Iain Cuthbertson has died

[SiHart]

Iain Cuthbertson- known to us as Garron in The Ribos Operation (and to me and Steve currently as the villainous Scunner Campbell in Supergran) has sadly died.

From Times Online

Standing well over 6ft, Iain Cuthbertson was a Scottish actor of towering presence. He was best known for his starring roles in the television series Budgie and Sutherland’s Law. He also had a distinguished career on the stage, and for three years he ran the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.

In January 1982 he suffered a crippling stroke that left him temporarily paralysed and unable to speak. At one time his very survival was in doubt, but he came through. He refused to accept that he would not work again, though it was 18 months before he was able to do so.

He was forced to give up the stage, his first love, in case he forgot his words, and although he returned to television and the cinema, where his lines could be displayed on crib boards, his career never regained its former momentum.

Iain Cuthbertson was born in 1930 in Glasgow, the son of Sir David Cuthbertson, a distinguished biochemist and part of the team that invented the saline drip. He was educated at Glasgow Academy, Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Aberdeen, where he read languages. Determined not to follow his father into science, he finally settled for acting only when he was 25.

He began his professional career in radio and made his first stage appearance in 1955, when he played twin brothers in The Man Upstairs. His early stage experience included a tour of Lanarkshire working men’s clubs, appearing before audiences of miners, some of whom had never seen a play before.

In 1958 he joined the Citizens Theatre, where his parts included Othello and Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He became general manager and director of productions at the Citizens in 1962 and during his time there created the part of Armstrong in John Arden’s play, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight.

In 1965 he moved to the Royal Court Theatre in London as associate director and during his time at the Court he played Musgrave in another Arden play, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, and translated and directed Alfred Jarry’s surreal play, Ubu Roi, with the comedian Max Wall in the lead.

From the late 1960s he concentrated on television. His first notable vehicle was The Borderers, an adventure series set in 17th-century Scotland, in which he played the canny warden helping to settle disputes. It was a sort of Scottish western with Cuthbertson as the sheriff.

It was followed in 1971 by Budgie, which was written by the prolific team of Keith Waterhouse (obituary, September 5) and Willis Hall and ran for three seasons. Adam Faith starred as a London spiv with Cuthbertson as a rough but endearing Glasgow gangster called Charlie Endell. The character became popular enough to spawn a spin-off series, Charlie Endell Esquire. Cuthbertson also appeared in Doctor Who, Z Cars, The Onedin Line and many other long-running television shows. In 1976 he had another personal success in a well-crafted BBC series, Sutherland’s Law, as a procurator fiscal oiling the wheels of justice in a rural community on the West Coast of Scotland. Resuming his stage career in the late 1970s, he played the Major-Domo in Ariadne auf Naxos for Scottish Opera.

Just before suffering his stroke Cuthbertson had completed four episodes of an ITV drama, Rep, set in a seaside repertory theatre in the 1940s. A planned second series had to be cancelled. His first substantial television assignment after his recovery was the children’s series Supergran.

In the cinema Cuthbertson was the father wrongly imprisoned as a spy in Lionel Jeffries’s affectionate version of The Railway Children. He played the Lord Chancellor in Scandal, the 1988 film about the Profumo affair, and Dr Leakey in Gorillas in the Mist, with Sigourney Weaver.

In 1997, after a long period without work, he returned to television in an ITV drama, Painted Lady, with Helen Mirren, and two years later he played a Scottish doctor in the film, The Titchborne Claimant. In addition to appearing in a couple of episodes of the television series Casualty, he had a role in Strictly Sinatra (2001), written and directed by Peter Capaldi, and played the ghost in a 2003 film version of Hamlet.

From 1975 to 1978 he was Rector of the University of Aberdeen. Although it was an honorary position he filled it conscientiously and once drove through the night to defuse a student protest.

Cuthbertson’s first marriage, to the actress Anne Kristen, was dissolved in 1988. His second wife was Janet Mary Smith. There were no children.

Iain Cuthbertson, actor, was born on January 4, 1930. He died on September 4, 2009, aged 79

Very sad. He's always a joy to watch, whatever he's in.

Si xx

[Pip Madeley]

I never knew he has a stroke so early on. RIP.

[Terry Leptil]

I've just heard that Ray Barrett has too passed away, this morning from a brain haemmorhage.

From The Australian:

HE had his ups and downs, but Ray Barrett - born in Brisbane on May 2, 1927 - was hardly ever out of work in a profession known for its chancy employment prospects. From radio as a teenager to roles as a cranky old fellow, Barrett was almost a fixture on Australian and British screen and television.

He had few regrets - except, perhaps, that he never played a Shakespeare season - a happy childhood, many love affairs and a long, challenging struggle with the bottle.

But in a successful acting career that spanned more than 50 years in Australia and Britain, Barrett never quite made it to the very top as a box-office star. His adaptability, however, earned him many meaty, tough-guy roles that exploited his acne-scarred face.

Barrett's father Reginald was a travelling hardware salesman, his mother Mabel a secretary for the same company. She supplied the inspiration for young Ray when she enlisted him to deliver monologues to her piano accompaniment. His elocution training helped win a radio eisteddfod aged 12 and Barrett was on his way in show biz.

Between 1939 and 1942, Barrett won 18 eisteddfods. Leaving Brisbane State High at 15 - he failed the junior certificate - he landed a job at 4BH. At 16 he was presenting the midday show. At 18, Barrett was singing with dance bands, acting in radio plays and in local theatre.

In his spare time, Barrett built a boat, the Countess, and sailed Moreton Bay and the Broadwater at Southport. He maintained a life-long love of boats and the sea.

After being jilted by Joy Bettanay - a “flirt and a tease and a semi-professional heart-breaker”, Barrett recalled in his memoirs - he married her sister Audrey in 1951 and a daughter Suellen soon arrived.

Four years of radio acting with the ABC was followed by Barrett's 1954 decision to try the booming Sydney scene. He thrived among the city's intensely competitive actors, who regarded blow-ins with a combination of jealousy and curiosity. He mixed easily and enjoyed sailing and a booze-fuelled social life.

He narrated Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1957, the year he decided to give London a go. Australia, he felt, could not offer the same breadth of opportunities.

Indeed, there was plenty of work in Britain for the versatile Barrett, who quickly found a part in a revue. TV police shows kept the family in food and board. He had a role in The Sundowners which was shot on location in Australia and in British studios. More luck followed when he was recommended by fellow expatriate Charles “Bud” Tingwell for a part on the hugely popular TV series Emergency Ward 10, a job that lasted nine months.

Six one-hour episodes of The Brothers Karamazov further established his reputation. The part as the oldest brother Mitya was a complex one; Barrett thought it was close to his best work on TV.

In 1965 he did voices for The Thunderbirds - including that of a female character - little realising that the show would gain something of a cult following. Unfortunately for Barrett and other actors on the show, they did not benefit financially from its worldwide popularity.

Meanwhile, Barrett's marriage was in trouble. One affair followed another until he shacked up with Celia Sherman, who dumped him after a few years. He had regular work on the series The Troubleshooters which helped to distract him from his chaotic love life. It was on that series that he met and married Miren Cork, with whom he had a son Reginald in 1972 and Jonathan in 1978.

The Troubleshooters, which ran from 1965 to 1972, established Barrett in British TV - the show was popular in Australia, too. He played a tough, resourceful and intelligent Australian field man for an oil company. The role was written specifically for him after the creator John Elliott had spotted Barrett in a bar behaving with typical Australian forthrightness.

The series gave Barrett the resources to buy land and build a house on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Formentera, where he lived on and off for 30 years. In London, he bought and renovated a series of cottages, having inherited building and carpentry skills from his father. As with most handymen, his houses were works in progress.

Another passion was cricket. He played with the Lords Taverners, who brought actors and cricketers together for charity games. Some of the greatest players - men such as Garfield Sobers, Denis Compton, Ken Barrington and Wes Hall - were teamed with showbiz personalities - Elton John, Peter Cook and Michael Parkinson among them.

In 1976, Barrett was enticed to Australia to make some lucrative cigarette advertisements (he had given up the habit, but the money was too good to refuse). He had earlier played Cooley in David Williamson's Don's Party, the first London production of an Australian play for 16 years. An impressed Williamson recommended that he be cast in Bruce Beresford's film version. Barrett accepted, little suspecting that he was about to return to his homeland semi-permanently.

The film version of Don's Party was an outstanding critical and commercial success. In his memoirs (written with Peter Corris) Barrett wrote: “It's a tribute to the film's energy and life that even the Americans understood it.”

The shoot was as chaotic as the party it depicted with Barrett getting drunk on the set and taking a swing at the late Graham Kennedy, who then refused to share a scene with him.

Soon after filming Don's Party, Barrett got a call from Fred Schepisi inviting him to play the racist cop in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Barrett's timing was impeccable: work in Britain was drying up and the Australian film industry was resurgent. The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith brought Barrett his first serious film-industry award - the 1978 Australian Film Institute's best supporting actor.

The family moved to Brisbane where he bought a boat and a house near the river. He soon met Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen- who showed early enthusiasm for investing in local film studios. It all fizzled out, and one of Bjelke-Petersen's advisers ended up jail for fraud. Barrett says that he was offered the state seat of Gold Coast held by Russell Hinze, a cabinet minister. Another fizzer.

Screen-writer Bob Ellis's Goodbye Paradise was his next big movie, one that became an Australian crime classic and brought Barrett his greatest prize - the AFI best actor award.

But just as he had reached a professional peak, his marriage to Miren broke up. Miren's departure came as a shock to Barrett - he hadn't noticed the warning signs - and he hoped in vain for a reconciliation. It was not to be, but he had full access to his boys.

It was a low point in Barrett's life and he hit the booze with a vengeance. Luck continued to intervene when he met Gaye O'Brien who helped him get off the grog and sort himself out. They married in 1986, went sailing and lived for a year at Formentera.

In his memoirs, Barrett says of Gaye that she “pulled me up by the bootstraps from what could have been a long slide to the bottom (and) helped to end my romance with the bottle”. She also became his agent and manager. He needed someone to look after the money because the divorce had left him skint except for his boat, the Formentera house and some land in Sydney.

They bought a place at Stradbroke Island and settled into the good life, but one where there was a continual call on his acting talents. He made nine movies in the '80s including Empty Beach and Blood Oath.

For TV, Barrett also made several worthwhile series - Waterfront, The Timeless Land and The Sporting Chance in which he played a cynical sports journalist.

The '90s also brought film roles - Hotel Sorrento, On Our Selection with Leo McKern and Geoffrey Rush, and In the Dark Winter. TV continued to supply parts such as After the Deluge - a superb performance - and as a cranky old soak in the police drama White Collar Blue in 2003.

Two fine actors gone. May they both rest in peace.

[Si Hunt]

Cuthberton is one of my favourite people in Doctor Who, just for his one role which he somehow turns into a truly real, lovable character. I had a feeling he was ill, as he's always seemed reclusive, though it was good to see him in "Casualty" a few years ago, albeit looking quite different to how we remember. But we'll always have his wonderful turn as Garron, which I'm sure in 50 years from now, will still be treasured, even if it was but a footnote in his career.

Wilco, Graham, Out!

Si.

[SiHart]

Si- you'd love him in Supergran as he seems to be reprising the Garron role as the Scunner Campbell and he's the best thing in the show by a huge margin.

Sad news about Ray Barrett too

Si xx

[shada pavlova]

Not Ray Barrett!

He was the most chilling puppet-villian of the sixties.



Can't believe he's gone.

[Stephen Morgan]

Iain Cuthbertson- known to us as Garron in The Ribos Operation (and to me and Steve currently as the villainous Scunner Campbell in Supergran) has sadly died.


Very sad. He's always a joy to watch, whatever he's in.

Si xx

And well known to me as Charles Endall Esq. in Budgie.

As you say, very sad, always a joy to watch.

RIP Iain Cuthbertson.

[Captain Tancredi]

Two very rich and full careers there- all credit to Iain Cuthbertson for being one of the very few actors ever to give a Who performance big enough to equal Tom Baker.

[Andrew Curnow]

I love his accent (or accents) throughout that story, and like you say Ian he managed to 'stand up to' the fourth Doctor in terms of screen presence. RIP to both Iain C & Ray B.

[Si Hunt]

My favourite bit in "Ribos" is where Garron says "I always said dying was the last thing I wanted to do!" and you hear Tom laugh OFF CAMERA. Garron flashes him a smile and carries on with his tale... it's almost like it was Tom laughing, not the Doctor, and in the whole story Tom clearly adores Iain - as he does Beattie Lehmen, he seems to love playing opposite eccentrics!

Si.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

You're making me want to watch the Ribos operation again. I haven't seen it since the UK Gold repeat and alas I haven't purchased the key to Time box set yet.
I might have to dig the old VHS tape out and watch it.

[Captain Tancredi]

My favourite bit in "Ribos" is where Garron says "I always said dying was the last thing I wanted to do!" and you hear Tom laugh OFF CAMERA. Garron flashes him a smile and carries on with his tale... it's almost like it was Tom laughing, not the Doctor, and in the whole story Tom clearly adores Iain - as he does Beattie Lehmen, he seems to love playing opposite eccentrics!

Si.

Credit due to George Spenton-Foster as well there for going with his actors- the story's so much more entertaining as a result.

[Jamie McCrimmon]

I liked Iain Cutherbertson, he was good at playing baddies and he seemed like a really lovely bloke, too. I remember him most from Children of the Stones and Railway Children.