Plan B Forum

British actor Geoffrey Palmer has passed and that's really sad to me. Probably best known to US TV audiences as Lionel Hardcastle who reconnected with Jean Pargiter (Judi Dench) late in life in As Time Goes By which seems to cycle around and around on PBS. To most of us Brits he first came to our attention in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin with Leonard Rossiter. They were two superb comic actors who never told a joke but who could have you literally ROTFL.

He was also the doctor in an episode of Fawlty Towers and Admiral Roebuck in Tomorrow Never Dies, one of the Pierce Brosnan 007 movies.

He was one of those actors whose presence was enough to make me want to see the show.

As Time Goes Byis the only thing I know him from. That was my introduction to the 'American ex-pat' who seems to be a stock figure in many other Brit shows.

Thanks for the posting here. I don't think I would have notice otherwise.

snailgate

Didn't he make it there as Jimmy "bit of a cock up on the catering front" Anderson in "The rise and fall of Reginald Perrin"?



Great character actor, personified "lugubrious", he will be missed.

One of my favourite speeches from it..

In Jimmy's bedsit, he shows Reggie his accumulating stockpile of weapons for his private army, invites Reggie to join him, and tells him exactly the sort of scum they would be fighting against.

Jimmy: "...wreckers of law and order. Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists,
union leaders, Communist union leaders, atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos, vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby- pamby probation officers, rapists, papists, papist rapists, foreign surgeons - headshrinkers, who ought to be locked up, Wedgwood Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue- sniffers, 'Play For Today', squatters, Clive Jenkins, Roy Jenkins, Up Jenkins, up everybody's, Chinese restaurants - why do you think Windsor Castle is ringed with Chinese restaurants? "

Reggie: "You realise the sort of people you're going to attract, don't you Jimmy? Thugs, bully-boys, psychopaths, sacked policemen, security guards, sacked security guards, ratialists, Paki-bashers, queer-bashers, Chink-bashers, anybody- bashers, Rear Admirals, queer Admirals, Vice Admirals, fascists, neo-fascists, crypto-fascists, loyalists, neo-loyalists, crypto-loyalists. "


Jimmy: "Do you think so? I thought recruitment might be difficult. "

Jimmy reminds me of Jarl wes and Darren


ETA: A life in pictures.