As the voice of Parker, Lady Penelope’s butler and chauffeur in the TV series Thunderbirds, the actor David Graham, who has died aged 99, became a cult figure in television animation. “Yus, m’lady”, spoken in nasal cockney, was the catchphrase of Parker, a reformed safe-cracker employed at Creighton-Ward mansion to drive Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls-Royce with the number plate FAB 1.
Gerry Anderson, who created the Thunderbirds with his wife Sylvia, provided the inspiration for the puppet’s heavy cockney voice when he took Graham to lunch at a pub in Cookham, Berkshire, where they encountered a waiter called Arthur. Graham recalled: “A lovely grey-haired old gentleman came over and said, ‘Would you like to see the wine list, sir?’ I looked at Gerry and Gerry looked at me. We kept him talking and it turned out that he had ‘worked for ’is majesty at Windsor Castle’. It interested me the way he kept dropping his aitches and putting them somewhere else.”
With Sylvia Anderson providing the voice of Lady Penelope – International Rescue’s London agent – Graham completed the British end of the operation. Thunderbirds, which ran for 32 episodes over two series (1965-66), featured the adventures of the American Jeff Tracy, based on Tracy Island in the Pacific, with his five sons, who take on dramatic rescue missions in their hi-tech craft. Graham provided up to seven different voices in each episode, including that of Kyrano, the Tracy family’s loyal servant.
Graham also voiced Gordon Tracy, Thunderbird 4’s aquanaut, and Brains, the geek behind the technology. He reprised all three in the spin-off feature films Thunderbirds Are GO (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968). Five decades later, Graham brought Parker back to life when he was the only original voice cast member to work on the 2015-20 television revival, Thunderbirds Are Go.
Parker gave Graham longevity and a place in popular culture. He joined Sylvia in recording the song Parker – Well Done! in 1965 as the B-side of the Thunderbirds theme and remained in demand at Gerry Anderson fan conventions for the rest of his life.
As well as voicing more than 100 characters in six puppet series produced by Anderson, Graham assured himself another place in the television history books by joining Peter Hawkins in 1963 to provide the first Dalek voices in Doctor Who. Their harsh, staccato delivery was processed electronically to give a grating effect. This partnership continued on television until 1966 and in the film spin-offs Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD (1966).
Graham was born in London to Leah (nee Aarons) and Solomon Graham, who sold life insurance. Following service in the RAF as a radar mechanic in 99 Squadron during the second world war, Graham worked for a short time as an office clerk before his sister, who had married an American GI, invited him to New York. He trained there as an actor at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, picking up an American accent that would later prove invaluable in his voice work. However, on returning to Britain to act in rep, he was told to lose it.
He made his London stage debut as Alec in the CP Taylor play Bread and Butter (Jeanetta Cochrane theatre, 1966). Later he appeared as Dr Cefercola, alongside Laurence Olivier, in Franco Zeffirelli’s productions of Saturday, Sunday, Monday (National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1973-74), and in Filumena, as Dr Norcalla (Lyric theatre 1977-78). Michael Blakemore directed him in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Saville theatre, 1969) and in Macbeth, in which he played the Old Man (National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1972-73).
One of Graham’s earliest television appearances was as a villain on the run in a 1957 episode of the detective drama The New Adventures of Martin Kane, directed by Anderson, who was about to switch to puppet series.
Although Graham did not appear in Anderson’s first two animated productions, he was asked to voice Grandpa “Gramps” Twink in Four Feather Falls (1960), a children’s western featuring Sheriff Tex Tucker (voiced by Nicholas Parsons) and his loyal companion, Dusty the Dog (Kenneth Connor). He based the strangulated voice on that of the US actor Walter Brennan, and was also heard as other characters, including the Mexican bandit Fernando.
Graham played an undercover detective infiltrating a gang of lorry hijackers in the live-action film Crossroads to Crime (1960) before giving his vocal talents to a string of Anderson’s most popular puppet creations.
He voiced Dr Beaker and Mitch the Monkey – doing his research at London Zoo – in Supercar (1961-62), Professor Matthew Matic and Zoonie the Lazoon in Fireball XL5 (1962-63), various villains in Stingray (1964-65) and guest characters in The Secret Service (1969), which merged puppets with live action and was the last Anderson-produced series to feature Supermarionation, the technique whereby the pre-recorded dialogue triggered solenoids in the puppets’ heads, resulting in synchronised lip movement.
Graham was also heard as the clockwork-doll-owning schoolgirl’s father in Sara and Hoppity (1962-63), Snork in the English version of Moomin (1990-91), the Wise Old Elf and Mr Gnome in Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom (2009) and Grandpa Pig in Peppa Pig (2004-21).
In between this voice work, he had bit parts in many programmes, as well as runs in the children’s sci-fi series Timeslip (1970-71) as Controller 2957, a future projection of the time-travelling teenager Simon Randall (Spencer Banks), and the sitcom So Haunt Me (1992-94) as Mr Bloom, the long-suffering neighbour of a ghost (Miriam Karlin). He was a member of BBC radio’s drama company from 1975 to 1977.
Graham is survived by his cousin, Pete, a niece, Elizabeth, and a nephew, Jonathan.
