GEOFFREY PALMER

(4 June 1927 - 6 November 2020)

The British actor Geoffrey Palmer, who has died aged 93, was a very popular figure in TV comedies and dramas, but in a 65-year career he also appeared on stage and in many films. He will be particularly remembered for Bob Larbey’s BBC sitcom As Time Goes By in which he co-starred with Judi Dench for sixty-four episodes from 1992. But he was in many other comedy series such as The Army Game, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Butterflies, Fawlty Towers, The Goodies, Whoops Apocalypse, Blackadder and Rev among others. Television drama included The Avengers, The Saint, Doctor Who, Colditz, The Sweeney, Bergerac and Poirot. On stage he worked for the National Theatre, the Royal Court in London and the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. He also made several radio recordings and was the narrator of the Mr Men children’s TV series. In the cinema he began in 1962, uncredited, in A Prize of Arms, then Ring of Spies, Cast a Giant Shadow with Kirk Douglas and John Wayne, Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man!, The Outsider with Sterling Hayden, Peter Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts, Clockwise and A Fish Called Wanda with John Cleese, Alan Bennett’s screenplay of The Madness of King George, Mrs Brown with Judi Dench, the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, Anna and the King with Jodie Foster, Peter Pan (as Quiller Couch), Stanley Baldwin in Madonna’s W.E. and Paddington. His last film, An Unquiet Life, about Roald Dahl’s marriage to Patricia Neal, has yet to be released. Geoffrey Palmer was married to Sally Green and they have a daughter, Harriet, and a son, Charles. He was awarded an OBE in 2004.

MICHAEL DARVELL