Roy Castle

Roy Castle (31 August 1932 – 2 September 1994) was an English performer born in Scholes, near Holmfirth, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The son of a railwayman, he trained as a tap dancer from an early age at Nora Bray's school of dance alongside Audrey Spencer, who later established her own dance school. After completing his education at Holme Valley Grammar School, Castle began performing in an amateur concert party. He turned professional in 1953, working as a stooge for comedians Jimmy Clitheroe and Jimmy James while living in Cleveleys, near Blackpool, where he performed at the local Queen's Theatre. Over the course of his career he worked as a dancer, singer, comedian, actor, television presenter, and musician, with particular skill as a jazz trumpet player and the ability to perform on numerous other instruments.

By 1958, Castle had risen to sufficient prominence to appear at the Royal Variety Show, where he was invited to perform on the Royal Command Performance and received wide acclaim. It was at this event that he met Harry Secombe, who became a lifelong friend and later served as best man at Castle's wedding to dancer Fiona Dickson on 29 July 1963. The couple, who had been introduced by Eric Morecambe, had four children together. Their youngest son, Ben Castle, born in 1973, became a jazz saxophonist who performed with artists including Jamie Cullum, Carleen Anderson, Beth Rowley, Marillion, and Radiohead, and contributed to film soundtracks. Both Castle and his wife were committed Christians who regularly attended a Baptist church near their home.

Castle's stage career extended to Broadway, where he appeared in 1965 in Mr. Pickwick. His performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1966. The Pickwick material remained significant throughout his career: he appeared in a BBC television musical version of Pickwick in 1969, and in the 1990s he toured the country in a new production of the show starring alongside Sir Harry Secombe, which was also recorded. In the West End, Castle co-starred with Jimmy Edwards in the comedy farce Big Bad Mouse at the Shaftesbury Theatre during 1967 and 1968, stepping in after Eric Sykes withdrew due to illness. The loosely scripted production allowed both performers to ad-lib freely, with Castle incorporating trumpet performances and tap dancing into the show.

His film work included the 1965 feature Dr. Who and the Daleks, in which he starred alongside Peter Cushing as Ian Chesterton, Dr. Who's first male assistant, playing the role with a more comedic approach than William Russell had brought to the equivalent television serial. He also appeared in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors as a jazz musician and in Carry On Up the Khyber in 1968. On television, he guest-starred in an episode of the Morecambe and Wise series Two of a Kind, which aired on 3 August 1963, receiving billing twice for appearances in both halves of the programme. In 1973, he teamed with Ronnie Barker, one of his closest friends, in the one-off comedy Another Fine Mess, an episode from Barker's series Seven of One. Castle also made multiple appearances on the BBC's long-running variety programme The Good Old Days and stood in for Bruce Forsyth as host of The Generation Game in 1975 while Forsyth was ill. In 1988, he presented and performed in the Anglia Television series Marching as to War, which traced and re-enacted the early history of the Salvation Army.

From 1972, Castle served as the presenter of Record Breakers, a BBC children's programme built around the Guinness Book of Records, a role he held for more than twenty years alongside Norris McWhirter, Ross McWhirter until his murder in 1975, Fiona Kennedy, and Cheryl Baker. Castle recorded the show's theme song, "Dedication," and typically performed it live over the closing credits. While hosting the programme he set nine world records himself, among them the fastest tap dance at 1,440 taps per minute, recorded on 14 January 1973, the longest wing walk at three hours and twenty-three minutes, and playing the same tune on 43 different instruments in four minutes. On 2 November 1985, the Daily Mirror reported that he had tap-danced one million times in twenty-four hours during a sponsored event in London, raising one million pounds for charity. Record Breakers continued until 2001, making it one of Britain's longest-running television programmes.

Castle's recording career spanned three LPs released between 1958 and 1969. One of these, Songs for a Rainy Day, was recorded in 1966 for the Columbia label and featured twelve songs connected by the theme of rain, with jazz arrangements by Victor Graham and performances by British jazz musicians including Gordon Beck, Jeff Clyne, Leon Calvert, Ike Isaacs, Ray Swinfield, and Al Newman. The album was reissued on CD by EMI Gold in 2005 under the title Isn't This a Lovely Day. He also released a charting single in 1960, the Christmas song "Little White Berry." In 1978, he recorded eight Bible parables for the Scripture Union label, released on one side of the LP Castle on Luke Street. On 31 December 1992, Castle was appointed OBE in the 1993 New Year Honours.

Castle was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 1992. A non-smoker, he attributed the illness to years of passive smoking in jazz clubs where he had performed as a trumpet player. He underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy and entered remission later that year, but announced on 26 November 1993 that the cancer had returned. Despite his deteriorating health during the spring and summer of 1994, he undertook the Tour of Hope to raise funds for the construction of what became the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, the only British charity dedicated solely to defeating lung cancer. Fewer than six months before his death, he attended the Liverpool–Everton derby match at Anfield on 13 March 1994, standing on the Spion Kop terrace. Castle, who supported Liverpool, had also been present at the club's FA Cup final victory over Sunderland in May 1992. He died on 2 September 1994.