Ray Brooks, British actor and voice of Mr Benn, dies aged 86 | Tv

Ray Brooks, the British actor who starred in EastEnders, Ken Loach’s drama Cathy Come Residence and narrated the Seventies youngsters’s TV present Mr Benn, has died on the age of 86.

Brooks died peacefully on Saturday along with his family members at his bedside after a brief sickness, in line with a press release shared by his household with the BBC.

The assertion additionally revealed that Brooks had spent the previous couple of years residing with dementia.

Brooks’ sons, Will and Tom, mentioned: “His three true loves had been household (he additionally had a daughter Emma, who died in 2003), Fulham Soccer Membership, and spending time in Brighton, the place he was born.”

The cartoon Mr Benn, narrated by Brooks, follows the character who enters a magical costume store and travels to new locations based mostly on the costumes he wears.

Solely 13 episodes had been launched however the cartoon turned well-known with generations of youngsters as a result of episodes had been repeated twice a yr for greater than 21 years.

“I used to be requested to do different cartoons due to Mr Benn – together with Rupert the Bear, which was the worst factor I’ve ever achieved. I used to have a few pints earlier than recording it, to numb my mind for his horrible rhymes,” Brooks instructed the Guardian in 2017, including: “Grandmas come as much as me and say their grandchildren are fed up with in the present day’s cartoons, however they love the simplicity of Mr Benn, the truth that he’s very ethical, at all times checking out individuals’s issues – together with dragons.”

Brooks went on to seem in a bunch of various primetime tv exhibits together with ITV’s Coronation Road, during which he performed Norman Phillips, and EastEnders, the place he performed Joe Macer, who memorably killed his spouse, the long-running character Pauline Fowler.

Brooks additionally starred within the BBC comedy drama Massive Deal, which adopted gambler Robbie Field as he tried to make a residing by betting whereas additionally making an attempt to keep up his relationship with Jan, performed by Sharon Duce.

Brooks earned a lot of movie credit, together with a task in The Knack … And How To Get It, which gained the 1965 Palme d’Or on the Cannes movie pageant.

A yr later he starred in Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Residence, a BBC drama filmed like a documentary, which explored the influence of Britain’s housing scarcity within the late Nineteen Sixties. In 2000, a British Movie Institute ballot of 100 business figures rated it because the second-best British tv programme ever made, after Fawlty Towers.

Press Affiliation contributed to this report.