman.

Having helped capture a hint of the Swinging Sixties atmosphere, Cribbins cameo'd as a photographer in another all-star ensemble piece, Robert Hartford-Davis's equally modish Michael Bentine showcase, The Sandwich Man (1966). He also revisited the CFF as Ron in Ian Darnley-Smith's A Ghost of a Chance (1967), which sees Jimmy Edwards, Patricia Hayes and Graham Stark play a trio of friendly ghosts who help some kids save an historic landmark from shady dealers Ronnie Barker and Terry Scott. This overlooked gem is available from Cinema Paradiso on The Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box, Volume 2.

Once again demonstrating his adaptability, Cribbins took the role of agent-cum-cab driver Carlton Towers, who helps Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) infiltrate the International Mother's Help HQ in Berlin before frustrating Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) at his auction of compromising photographs in the much-maligned James Bond spoof, Casino Royale (1967), which endured such a troublesome production that John Huston, Ken Hughes, Robert Parrish, Joe McGrath and Val Guest all took a turn at directing it. Cribbins next hooked up with Jerry Lewis and Terry-Thomas to play an accomplice named Fred Davies in Jerry Paris's Swinging London crime caper, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968). Despite the setting, this has never been released on disc in the UK. It's not a classic, but it would make a nice treble bill with Beryl Stevens's BAFTA-nominated short, The Bargain (1965), and Brian Cummins's The Undertakers (1969), in which Cribbins co-starred with Wilfrid Brambell as Messrs Rigor and Mortis.

Although there scarcely seemed to have been enough time, Cribbins also returned to the theatre to join Patricia Routledge in the Wild West operetta pastiche, Little Mary Sunshine (1962), and the John Chapman and Ray Cooney farce, Not Now, Darling (1968). This was televised with Cribbins in the cast before Leslie Phillips took over for Cooney's 1973 feature version. In 1969, he was also given his own sketch show by ITV, Cribbins (which we aren't currently able to bring you). However, his most epic tele-achievement was his record 112 appearances between 1966-93 as the guest storyteller on the BBC's children's classic, Jackanory.

Perks Must Be About It

Cribbins had been pals with Lionel Jeffries for a decade and they had shared the screen on a couple of occasions. But, when Jeffries went behind the camera to make his directorial debut with a 1970 adaptation of Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children, he had no doubt who he wanted to play the porter at Oakworth Station. Earning him a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Albert Perks is Cribbins's most fondly remembered film role and it was a shame that he was unable to reunite with Jenny Agutter for Morgan Matthews's long-awaited sequel, The Railway Children Return (2022). Cinema Paradiso users should keep their eyes peeled for the latter's release date on high-quality Blu-ray and DVD later in the year.

Recognising Perks as a genially avuncular character, Hornby shrunk Cribbins down to 00 gauge for a series of model railway commercials. Alfred Hitchcock, on the other hand, detected a darker side that would enable Cribbins to play Felix Forsythe, the Covent Garden publican who letches after barmaid Babs Milligan (Anna Massey) and betrays ex-barman Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) with his insinuations in the grisly thriller, Frenzy (1972). Despite this fine performance against type, the Brewers of Britain hired Cribbins to front the 1973 infomercial, I Know What I Like, in which he also plays a variety of characters involved in the making of beer.

Six years were to pass before Cribbins went before a film camera again. In the meantime, he became a fixture on television. Having fronted the sketch show, Get the Drift (1971), he reinforced his reputation as a children's favourite by voicing all 60 episodes of The Wombles (1973-75), which drew on the much-loved books by Elisabeth Beresford. A dozen of the tales delightfully animated by FilmFair's Ivor Wood and scored by Mike Batt can be found on The Wombles: Tobermory on TV and The Wombles: Orinoco and the Big Black Umbrella (both 2007).

Another inspired bit of casting saw Cribbins's Mr Hutchinson lock horns with Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) in 'The Hotel Inspectors', a classic episode of Fawlty Towers (1975-79) that sees a pernickity spoon salesman insist that he's 'not a violent man' after launching a sustained assault on the Torquay hotelier. But there was no guessing where Cribbins was going to crop up next during the 1970s. He hosted the first three series of the BBC's charades-based panel game, Star Turn (1976-81), and shared showbiz anecdotes on Dick Hills's chat show, Tell Me Another (1976-79). In addition to a number of children's specials, he also voiced programmes like Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (1976), Moschops (1983), Edward and Friends (1987) and Bertie the Bat (1990). Moreover, he guested as Jolly Jack in 'The Golden Hind', an episode of ITV's enduringly popular teatime favourite, Worzel Gummidge (1979-81).

A regular at the Leeds City Varieties on the music-hall nostalgia show, The Good Old Days (1953-83), Cribbins further demonstrated his versatility with contrasting turns as Captain Michael in the Brian the Brain episode of Space: 1999 (1975-77) and as Pinchwife in William Wycherley's bawdy Restoration comedy, The Country Wife (1977), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Helen Mirren At the BBC (2008).

Frustratingly, it's not possible to share Cribbins's teaming with Wilfrid Bambell as Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Tage Danielsson's surreal Swedish comedy, The Adventures of Picasso. Readily available, however, is The Water Babies (both 1978), Lionel Jeffries hybrid live-action/animation adaptation of the Charles Kingsley tale about a Victorian child chimney sweep's ordeal at the hands of Messrs Grimes and Masterman (James Mason and Cribbins) and his adventures underwater (which allowed Cribbins to voice an eel).

You have to know where to look to find the odd Cribbins credit. Indeed, you need to keep your wits around you to spot Pyramid, the nefarious master of disguise smuggling an Egyptian mummy out of the country in David Eady's Night Ferry (1976), which crops up on the aforementioned Children's Film Foundation Bumper Box 2. Eady also handled Cribbins's vocal teaming with Brian Wilde in Play Safe (1978), in which a robin and an owl watch a small boy's attempts to fly a kite. This is contained in Worth the Risk?, Volume 8 of the BFI's The COI Collection, which also includes The Furry Folk on Holiday (1967), one of several public information films about road safety, in which Cribbins voiced squirrel Tufty Fluffytail.

Cribbins's guest slot as a house painter in the 1979 tele-remake of the 1967 slapstick gem, The Plank, forms part of The Eric Sykes Collection (2010), which also includes It's Your Move (1982), in which Cribbins's neighbour becomes increasingly exasperated by the efforts of Eric Sykes and Tommy Cooper to move newlyweds Richard Briers and Sylvia Syms into their new home.

Cinema Paradiso users can also muse on Cribbins's twofold contribution to Gerald Thomas's greatest clips compilation, That's Carry On (1979). But his world-weary display as a CID officer investigating a cold case in Val Guest's take on Leslie Thomas's crime stories, Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (1981), isn't currently available. And, regrettably, the same is true of the sitcoms Shillingbury Tales (1980-81), Cuffy (1983), Langley Bottom (1986) and High and Dry (1987), with the latter being a TV reworking of It Sticks Out Half a Mile (1982), a BBC radio sitcom that had reunited John Le Mesurier, Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwee as their Dad's Army (1968-77) characters, Arthur Wilson, Frank Pike and Bert Hodges.

Paintballing Daleks

Although he occasionally revelled in small-screen opportunities to play characters like Hebert Soppitt in J.B. Priestley's When We Are Married (1987), Cribbins often returned to the theatre to do some meaningful acting. In 1974, he headlined John Chapman and Ray Cooney's There Goes the Bride before starring in the latter's 1983 farce, Run For Your Wife. Indeed, such was his connection to Cooney that he guested as a hospital patient in his 2012 film version of Run For Your Wife, which co-starred Danny Dyer, Denise Van Outen and Neil Morrissey.

Back on the boards, Cribbins played Nathan Detroit in the National Theatre's 1988 revival of Frank Loesser's musical, Guys and Dolls, which had been filmed in 1955 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with Frank Sinatra as Nathan opposite Marlon Brando's Sky Masterson. The following year, Cribbins essayed another lowlife, gangster Moonfaced Martin, in Anything Goes, and took on the roles of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1991) and Watty Watkins in Lady Be Good (1992) before Richard Eyre cast him as mountebank Professor Otto Marvuglia in Eduardo De Filippo's La Grande Magia (1995).

This came three years after Cribbins had patched up his differences with Gerald Thomas to appear as map-maker Mordecai Mendoza in the ill-conceived Carry On Columbus (1992). Eleven years later, he returned to the big screen as Mutley, the grandfather of rebellious bowls player Cliff Starkey (Paul Kaye) in Mel Smith's Blackball (2003). But another nine years were to elapse before Cribbins played The Voice in Chris Hopewell and Crispian Mills's A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012), which starred Simon Pegg as a put-upon crime writer in a black comedy that was based on Paranoia in the Launderette, a novella by Bruce Robinson, the director of Withnail and I (1987).

Cribbins's film career would wind down as Albert, an old man befriended by Sarah (Beattie Edmondson) after she inherits a pug dog, in Mandie Fletcher's Patrick, and as the narrator of Josh Blaaberg's short, Woodland (both 2018). In later life, he confided to one interviewer that he still was up for the challenge of playing Clint Eastwood's father in a Western. But, while that opportunity never arose, there were still a few choice roles lying in wait on the small screen.

Every now and then, Cribbins popped up as Victor the Vicar, the rector Crinkley Bottom, on Noel's House Party (1991-96). In 1999, he guested as Uncle Henry in the Time to Go episode of Dalziel and Pascoe (1996-2007), before spending 11 episodes in 2003 worming his way into the affections of Blanche Hunt (Maggie Jones) as gardening lothario Wally Bannister in Coronation Stree (1960). The same year saw him take the title role in In Which Gavin Hinchcliffe Loses the Gulf Stream in Last of the Summer Wine (1973-2010).

Following a three-show stint as Frank Cosgrove in Down to Earth (2000-05), Cribbins played music manager Arnold Korns in 'Horror of Glam Rock', an episode in the audio series, Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures (2007). This wasn't his first encounter with the regenerating Time Lord, however. In 1966, Cribbins had found himself aboard the Tardis as PC Tom Campbell, alongside Peter Cushing, niece Jill Curzon and granddaughter Roberta Tovey in Gordon Flemyng's Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., a sequel to the same director's Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965).

Eight years later, Cribbins came within a whisker of being cast as the Fourth Doctor. However, Tom Baker prevailed and Cribbins would have to wait a total of 41 years before he could make history as the first actor to play a companion of two different Doctors, when he landed the role of Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), who tagged along with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). Wilfred would feature in 10 Doctor Who episodes between 2008-10, with Cribbins himself devising the scene in which he shoots at the Daleks with a paintball gun.

Shortly before he died, Cribbins was reunited with Tennant and Tate to record scenes that will form part of a 60th anniversary special that will screen in November 2023. We can hardly wait.

Even after this late career highlight, however, we're not quite done. In 2014, Cribbins told The Guardian: 'I think I'm a good actor, without being boastful. I have an array of voices.' Over the years, he put them to sublime use. We've already mentioned Jackanory and The Wombles. But Cribbins also voiced Buzby, the cartoon bird used to promote British Telecom between 1976-82, and recorded such children's audiobooks as The Snowma (1983), Winnie-the-Pooh (2015) and The Jungle Book (2021).

In 2013, four years after receiving a special presentation at the BAFTA Children's Awards, Cribbins returned to CBeebies to play the old fisherman who tells stories to his dog, Salty, in Old Jack's Boat and Salty's Waggy Tales. In 2011, he was awarded the OBE and dismissed suggestions of imminent retirement by playing Duggie Wingate in The Flying Club, a 2014 episode of Midsomer Murders (1997-), and DCI Ronald Sainsbury in two 2015 episodes of New Tricks (2003-15). He also guested on Would I Lie to You (2007-) and wowed the critics, at the age of 87, as Tom Snout in Russell T. Davies's 2016 tele-adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. No wonder Cribbins called his 2018 autobiography, Bernard Who? 75 Years of Doing Just About Everything. Thank you for it all.