Bernard Cribbins (born 1928)

December 29 is the birthday of English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian, Bernard Cribbins, OBE (born 1928). Cribbins came to prominence in films of the 1960s, and has been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid-1950s. 

  

Cribbins is particularly well known to British audiences as the narrator in The Wombles, a BBC children's television program that ran for 40 episodes between 1973 and 1975. He also recorded several successful novelty records in the early 1960s and was a regular and prolific performer on the BBC's Jackanory from 1966 to 1991. Having appeared as Tom Campbell, a companion to Dr. Who in the 1966 feature film, Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., Cribbins may be best known for his role, four decades later, as Wilfred Mott, a companion to television's Tenth Doctor. 

Born in Derker, Oldham, Lancashire, Cribbins served an apprenticeship at the Oldham Repertory Theatre, taking a break during his years of study to undertake national service with the Parachute Regiment in his late teens. 

Cribbins made his first West End theatre appearance in 1956 at the Arts Theatre, playing the two Dromios in A Comedy of Errors, and co-starred in the first West End productions of Not Now Darling, There Goes the Bride and Run for Your Wife. He also starred in the revue And Another Thing, and recorded a single of a song from the show, titled "Folksong". 

  

In 1962 he recorded two comic songs, "The Hole in the Ground", in which an annoyed workman eventually buries a harasser, and "Right Said Fred", in which three workmen struggle to move an unspecified heavy and awkward object (possibly a grand piano) into or out of a building. Both were produced by George Martin for Parlophone, with music by Ted Dicks and lyrics by Myles Rudge. "Hole in the Ground" reached the top ten in the UK Singles Chart. 

Cribbins' later theatre credits include the roles of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre, Moonface Martin in Anything Goes with Elaine Paige at the Prince Edward Theatre, Alfred P. Dolittle in My Fair Lady at the Houston Opera House, Texas, and Watty Watkins in George Gershwin's Lady, Be Good at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre and on tour. He has also appeared in numerous pantomimes.

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