I'm a bit late in posting this, as he died last week, aged 84.
Veteran Welsh actor - in tons of Boulting Brothers films, amongst other things - and sublime shit-stirring documentary maker (Hang Out Your Brightest Colours etc.). More ham than the deli counter at Waitrose but quite, quite brilliant - like John Pilger as played by Donald Wolfit.
Also of course appeared memorably in two episodes of The Prisoner, as Napoleon in The Girl Who Was Death (a send-up of his "proper" Napoleon role in the BBC's 1963 dramatisation of War And Peace) and the infamous final episode Fall Out, where time and money were so pushed he had to improvise his own dialogue.
One of the best interviewees in Roger Lewis' Peter Sellers biography.
Passionately anti-apartheid but made a pro-Zola Budd film which featured him heckling Desmond Tutu thus: "I WILL PRESUME TO GUESS WHAT JESUS CHRIST WOULD HAVE THOUGHT, ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU M.A. HONS.! HE WOULD HAVE BEEN APPALLED!!! DO YOU CONCUR WITH THE FORCED PARTITION OF NORTH! EAST! IRELAND????"
The Michael Collins documentary was classic; his snarls of "Britain" set against the lilting Celtic drawls of "the Republic of Ireland."
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Monday, 3 July 2006 09:13 (eighteen years ago) link
I had a vhs copy of a 'fans' documentary regarding the Prisoner. Kenneth Griffith narrated / presented it throughout in a masterly fashion, and apparently did it for no other reason than he was asked.
― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 3 July 2006 09:18 (eighteen years ago) link
BBC4 would be a perfect place to replay some of his documentaries. I think the last thing I saw him in was 4 weddings, but he was better (and at least on screen longer) in that other Hugh Grant vehicle The Englishman Who Went Up The Hil, etc...
― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Monday, 3 July 2006 11:50 (eighteen years ago) link