Amid the Palins and Twiggys, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and TV's Chris Packham being gonged in the 2019 New Year's Honours list, there was one notable absentee who surely must be up for something sooner or later - the national treasure that is Bernard Cribbins, who turns 90 today.
For Britons of a certain age - particularly mine - Cribbins is the voice of The Wombles, or Mr Perks from The Railway Children, or an early member of the Carry On troupe, or Peter Sellers' sidekick in two of his best British comedies, Two-Way Stretch and The Wrong Arm Of The Law. More recent fans may have been acquired by Cribbins' portrayal of Wilf, Catherine Tate’s grandfather during David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor in Doctor Who.
He is still as sharp as a button at 90 and more than willing and able to keep acting, something I'd love to see him do more of. A quick scan of his press coverage will see a recurring theme, that of everyone's favourite uncle, a persona not unsurprisingly cast while voicing The Wombles in the 1970s, and that of Great Uncle Bulgaria in particular. Like his contemporary Brian Cant narrating the Trumpton, Chigley and Camberwick Green triumvirate, Cribbins' warming voice became an integral part of childhood, but his visibility on everything from regular storytelling stints on Jackanory to the televisual parlour game that was Give Us A Clue served to cement his status as a loveable, avuncular figure. Some actors might bristle at the notion that, thanks to something they did 30, 40 or even 50 years ago they have been installed as a national treasure. but not Cribbins: "Yeah, yeah, why not?", he told The Times recently. "I mean, you as an adult may not have seen my latest whatever," he said to journalist Dominic Maxwell, "but you have a long-range memory of something pleasant. It's like remembering your first ice cream or your first banana. No, I’m happy with that."
One further abiding memory I have of Cribbins is his brief, unlikely but "delightful little interlude" as a pop star in the early 1960s, recording the novelty records The Hole In The Ground and Right Said Fred with Beatles producer George Martin. I'm, obviously too young to have heard these tunes first time around, but thanks to their regular plays on Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart's Junior Choice, I still own a copy, somewhere, of a Right Said Fred reissue from the '70s. Novelties though they may be, they are further evidence of just how loveable Cribbins was then, and still is now. No wonder he was asked to sing The Hole In The Ground at George Martin's memorial service, joke fully intended.
As fine an actor as he is - and his time in Doctor Who served as a timely reminder - I go back to the 60 episodes of The Wombles Cribbins voiced between 1973 and 1975 (and repeated long after). Cribbins breathed colourful, distinctive life into the wise old Great Uncle Bulgaria, the blunt Tobermory, lovably lazy Orinoco, Bungo, the fitness freak Tomsk, brainy Wellington, the oh-la-la Madame Cholet, and one of my favourites, the occasional visitor to Wimbledon Common, Cairngorn, the MacWomble the Terrible! Cribbins' dexterity was such that you could, believably, forget that you were watching Ivor Wood's stop-motion animation characters, and their before-their-time message about litter and recycling. "Kids love a story," he told The Times. "It can be adventure or funny or whatever, but you have got to give it 100 per cent. I've thought about characterisation, interpretation, whatever you want to call it. I’m in control."
In his recent autobiography, Bernard Who?, Cribbins wrote about his work on The Railway Children - for my money still one of the finest family films ever made - in which he plays stationmaster Albert Perks. "When I was a boy, in the early Thirties, me and my pals would run to the railway bridge near our homes and inhale the intoxicating smoke and steam as an engine whistled below. The thought still makes me smile. So when my friend Lionel Jeffries phoned me nearly 40 years later to ask me to play Albert Perks, a stationmaster, in a film he was making, he didn't have to ask twice. Cribbins had, of course, worked with Jeffries - another national treasure - in both Peter Sellers crime comedies, Two-Way Stretch and The Wrong Arm Of The Law, and knew it would be fun, even with the screen adaptation of Edith Nesbit's Victorian tale of three children and their adventures living alongside a Yorkshire railway line marking Jeffries' debut as a film director. And what a magnificent job he did of it, to the extent Cribbins still speaks fondly of the scene when Jenny Agutter's Bobbie meets her father (Iain Cuthbertson) on the station platform: "If you don't shed a tear when she shouts, 'Daddy, my daddy!' you're made of wood", Cribbins says.
Cribbins' own role in the 1970 film - of which he remains justly proud ("I’ve a lot of affection for Mr Perks, it was a lovely job and it’s had a lot of long-term applause.") probably did as much as The Wombles and Jackanory to seal his status as Britain's favourite uncle. His friend Lionel Jeffries had a particular knack for being able to reach and entertain children, and I'd argue that Cribbins - for all his acting range and parts in things for grown-ups - is the same. In an era when children are only supposed to respond to culture with 'an edge', Cribbins' mellifluous intonation, and the gentle, charming stories of both the Wimbledon Common clan as well as the cinematic adaptation of Nisbet's railway family, should be nailed to the national curriculum. Happy Birthday, Bernard. Let's hope your knighthood's in the post come the Queen's Birthday Honours in the spring.
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