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This might be logged under my Famous Faces category but really Famous Voices would be more apt. You probably won’t recognise the face of Roy Skelton, and possibly not even his name, but he was the voice of two of the most famous British television puppets of all time. Roy Skelton was both Zippy and George from Rainbow.
Sadly, Roy Skelton has passed away. He suffered a stroke and died at his home in Brighton on June 8th 2011.
Whilst best known for being Zippy and George, a fact which boggles me given the arguments these two puppets sometimes had with each other, and Roy did it all in one go, switching between the voices as necessary, he was also a big contributor to Doctor Who, providing voices for the Daleks, Cybermen and (if you’re a real Doctor Who fan) the Krotons (nope, my Who knowledge isn’t sufficient for them either, you need to go back to Patrick Troughton for them).
I’ll leave you with a little video clip which shows what might have happened had Roy Skelton left the house one morning with his Rainbow hat on, but was actually off to provide voices for Doctor Who…
He was also the Monoids, Spiridons, various computer voices and appeared in front of the camera in Colony in Space, Planet of the Daleks (briefly) and the Green Death.
You must have seen the Krotons! It was repeated in 81 so that’s in your lifetime! It’s coming up on my DW Watching blog in a few weeks time: http://dweveryday.blogspot.com/
His Cybermen, the original Tenth Planet versions, were superb
I did check first to see if you had reached The Krotons yet. I’ll update the link in the main text from the Wikipedia page when you do.
8th – 11th July