CONRAD PHILLIPS

(13 April 1925 - 13 January 2016)

British stage actor in films from 1948 including some second feature work and a lot of television parts, the most famous of which is the title role of the William Tell series (39 episodes, 1958-59). Films in the 1960s included Circus of Horrors, Sons and Lovers, No Love for Johnnie, Murder She Said, Heavens Above!, The Shadow of the Cat, and Impact, a short revenge thriller which he also co-wrote. From the 1970s onward Phillips’s career was entirely in television: Crown Court, Heidi, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Hammer House of Horrors, Jangles, Robin of Sherwood, Emmerdale and a reboot of William Tell, called Crossbow, in which he appeared in three of the 72 episodes but not as Tell. He retired in 1991 due to painful back problems and moved to Scotland, then France and subsequently Wiltshire.

MICHAEL DARVELL