Bernard Cribbins

Bernard Cribbins OBE, is an English actor, comedian, and singer whose career has spanned over 70 years. Cribbins made his first West End theatre appearance in 1956 at the Arts Theatre, playing the two Dromios in A Comedy of Errors, and co-starred in the first West End productions of Not Now Darling, There Goes the Bride and Run for your Wife. He also starred in the revue And Another Thing, and recorded a single of a song from the show titled “Folksong”.

In 1962, three comic songs Cribbins had recorded were released and entered the UK Singles Chart. “The Hole in the Ground” was about an annoyed workman who eventually buries a harasser. “Right Said Fred” was about three workmen who struggle to move an unspecified heavy and awkward object into or out of a building.

Both these songs were produced by George Martin for Parlophone, with music by Ted Dicks and lyrics by Myles Rudge. “Hole in the Ground” and “Right Said Fred” both reached the top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. The third and final Cribbins single of the year was “Gossip Calypso”, which was another top 30 hit.

Cribbins appeared in films from the early 1950s, mainly comedies. His credits include Two Way Stretch (1960) and with Peter Sellers and three Carry On films – Jack, Spying and Columbus. Other appearances include the second Doctor Who film Dalek’s Invasion Earth 2150AD (1966) and The Railway Children (1970) as Mr Albert Perks, the station porter.

Cribbins was the narrator of the British animated children’s TV series The Wombles from 1973 to 1975 and also played the character of the Water Rat in a radio adaptation of The Wind in the Wilows. He was the celebrity storyteller in more episodes of Jackanory than any other personality, with a total of 114 appearances between 1966 and 1991. He also narrated the audio tape of the Antonia Barber book The Mousehole Cat. From 1974 to 1976, Cribbins narrated Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings.

Cribbins was the star of the ITV series Cribbins (1969–70). Other TV appearances include The Avengers (1968), Fawlty Towers (1975, as the spoon salesman Mr Hutchinson who is mistaken by Basil Fawlty for a hotel inspector). He regularly appeared on BBC TV’s The Good Old Days recreating songs made famous by the great stars of Music Hall.

Cribbins returned to Doctor Who in 2006, when a photograph of him and fellow Doctor Who alumna Lynda Baron at a wedding appeared on the BBC’s tie-in website for the television episode “Tooth and Claw”. In December 2007, he appeared as Mott in the Christmas television special, “Voyage of the Damned”; he then appeared in a recurring capacity as the same character for the 2008 series, as the grandfather of companion Donna Noble. He became a Tenth Doctor temporary companion himself in “The End of Time”, the two-part 2009–10 Christmas and New Year special, when his character was inadvertently responsible for that Doctor’s demise. Cribbins’s role as Mott makes him the only actor to have played two companions, and the only actor featured alongside the Doctor’s enemies, the Daleks, in both the TV and cinema versions of Doctor Who.

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