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.
Saturday, 10th 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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