Bernard Cribbins: An appreciation 1928-2022

 On Thursday it was announced Bernard Cribbins died who was major part of our childhood.

Born in Oldham, Lancashire he got into acting at the age of fourteen, then like many was called up during WW2 in the parachute regiment before resuming.

I'm going to ignore the grown up acting he did and leap to one of several comedy records he recorded for EMI produced by the legend that was Sir George Martin whose UK Label Parlophone had dance band music and comedy such as The Goons before an infectious Liverpool foursome called Beatles kickstarted the British Invasion.

In Britain, this was one of the staples of the children's requests show Junior Choice for many years together with Right Said Fred that I loved listening to at weekends as a boy.

Doctor Who is a BBC TV series that is a global sensation with a long history that was popular with children and he took part twice in it.

With the Daleks in 1964

With David Tennant.

The Wombles were environmentally friendly superstars in the 1970's and returned in more recent years and he provided the all the voices for the 1973/5 series by Elisabeth Berrisford.

They were filmed by Filmfair in stop motion by Ivor Wood and Barry Leith who gave us many more favourite cartoons such as Ivor The Engine.

In Britain, he was a staple of that much missed BBC show Jackanory where across several days leading actors and actresses read stories with vocalization to children.

Here he is as one of the actors tackling J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit in 1976.

He tackled the whole of Jane Aiken's Mortimer's tales and actually he appeared more than a hundred times, the most appearances on that show ever.

There is something quite magical to just being sat listening to a story being read with no big visual effects as you create that world in your head and for many of us he was part of that.

None of us can forget that classic children's film The Railway Children from 1970 where he played Albert Perks, a modest station porter in the North of England filmed on the Keighley and Worth Valley preserved steam railway in Yorkshire.

It is out on Blu Ray and well worth seeing.

Bernard was everywhere and someone whose performances played a big part in our lives so we'll miss him as he reminds us of our lives not least our childhoods.