Geoffrey Bayldon

Geoffrey Bayldon spent years on stage, a great deal of it in Shakespeare, before television found the thing it wanted from him: a face that could read as ancient and mischievous at the same time. Born in Leeds in 1924, he died in 2017, and two parts outlived nearly everything else he did. He played the title role in Catweazle, a children's series about a medieval wizard stranded in modern England, and the Crowman in Worzel Gummidge. British children of two separate decades grew up slightly afraid of him.

The film work is a different catalogue and a much odder one. He was a fixture of British horror at its portmanteau peak, appearing in Tales from the Crypt, The House That Dripped Blood, Asylum and The Monster Club, with Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and a small uncredited part in the 1958 Dracula alongside them. He is the wireless operator in A Night to Remember, still the most restrained Titanic film anyone has made, and Theo Weston in To Sir, with Love.

Then there is Casino Royale, the 1967 spoof, in which he plays Q. He therefore played a Bond character without ever appearing in a Bond film proper, which is a fittingly sideways credential for a career built on being almost, but never quite, the lead. He was still taking film parts in the 2000s, Ladies in Lavender among the last of them.