Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.

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Monday, 14^th November, 1983

King Jason Rules Again

He was a cult figure of the swinging 60s. The guy every young blood tried to look like. And the fella 35,000 Australian women voted the man they would most like to be seduced by. But it is more than a decade since Jason King, the super smoothie with the droopy moustache disappeared from our screens. Now Peter Wyngarde, the actor who played the cultured hero of Department S on the follow up series Jason King, is back.

Peter, now 50, and still rakishly handsome, will be making his comeback in a new Doctor Who saga. At the same time, Channel 4 is preparing to screen reruns of the old series that made Jason King a household name.

But Peter still secretly dreads the character that made him famous. “Suddenly Jason King took me over,” he says. “I was in danger of not being Peter Wyngarde anymore. The pressure of the roll was amazing. I could only take it for three years and then I had to quit. I just wanted to back away from public life. I had had enough. So I took myself off writing”.

In his Jason king heyday, Peter used to design the suits that the fictional hero wore. And he set the style for shirts with turned up cuffs the hallmark of the well-dressed man of the day. But now Peter is more at home in jeans and a combat jacket.

“All I want to do is go back to my roots and try to start again,” he says. “It’s a real challenge”.

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‘Woman’ – 10^th September, 1973

Peter’s Royal Progress

“Yes, I suppose people are surprised when they hear my singing voice,” said Peter Wyngarde, referring to his right royal success in the revival of the stage musical, The King And I. He added, “it was a surprise to me, too! I sound better than I originally thought I would. I’ve been enjoying the role tremendously, even though it’s poles apart from my tough guy TV image as the other king, author and detective Jason.

“I believe a lot of my fans, especially the teenage ones, don’t quite know what to expect when they come to see the show but they seem to enjoy it, all the same!” In fact, he’s still recovering from the enthusiasm of a party of 400 teenyboppers who made a block booking and all turned up at the stage door afterwards.

“It’s hard for me to analyse my appeal. Basically, I think my younger fans like the trendy clothes I wear as Jason King. Also, I’ve got an older man’s authority which makes me perhaps something of a change from the usual young pop stars, doesn’t it?”

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The London Evening Standard

Thursday, 11^th October, 1973

Surprise Encore With A Cuddle From The King

Dawn was almost breaking before Sally Ann Howes and Peter Wyngarde got to the beds today after the triumphant West End first night in The King And I. It had been an emotional occasion at the Adelphi Theatre, with audience applause thundering out and curtain call after curtain call.

The most emotional moments of all which was totally unexpected by the stars. It came when the curtain rose one more time to find the two of them hugging each other with delight. Peter explained: “We thought the curtain was down for good and we just fell into each other’s arms in relief. It was a magical moment.

“I don’t know what we said, but it sort of sealed the occasion. I imagine we were just gasping our thanks to each other”.

Backstage after all the congratulations from people like Cecely Courtnage, who looks upon herself as the second mother to Sally Ann, the stars exchanged presents.

He, using a line from the script, gave her a huge model elephant. “I think it has brought us both good luck,” he told her. She, remembering that the King wore glasses in the show, gave him a pair of Georgian spectacles. Says TV’s Jason King, “When I get the lenses taken out I will wear them during future performances”.

Both of them went on to a series of parties to mark the opening. There were public ones and private celebrations. Peter got to two of them but missed a third. “With a matinee due today,” he said, “I felt I had to sleep at some time”.

It was his first West End musical and he was at the theatre early to mentally adjust himself from London to Siam – leaving one world for another.

“It was wonderful hearing the adulation for the music,” he said. “I was so nervous that I must have gargled 100 times before going onstage. But it was exhilaration rather than fear. My last words to Sally were, look into my eyes when we’re out there”.

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March 2018

Interview with ‘Number 2’

Throughout The Prisoner, ‘Number Two’ was the visible face of authority – and one of the stellar guests at last year’s 50th Anniversary event was the late Peter Wyngarde, who took the role and so memorably goaded ‘Number Six’ in the episode Checkmate

Wyngarde’s extensive career ranged from Noël Coward and Shakespeare plays to starring in The Innocence, one of the finest horror films, underachieving television iconography as Jason King. He was also a motoring enthusiast, and one of his biggest roles came about largely due to a car.

“In the early 60s I received a script that was totally rubbish,” he told C&SP in his final interview before he passed away on 18th January (2018), “not a decent line in it!” Shortly afterwards however, Wyngarde was walking by Tony Cooks Bristol showroom on Kensington High Street and he fell for a new model retailing at £5,750 1s 2d. “Upon contacting my bank I discovered that the balance was 12s and 7d!” This vision of automotive splendour prompted a quick change of heart regarding the screenplay and the resulting Night of the Eagle turned out to be a splendid supernatural thriller in which Wyngarde drove a Triumph TR3A.

Off screen, he also experienced a TR2 – “pretty, but not very practical” – which was one of many vehicles that joined the Wyngarde fleet over the years. These included the Bentley S2 Continental with James Young coachwork that appeared extensively throughout Department S; a Studebaker Dictator that suffered a mishap – “I was speeding down the road to Southampton and the engine blew up”; and three TVR’s, the 3.5-litre V8 models receiving particular approval. Latterly, his marque of choice was Porsche; “They are incredible and feel hand crafted.”

Wyngarde also used to race at Brands Hatch: “I would love to have done more of it, but there were insurance problems due to my screen work.”

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Thursday, 5^th February, 1970

Peter Wyngarde was chosen Britain’s Best Dressed Male Personality last month. Looks like he could win himself another title of Britain’s most missed TV star. It’s the women fans that have missed him most since his Department S series came off the earlier this year. “I get letters from them every week asking when he’s coming back in another series,” says Lew Grade, boss of ATV. “We’re finalising a new deal now”.

This would be good news indeed for Mr Wyngarde’s female admirers. The new series will be made by Monty Berman, who also produced Department S. Wyngarde will again play the character of Jason King and filming starts next month.

The first of the 26 programmes in the series will be ready for screening next year. Meanwhile, Mr Wyngarde is manfully shouldering his responsibilities as Britain’s Best Dressed Male Personality. When he talked to my colleague the other day. he had on a snazzy pair of greening and yellow striped trousers that went well with a fluffy shirt, bare feet and a gold bracelet.

“My trousers were made from deck chair ticking,” he said. “I had them run up in Spain I think”.

“Show her the Valentino coat”, Peter, said a friend in blue velvet. “For God’s sake, tell everyone! It’s gone into cold storage.” he pleaded, “or someone will break in and pinch it for sure!”

The coat, ankle length, black sealskin, mink-trimmed and with a squirrel collar belonged to movie idol Rudolph Valentino in the 20s. ! “I just love the colour”, said Wyngarde, trying the coat on over the deck shirt pants and bare feet. “It’s very Zhivago-ish, isn’t it?”

Peter’s dress style influenced designs for all the clothes worn as Jason King. I’ve got some material, raised embroidered black silk, for an evening suit,” he confided. With a lovely frilly shirt? Miss Griffiths inquired. “No,” he replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps not too frilly.”

It’s details like that which can make or break you as Britain’s Best Dressed Man!

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June 1994

Few actors have become a strongly connected with the series as Peter Wyngarde is with Department S and Jason King. The two series were part of the explosion of TV spy series in the 60s and 70s, but are remembered primarily because of Wyngarde’s engaging performance as the foppish author, Jason King.

Peter was originally offered a minor role in the series as an old Oxford professor. He was initially unsure about taking the job because he was involved in a play. It was only when the reviews came in after the first night that he was persuaded to do it.

“We all had a big dinner party and I was at one end of the table and the producer who asked me to do the series was at the other end. I said to them, ‘I never read the notices… If the notices come in I shall go away somewhere and when I come back you won’t breathe a word of what happened because I don’t want to know’. So the papers came and I went away to another room and came back about half an hour later and I could tell by the looks on their faces that it was the disaster of the year! Funnily enough, it wasn’t actually and we played it for six months so it was alright. I think they were trying not to look anything, and when actors try not to look anything, they always look constipated! So I thought, ‘Oh God, this is not going to work’ so I got a napkin and wrote, ‘I will be delighted to do your series, signed Peter Wyngarde’ and that’s how I got it”.

The role accepted that night was the old university Don; the role that made it to the screen was Jason King. His portrayal of the ‘crime writer adventurer and lover’ is a million miles away from the cranky old professor as it was originally conceived.

“I didn’t like the idea of playing two characters in a day because you get a bit schizophrenic,” Peter explains. “I said I don’t want to be too many people because I’ll go raving mad. So [I said] ‘why don’t I do the thing I’ve always wanted to do on film which is be an extension of myself?’ because I think all the really great film actors have always been an extension of themselves”.

This allowed Peter to do the play at the same time and bring out the humour Jason King. “If you’ve got humour in yourself then you’ve got to bring it out”, he says. “That was a lovely thing about playing Jason because he was a romantic extension – and I emphasise the word romantic – of yourself. You could do things like James Bond”.

Peter took acting like James Bond perfectly literally in both Department S and its follow up Jason King by throwing himself all heartedly into the stunts.

“There is one episode when you can see it actually happening, when I did my back in. You can hear the crack. I’ll leap from some stairs, not terribly high, but enough when you do a swallow dive onto the villains. I said ‘oh it must be me, so you must take it from underneath so you can see it me’. I’m not a stuntman, but you want to do those things yourself because they look so real if you do them. I’ve never really recovered from it”.

This experience clearly didn’t put him off as he continued doing the stunts even though his contract explicitly forbade it.

In one episode he had another accident when he jumped out of an aeroplane.

I think I had four days off and I went and did a parachute course. The idea was that the cameraman came with me and we both did this course outside Cambridge and we jumped and I did the junk with him and he photographed me so you know it’s mehfil stop unfortunately a very large tree got in the way, and so did the shoot, and I arrived upside down!

“What was so marvellous about it was they showed the rushes the next day… And this bloody director said, ‘my God, it’s amazing! Paul (who was my stunt double) is looking more like Peter every time I see him!’ He never found out, but everyone else was laughing”.

Although he enjoyed going out to film on location on Jason King, such extravagance was out of the reach of the budget for the Department S. Many of the stories were set in faraway countries, which was achieved by using the much cheaper technique of back-projection.

“You used to sit in these stupid cars and have that terrible thing behind you rolling away and you’re trying to be real. It was ridiculous. I used to get the giggles, I said, ‘Are you sure we have to do this?’ They said, ‘All right, we’ll make it one morning where you do them all in a bunch’. I had forgotten I kept changing clothes all the time, so I spent the whole morning changing clothes. I think I change suits 400 times!”

and what happened was our writers had to solve them. And that’s how they became a bit fantastic, but they were based on true stories, most of them”. The idea was that Jason King was really Flemming writing about James Bond, but in the early days of Department S he was part of a threesome with actors Joel Fabiani and Rosemary Nicols.

“I got on marvellously with him”, says Peter. “We didn’t hit it off with ‘Knickers’ as I called her, because she decided she was going to become a star and I think actors don’t like that”.

When Department S finished, Peter Wyngarde took a year off before returning to start in Jason King. “I didn’t really want to do another series because it was very tiring”, he says. “I thought that was jolly nice, I enjoyed that immensely now let’s have a little rest. So I took a little sabbatical away and went around the world. As a result of working so hard I got amnesia. I don’t remember that trip – waste of money! A whole year away and I don’t remember anything about it. People come up to me in the street and say, ‘What were what we got up to in Bangkok, really Peter!’ And I say, ‘What are you talking about?’ Apparently I behaved appallingly in Bangkok, but there we are”.

When he came back he was called in by TV Executive Lew Grade to talk about returning as Jason King.

“He said, ‘Well listen, I’ve got to tell you something, Peter. My idea of a hero is somebody who’s blond, blue eyed and has a lovely smile. I can’t understand how people can stand somebody like you with this long black hair, these funny clothes you’re wearing and this funny English you speak… but I’ve got to tell you this, my wife likes you so we’re going to do another series!’”

Having been away for a year, he took little persuading to do the series, but he was surprised to find out Jason King was being based solely around his character. This, he feels, weaken the show.

“He’s a person you just want to see bits of, but if you’re going to go with him all the time you’ve got to go in another direction, a little more serious. And that’s what we had to do and he became vulnerable. I don’t know if you remember, we did one with that lovely girl, Felicity Kendal [Toki]. I fell madly in love with her of course, as me, not as Jason, or both of us fell in love with her. It shows, you see, and I don’t think Jason should ever have been vulnerable”.

Watching a video of Jason King 30 years later, it’s obviously a product of the 70s, if only in terms of the fashions. “The people in the streets were doing it which was marvellous, it was like at Mardi Gras”, says Peter. “But if you look at some of the episodes, my clothes are not exaggerated, there’re only exaggerated if I was playing a character within a character.

“I’ve never wore a medallion outside my shirt, for example, except for one character that goes to a discotheque. Of course they accused me of wearing a medallion and I became a medallion man, which I never was”.

One of the fashions Jason King is famous for are turn-back shirt cuffs. Peter only adopted the style when he lost his cufflinks on location in Venice.

“I was running from somebody or chasing somebody, I can’t remember which. I had to jump into this gondola. They [the cufflinks] were platinum, they were given to me as a present and one of them fell off into the drink. So I took off the other one and pull my cuffs back. It started a fashion, especially in Germany funnily enough. I remember going to Germany shortly afterwards and I went into a discotheque and every man in there had his cuffs back”.

The actor obviously has good memories of his time as Jason King because he talks of the show with great enthusiasm.

“It’s real danger which happens to a lot of actors – and it happened to me as well towards the end – is you get so embroiled with the character that you think nobody else can write for him and you are the only person who can write it and say the lines, which is probably 75% true. But then suddenly you’re only going in one direction. You must allow other people to come in on it otherwise you get a one-sided view of it. I think that the second series, the Jason King one, through no fault of mine, became too much of Jason King.

Peter Wyngarde still pops up now and again on TV, most recently in The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes. “I was just asked to do it and I said yes”, says Peter. “I thought, that’s a lovely idea. The character was marvellously interesting, but there wasn’t enough of him. I don’t think”.

There were suggestions that his character would appear in every episode of the new Sherlock Holmes series, and may have taken off in his own series. Those plans appear to have fallen through.

“The idea was at one time to carry him on, not a Sherlock Holmes, but as an individual characters so that he could be the link mount between different stories,” explains Peter. “But I thought it was rather limiting because he wouldn’t be in a period. “If he could be like Quantum Leap, then I could be different people, I think that could be fun. Or go into different periods, then it could be more interesting, but to say in that period and use classic stories, Kipling and all those kind of things, I think was rather limiting. [It’s] very much what I call English television, a bit dull”.

In the mid-60s he made a couple of appearances in The Avengers with John Steed and Emma Peel. “I did two Avengers: A Touch Of Brimstone and Epic”, he says. “One got me an Emmy nomination while I was out in Greece doing and I Spy. I remember Bill Cosby was in I Spy and we flew to Hollywood for the Emmy Awards and he got it and I was terribly upset as he’s become a millionaire 25,000 times over and I haven’t. I suppose he may have been the right choice, I don’t know”.

He was in a famous scene where he got to fight with Diana Rigg while she was dressed in black leather. “I whipped her and she had a snake around her neck. I think I was mad for the snake, that’s probably what it was, I wanted the snake”.

The scene caused a bit of a stir at the time. “Yes, it did,” says Peter. “The clothes she was wearing and a man whipping her, I suppose. She’s a neighbour, so I’ve stopped whipping her now!”

He also had a major role in one of the better Peter Davidson Doctor Who’s. He played Timanov, a religious leader on the volcanic Planet of Fire.

“We went to Lanzarote which was lovely,” he recalls. “I had a lot of fun there. They were a super company to work for, really great fun.

“It is an interesting story, it was like a kind of prehistoric thing in it away, and I thought the location was absolutely appropriate; marvellous those volcanoes, the colours were fantastic. A lady directed that [Fiona Cumming] she was good. I don’t know why she hasn’t done more because she was really good, very helpful”.

He still get fan mail – at least that’s what he tells you when he’s asked about the female admirers he used to get in the 60s and 70s.

“I still get them! We’ve got a wonderful fan club… because of this Sherlock Holmes thing, they thought I was going to be a in every episode, letters have been piling in. It’s quite extraordinary. I don’t understand it at all, thank God, because I think if I did understand it, it would stop”.

Interview by Jane Killick.

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Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.

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September 1973

Tea and honey…

with the King of Siam

It was not the sultry, ultra-sophisticated Jason King I’d love women the world over all the stern, anti-feminists, oriental King and I Peter Wyngarde that I met for afternoon tea on a sunny Yorkshire hotel terrace last week. No dark glasses. No dramatics in dress. No champagne with oysters. The man himself – in casual, rolled up jeans and open floral shirt with unfreaked hair combed soft just as it grows is more devastating than all the images we have of him on stage and screen rolled into one.

Eyes incredibly blue, smile with a disarming friendliness, this is a man happy in the sun, and at peace with the world. It’s communicating peace too; a shared contemplation of blue skies, green gardens and the grey stonework of the fine mediaeval building behind us. “I like to find somewhere like this, quiet and away from it all.

“This part is 13th Century common and from that line though this side was added in 1845 – quite well I thought,” he explained with a sweep of his arm. The art of the actor is put aside – for the moment he is content to forget all matters theatrical and recount some of the history of the Hall. This is only a second stay here yet already he is familiar with pedigree and past, characteristics of the care and attention to detail prevalent in all his work.

Obviously Peter Wyngarde (king of small screen, stage and fashion), has a great feeling for all buildings and the great outdoors. He squirms bare feet into sparse sandals and squares up to a tiny table to do homage to another great love… tea! Lid carefully lifted; pot softly stirred (“I think it will be alright”) and a hitherto quite indifferent liquid poured to perfection.

He waits patiently – and a girl brings honey. That the Wyngarde way to take tea, I mentally kicked myself for having plonked white cube sugar in my (which I hate) and resolve to make with the honey for a second cup – which I did – and it’s delicious!

When the girl returns (ostensibly for the tray, but really to request a handful of autographs), books are duly signed but the pot is not relinquished until it yields up a third cup. “Don’t take it just yet. Tea is a firm favourite of mine and, as you know, I drink it by the bucketful,” he reminds her. Despite attentive pouring, the final offering comes with a floating leaf or two. The now empty teapot is carefully observed. “Oh, I see what is the matter. You’ve used quick brew tea and the strainer isn’t right for that kind of tea,” he tells her gently.

New Theatre, Hull (September 17th – 29^th) then on to the Palace Theatre, Manchester, from October 1st before opening in London.

It played to packed-solid houses at Leeds Grand Theatre for two weeks in July, and before that with phenomenal success for a full four-week season in the Forum Theatre Billingham.

“I like touring, especially in provincial theatres. They’re not really having a very good time of it. It’s a good thing when one can use the name one has made on television to draw an audience. For instance, we filled a theatre at Billingham every night for four weeks and still people were turned away. We could have stayed there much longer. It is wonderful. But I understand that since we left, they had to close a show midweek. I don’t know what the answer is. You see last nights (this was in Leeds) we had a house full of young people. They loved it. The show is new to them! They went overboard for the songs shouted for uncles comment cheered, just like a pop concert. It’s marvellous”.

He ponders some more on the difficulties surrounding live theatre day today. “A lot of the traditions have gone. When a country loses its traditions, its lost”.

He counters my suggestion that perhaps the pull of so many other leisure entertainment lures “people away from the theatre with the reply, “I believe in competition. It’s healthy. But you see, television can be rather like a two-headed monster. It can strip away the mystery – bear the technicalities. When I go to the theatre, although I’ve been in it myself for so many centuries, I still want to believe that it’s true. It’s magic. One has to retain that. If you’re going to show the cameras, and the way this and that is achieved of course, the magic is lost”.

He takes a cigarette (one of the ten he’s allowed each day – doctor’s orders) and shows me the nicotine deposit in his cigarette holder. “Look at that. That’s from just, how many I had today – three/four cigarettes. I know it’s very bad for me. But I get so cross and irritable if I don’t smoke. Unbearable”.

The thought that he has to look after his voice now that he’s a singer, makes him laugh out loud. “Well, it’s not really a singing part. Mine are speaking-out songs, if one can call it that. The ‘Puzzlement’ piece is a tongue twisting one at that. Does it come over alright?” he asks.

Has he been in a musical before? “Yes, I played in Brecht’s The Good Woman Of Setzuan. I took the part of Yang Sun, a Chinese pilot. It’s strange, I hadn’t thought of it ‘til now, that in the two musical plays I’ve been in, I should play an oriental”.

What about clothes? One of the several awards he has gained with Jason King is ‘The Best Dressed Man In Britain’.

“Yes, clothes are very important to me. I think see things mostly in shapes, through the eye not the ear. Perhaps that means I have no right to be in musicals! I draw a shape. I see characters as shapes and before I know it, I’m designing clothes”. His interpretation in The King and I is powerful and moving. He has given a barbaric splendour to the two full-length caftans, heavily encrusted with embroidery, and ablaze with colour. “You should read the original book, it’s remarkable,” he advises.

– most stories have to be to some degree, but you have to put forward as much of the truth as you can.

“I don’t play the role romantically – he was a very hard man – he didn’t understand the meaning of love; didn’t acknowledge such a thing existed. He’s perplexed by his feelings. The whole thing is of great puzzlement to him. There’s the scene in the library, where he says, ‘But why should I be called upon to discuss matters of importance with… a woman!’ The beginning is there then, it’s definitely there, and he’s greatly puzzled by it. And when he dies her love for him is there too”.

Herein lies is sensitive rendering of the role – he understands the man and the media with which he works himself.

Early this year, in Leeds, we saw him do the same sort of thing in Charles Dyer’s Mother Adam, a part which he says he very much wanted to do, and one that he recalls took a lot longer to get to grips with. He firmly believes that an actor should be a Vagabond (“like the travelling players of longer go”). And says that in the past four years, he’s travelled more than anyone else he knows. Where does this very much travelled man feel most at home? “That’s an interesting question,” he parries. “Well as I said, I love the sun. I love doing nothing in the sun, and I adore Fiji. Went there for a week instead seven! But I should say that it is here in England that I feel most at home. That’s funny because I get very cross sometimes at the way things get done”.

A plane flies over at that moment and ‘at-home’ Peter Wyngarde points a finger skywards, shades his eyes with one hand, and becomes a small boy again. “I take great delight in watching planes go by and recognising what they are. I used to make models when I was a small boy. I know them all,” he says with a grin.

Earlier he’d said, “I think when you’re working in the theatre at night, you shouldn’t do anything at all during the day”. But this busy-doing-nothing time was now drawing to a close. “I’m afraid I shall have to go now. This is sort of a ritual hour,” he said. Tea and honey time, was over.

And the King went away to prepare for the tasks ahead for a new he would be called upon to do many things.

Interview by Joy Jones.

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Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.

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Saturday, 10^th August, 1985

Return Of The King

35,000 Australian women once voted him the man they would most like to be seduced by. In the early 70s he was the hottest property on ITV, and responsible for a generation of tots being christened ‘Jason’. Even today, when he phoned TV Times, the blasé switchboard girl paused and asked, “Are you THE Peter Wyngarde?”

He was, of course, the super with-it star of the series Department S and Jason King, all languid elegance, snappy suits, curly hair and drooping moustache. And then he more or less disappeared.

During the last 10 years he has popped up only occasionally; a film role here, a stage play there, between stretches out of work. But a couple of months ago he suddenly sizzled back to ITV screens as the devil himself in a Hammer House Of Horror Mystery And Suspense story. And on Wednesday he plays an almost equally nasty piece of work in Bulman, also on ITV.

“I’m Gallio, a crook,” says Wyngarde. “I play him with a terribly phoney American accent – like a very old George Raft. In fact, I took the moustache off for the role because Raft never had a moustache. And I really get to sock someone.

“It’s nice playing villains. People don’t expect it of me, but they forget that before Jason King I had done 110 television plays; that’s 110 different characters. But even today Jason King follows me around. I can take my moustache off, cut my hair, but people still recognise me as him.

Both Department S and Jason King keep cropping up on late night television all over the world. There is even talk, says Wyngarde, that Channel 4 may rerun them. “A lot of people would like to bring them back, and it would be lovely money for me”.

At the age of 52, Wyngarde is fed up just sitting around in London. “In fact, I’m thinking of going to America unless more work comes along here. And the sort of work I like is being done in America.

When in August, he asks, is his Bulman episode being shown? “The 14th? That’s just after my mother’s birthday. She will be pleased to see me again”.

Interview by Adrian Furness.

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Variety Playhouse

Peter and Zena Marshall perform an excerpt from ‘The Rose Without a Thorn’ by Clifford Bax

Broadcast: 25th December, 1954 at 13.10

Toast Of The Town

Toastmaster, Eamonn Andrews, spotlights ‘Duel of Angels’, and features the performance of a scene from the Jean Giraudoux play. Peter played Count Marcellus.

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 7^th June, 1958 at 20.15

Movie-Go-Round

Soundtrack from: The Siege of Sidney Street

Broadcast: 6th November, 1960 at 14.45

Guest Spot

Interview with Peter by Anne Holden

Peter talked about his role as Count Marcellus in ‘Duel of Angels’

Broadcast: Saturday, 13th August, 1960 on Radio KFAX (New York)

Guest Spot

Interview with Peter by Al Covaia

Peter talked about his role as Count Marcellus in ‘Duel of Angels’

Broadcast: Wednesday, 10th August, 1960 on Radio K00 (New York)

Movie-Go-Round

Peter recalls his favourite movie themes

Broadcast: BBC Radio – 6th November, 1960 14.45

Repeated on BBC Radio 2 – 23^rd February, 1974 as Star Sound and on BBC Radio 2 – 7th January, 1975 at 20.02 

Radio Luxembourg Department S Special

Interview with Peter

Broadcast: Radio Luxembourg – January 14th, 1970

BBC Radio Manchester

Interview

6th November, 1971

Women’s Hour

Interview

Broadcast: BBC Radio 2 – January 26th, 1973

Weekend Women’s Hour

Interview

Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 – March 31^st, 1973 at 15.00

Star Sound

Peter recalls his favourite movie themes

Broadcast: BBC Radio 2 – 23 February, 1974 at 18.03

John Dunn’s Late Night Special

Interview

Broadcast: BBC Radio 2 – 19^th November, 1974 at 22.02

The Rias Parade

Variety Show

Broadcast: (West) Germany – 29th November, 1974

The Showman

Peter is interviewed by Harry Martin

Broadcast: Australia 1983

A Game Of Two Halves

Peter discusses his favourite year

Broadcast: BBC Radio 5 – 29^th March, 1993 at 14.30

The Afternoon Shift

Interview

Broadcast: BBC Radio 2 – June 4th, 1996

The Judy Spier’s Show

Interview

Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 – August 1994

Nightwaves: The Innocents Special

Peter and other guests talk about the classic film, ‘The Innocents’. Broadcast live from The British Film Institute (BFI).

Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 – 2nd December, 2013

Peter (far left) at the BFI live broadcast

The Arts Show

Broadcast: BBC Radio Ulster – 18th January, 2018

Marie-Louise looks back on the life of Peter Wyngarde

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© Copyright The Hellfire Club: The OFFICIAL PETER WYNGARDE Appreciation Society: https://www.facebook.com/groups/813997125389790/

The Wonderful Year: 1851

Broadcast: Sunday, 4th February, 1951 and Friday, 2nd November, 1951

The Noble Spaniard

Character: The Duke of Hermances (a Spaniard)

The play takes place in the dining room of the Proudfoot family’s villa in Boulogne in 1950

Broadcast: 4th August, 1953

Artists In Crime

Character: Nigel Bathgate

A serial in five episodes, dramatised by Giles Cooper from the novel by Ngaio Marsh

The action of the play takes place during the late 1920s.

Part 1: Broadcast: 11th August, 1953 at 20.30

Part 2: Broadcast: 18th August, 1953 at 20.30

Part 3: ‘Question and Answer’ – Broadcast: 24th August, 1953 at 20.30

Part 4: ‘The Man at the Table’ – Broadcast: 31st August, 1953 at 20.30

Part 5: ‘The Final Touches’ – Broadcast: 7th September, 1953 at 20.30

Léocadia

Character: Prince Albert Troubiscoi

A comedy by Jean Anouilh Translated by Patricia Moyes Radio production by Raymond Raikes

Broadcast by the BBC Home Service – 1^st August, 1954 at 16.30

Story Synopsis: The story deals with a Prince (Peter Wyngarde) who mourns a dead opera singer Léocadia, and spends his time loitering in the park where his aunt, the Duchess (Gladys Young), has reconstructed the places linked with their brief romance. But now she employs Amanda (Dorothy Gordon), a little milliner from Paris, to impersonate the dead diva for three days.

Rosalynde

Character: Rosander

Broadcast by the BBC Home Service – 8th August, 1954

Variety Playhouse: A Rose Without A Thorn

Broadcast: BBC Radio – 27th December, 1954 at 20.40

Character: Francis Dernham

N.B.: A second performance of the play was broadcast on 31st December, 1954 at 19.30 

Story Synopsis: In what was billed as “One of the finest historical plays written in modern times”, Clifford Bax conducted a sympathetic and unerring dramatic enquiry into the love of King Henry VIII for Katherine Howard.

The King’s fourth marriage – to the pathetic and bewildered Anne of Cleves – has come to grief as the play opens, and Henry’s questing eye has already been taken by another lady of the Court when he asks the young Courtier, Thomas Culpeper: “Is her reputation as fair as her face?”

The unhappy Tom, who is himself enamoured by Katherine, acknowledges that is; and it is at that moment, perhaps, that the King is falsely persuaded that he’s found ‘the rose without a thorn’.

The play is thereafter concerned with a royal passion, foolishly idealised, and doomed to tragedy because it knows no compromise with jealousy.

Bax treats Katherine’s dilemma, of past feeling and present indiscretions, with a delicate understanding. He also allows the King as much dignity, sensitivity and charm as can be allowed to a man who avenged to wounds to his pride as a husband – as he rebuffed the challenges to his authority as a king – by a lavish recourse to the executioners block.

The Ermine

Character: Frantz

A play in three acts by Jean Anouilh

Translated by Miriam John Radio adaptation and production by Raymond Raikes Broadcast: BBC Radio – 2^nd April, 1955 at 18.35

The Golden Bowl

Character: The Prince

Part 1: ‘The Prince’

Part 2: ‘ The Princess’

The novel by Henry James dramatised by Mary Hope Allen The principal scenes take place in London and at Fawns House at the beginning of the century. 

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 10th January, 1956 at 19.30

Above: Peter as the Prince and Irene Worth as Charlotte Stant reading ‘The Golden Bowl’ – adapted from Henry James’ novel, and recorded for transmission in the BBC’s Third Programme on October 2nd, 1955.

Also Amongst The Prophets

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 5th February, 1956 at 15.00

Character: David

Story Synopsis: The Old Testament story of Saul, the first king of Israel, is shot through with tragic irony. The corruption of power was thrust upon this innocent young man by a prophet who himself was bitterly opposed to kingship. ‘And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee,’ said Samuel, and thou… shalt be turned into another man.’ But Saul, after his early successes, was turned into another man in a tragic sense; ‘ for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.’ Abandoned by Samuel, Saul becomes gradually madder and unhappier, and his one consolation is in David – until jealousy makes him David’s enemy. He swings to and fro between love and hate, between sanity and madness, and, as he swings, is propelled towards disaster by his own actions and by circumstance.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Character: Marchese Fabio Colli

A tragi-comedy by Luigi Pirandello translated by Frederick May Adapted by Helena Wood Produced by Mary Hope Allen

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 25th March, 1956 at 21.25

Repeated on 31st March, 1956

The Wood Demon

Introductions to the four acts spoken by Peter

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 4^th November, 1956 at 15.00

The Oresteia

Character: Orestes, son of Agamemnon

Part 1: ‘Agamemnon’ Broadcast: 23rd November, 1956 at 21.45

Part 2: ‘The Choephori’ Broadcast: 24th November, 1956 at 21.45

Part 3: ‘The Libation Bearers Broadcast: 25th November, 1956 at 21.45

Part 4: ‘The Eumenides’ Broadcast: 26th November, 1956 at 21.45

A new translation by Philip Vellacott with music by Antony Hopkins. Arranged for broadcasting and produced by Raymond Raikes

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 23rd November, 1956 at 21.45 

Uncle Vanya

Scenes from country life in four acts by Anton Chekhov Translated from the Russian by David Tutaev Radio adaptation and production by Raymond Raikes Other parts played by members of the BBC Drama Repertory Company Introductions to the four acts spoken by Peter.

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 1^st February, 1957 at 20.50

Repeated: October 1972

The Egotist

Character: Sir Willoughby Patterne

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 30^th August, 1957 at 21.15pm

Children’s Hour: Captain of the Dragoons

Character: Captain Charles Carey

Part 1. Swords and Pistols For Two

Part 2. Secret Service

Part 3. A Pinch of Snuff

Part 4. The Traitor

Written by John Keir Cross from the novel by Ronald Welch 

Part 1: ‘Swords and Pistols For Two’ Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 2nd October, 1957

Story Synopsis: Captain of Dragoons is a stirring tale of adventure and intrigue set in the time of John Churchill , first Duke of Marlborough. The young Captain Charles Carey is called upon, against his will, to serve his country as a secret agent in French territory. He is entrusted with a perilous mission, calling for all his skill as a swordsman and his full reserves of courage and resource. “Perhaps my hand trembles a little from my wound in the duel. The pistol swings round towards me; and, suddenly, as I touch it …”

Part 2: ‘Secret Service’ Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 9th October, 1957 at 17.00

“Behind every great campaign, there is another campaign. Behind every Service, there is another and a hidden Service. I, by the Duke’s good grace, am the head of that Service; and you, Charles Carey, are its newest recruit!”

Part 3: ‘A Pinch of Snuff’ Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 16th October, 1957 at 17.00

“It is still snuff that I am in pursuit of, as I enter the little tobacconist’s shop of a certain Monsieur Henri Vallon, in a side-street: a rather special snuff, not quite to everyone’s taste, recommended to me by a certain Colonel Henshall, and known as the Nantes mixture….“  

Part 4: ‘The Traitor’ Broadcast: 23rd October, 1957 at 17.00 

“The one remaining thread to be tied was that of the mystery of the traitor-the man who had so nearly brought about my death long ago at Limburg. I longed more than ever to unmask him, and at last the opportunity came.”

The Alabama

Character: Captain Raphael Semmes

The story of an ocean raider Written and produced by Kenneth Poolman

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 20th November, 1957 at 20.00

British Drama: A Woman Killed With Kindness

Character: Master Wendoll

Broadcast: British Home Service – 25^th February, 1959 at 20.00

Repeated: Under the title ‘National Theatre of the Air’ by the BBC Home Service on 20^th August, 1961 at 20.30, and as ‘The Sunday Play’ by The BBC Home Service on 3^rd April, 1966 at 14.30

The Balcony

Character: The Chief of Police

Written by Jean Genet translated by Bernard Frechtman ‘We’ve reached the point at which we can no longer be actuated by human feelings. Our function will be to support, establish, and justify metaphors.’ Produced and adapted for radio by John Tydeman

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 6th December, 1964 at 20.55

Time Remembered

Character: Prince Albert Troubiscoi

Produced by Charles Lefeaux The action takes place in the house and grounds of the Duchess of Pont-au-Bronc’s country estate in Brittany

Broadcast: BBC Home Service – 25th January, 1965  20.30

Saturday Night Theatre: The Sleeping Prince

Character: The Regent

Written by Terence Rattigan adapted for radio by Gerry Jones

The fairy story of a Gaiety Girl invited to supper by the Regent of Carpathia, in London for the Coronation of King George V. A casual encounter involves her not only in romance, but in the turmoil of Europe just before the First World War.

Broadcast: BBC Home Service 7^th January, 1967.

Repeated: 27^th September, 1970

Mort

Character: Death

By Jon Pope (based on Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ books)

Story Synosis: Teenager, Mort has a personality and temperament that makes him unsuited to the family farming business, so his Lezek takes him to a local hiring fair hoping that he’ll get an apprenticeship for himself. Just before the last stroke of midnight that same day, Death arrives and takes Mort on as an apprentice, although his father believes that Mort is actually working for an undertaker.

Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 – 28th August, 1991

The Pickerskill Detentions: Part 3 – ‘A Textbook Detention’

Character: Mr Mike Poulson-Jabby

By Andrew McGibbon.

Story Synopsis: Dr Henry Pickerskill, retired English Master of Haunchurst college for boys, looks back on his most memorable detentions.

Pickerskill’s doctoring of a hated school textbook amuses him greatly, and goes unnoticed until an unfortunate detention in the late fifties where the subversive book is mistakenly used by another teacher.

Broadcast: BBC Radio 4 – 28th February 2007 at 23.15

Listen to the play HERE

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© Copyright The Hellfire Club: The OFFICIAL PETER WYNGARDE Appreciation Society: https://www.facebook.com/groups/813997125389790/