Nigel Pegram

Nigel Pegram, born on 22 November 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa, is a British actor who has worked extensively across stage, film, and television as a character performer and voice artist. Following his parents' divorce in 1942, he relocated with his family to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia, and his childhood continued to take him across the globe, including Batu Gajah in Malaya in 1947, Oxford in 1949, and back to Bulawayo before further moves to Tanganyika and Uganda during the 1950s. This wide-ranging early life across multiple countries and cultures provided him with the vocal range that would later define much of his professional work. He was educated at Falcon College in Southern Rhodesia and subsequently earned a BA in law from the University of Natal in Durban. In 1962 he moved to the United Kingdom and enrolled at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society. In the summer of 1963 he performed at the Blue Angel Club in London as part of the British satire scene, and in 1964 he took part in the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival alongside Michael Palin and Terry Jones, both of whom would later become members of Monty Python.

Upon completing his studies, Pegram moved to the United States in 1965 when he joined the Oxford–Cambridge Revue for a three-month engagement with the Second City Company in Chicago. The following year he joined the cast of the musical revue Wait a Minim!, replacing Jeremy Taylor when the production transferred to Broadway in early 1966. He remained with the show for a further two years as it played various theatres across the United States, including the John Golden Theatre and the Colonial Theatre. That Broadway appearance constitutes his sole verified credit on the Great White Way.

In 1968, Pegram married April Olrich, a Zanzibar-born former Royal Ballet principal and actress who had been his co-star in Wait a Minim!, in a ceremony atop Coit Tower in San Francisco. The couple returned to London in 1969, and later that year Pegram appeared in the revue Postscripts at the Hampstead Theatre Club. Their marriage lasted 46 years until Olrich's death in April 2014, after which Pegram assumed sponsorship of the April Olrich Award for Dynamic Performance, an honor she had founded at the Royal Ballet School in Richmond Park.

From the early 1970s onward, Pegram built a substantial career in British film and television. He played Eric, an android, across two series of the children's programme Robert's Robots from 1973 to 1974. In 1977 he appeared as Cernik in an episode of the science fiction series Space: 1999, and that same year took on the role of Group Captain Ruark in the RAF sitcom Get Some In!, returning as a regular during the show's fifth and final series when its setting shifted to an RAF hospital. In 1986 he appeared as Mrs Willa Westinghouse, a transgender US presidential candidate, in the science fiction comedy The American Way, alongside Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Pollard. The following year he appeared in four episodes of the drama series Pulaski, written by Roy Clarke, playing a television director. His television work across these decades also included appearances in The Professionals (1980), Fresh Fields (1985), Pulaski (1987), Drop the Dead Donkey (1990), Lovejoy (1992), Van der Valk (1992), Melissa (1997), Written in Blood (1998), and Doctors (2003).

Among his most prominent television roles was that of Nigel in the ITV cricketing comedy drama Outside Edge, based on the play by Richard Harris, which ran for three series from 1994 to 1996. The part was written specifically for Pegram. The series won Best TV Comedy Drama at the British Comedy Awards in 1994. Later television appearances include the role of Reverend Babbington in the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode Three Act Tragedy in 2010, Bernard in the sitcom Outnumbered in 2011, and Alistair in an episode of Vicious broadcast in June 2015.

Pegram has also maintained a consistent presence as a voice artist. His animated film credits include All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), in which he voiced Sir Reginald, and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He voiced General Woundwort in the television series adaptation of Watership Down in 2001 and contributed voices to the Enid Blyton's Enchanted Lands television series in 1998. In 1999 he voiced Ernest Hemingway in Michael Palin's documentary series Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure, reuniting him with his former Oxford contemporary.

His stage work has been equally varied. During the 1970s he was a member of the Reunion Theatre Company, performing at the Dolphin and Anchor Studio Theatre in Chichester in productions including Beeston Craig and an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Before Breakfast. He also appeared in pantomimes including Babes in the Wood and Red Riding Hood during this period. Among his other stage credits are the role of the Duke of Windsor in the 1980 UK tour of Crown Matrimonial, Melvin P. Thorpe in the West End production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Wilson in The Case of the Dead Flamingo. In 2003 he appeared as Adam in Peter Hall's production of As You Like It, and in 2006 he played American Secretary of State Byrnes in James Graham's Eden's Empire at the Finborough Theatre in London.