Bernard Cribbins RIP

Sorry to hear that Bernard Cribbins has died, aged 93, but what a wonderful life.

Cribbins starred alongside Peter Cushing in what was only the second film I saw in the cinema. (The first was Mary Poppins.)

Playing Doctor Who companion Tom Campbell alongside Peter Cushing he appeared in the 1966 film Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. which I remember being quite scary and better than the TV series on which it was based because it was in colour not black and white.

In 1970 Cribbins was the station porter Albert Perks in The Railway Children, another film I first saw in the cinema.

Since then he’s popped up all over the place - in Fawlty Towers, Coronation Street, Midsomer Murders, New Tricks … the list is endless.

In 2010 he also made a reappearance in Doctor Who (on TV this time), making him the only person to play two companions.

But what I remember most, because I associate them with my childhood listening to Ed Stewart’s Junior Choice on Saturday mornings, are the songs ‘Hole In The Ground’ and ‘Right Said Fred’, both performed by Cribbins in an age when this sort of thing actually made the charts.

Released in 1962, the same year as The Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Hole In The Ground’ reached #9:

Don't dig there, dig it elsewhere.

You're digging it round and it ought to be square.

The shape of it's wrong, it's much too long,

And you can't put a hole where a hole don't belong.

Noel Coward, no stranger to comic songs, later nominated it as one of his Desert Island Discs.

With sound effects by George Martin, ‘Right Said Fred’ was also released in 1962 and reached #10.

"Right, " said Fred, "Give a shout for Charlie."
Up comes Charlie from the floor below
After strainin', heavin' and complainin'
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea

According to Wikipedia Cribbins was awarded the General Service Medal for his service in Palestine with 2/3 Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, soon after the war.

Born in December 1928, he was still a teenager.