Colin Jeavons

Colin Abel Jeavons (born 20 October 1929) is a retired British television actor. Career Jeavons' earliest television role was as Jules Neraud in an episode of the 1956 anthology series of teleplays Nom-de-Plume. Broadcast live, it is unknown if any recordings of the production exist. He began an association with Dickens productions on BBC Television in 1959 with Bleak House as Richard Carstone, and Great Expectations (for the first time) as Herbert Pocket. The same year he played Prince Hal/Henry V in the BBC's The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff. In 1963 he played the extremely reluctant hero Vadassy forced into espionage in Epitaph for a Spy for BBC Television. Jeavons portrayed Uriah Heep in the BBC's David Copperfield (1966). Only one episode featuring him (episode 11, "Umble Aspirations") is known to exist. He appeared in a host of 1960s and 1970s TV programmes including Doctor Who (in "The Underwater Menace"), Adam Adamant Lives! as a murderous fashion designer, as the undertaker Shadrack in Billy Liar (1973), as businessman Leonard Gold in The Sweeney (in the 1978 episode "The Bigger They Are"), as shop owner Ellery in Shoestring in the episode "Where Was I?" (1980) and The Avengers (in "A Touch of Brimstone" and "The Winged Avenger"). Pete Stampede and Alan Hayes wrote of Jeavons in the latter series as "one of those under-rated, ever-present supporting actors who never turn in a bad performance." On children's TV, he hosted Play School for a time, and read "The Black Vicar" on Jackanory. He also appeared in the 1981 Doctor Who spin-off K-9 and Company, and he narrated two BBC children's animated series, namely Barnaby and Joe. He appeared in the Play For Today production of David Edgar's play about British neo-Nazis, Destiny (1978). The same year he played the part of Mr Johnson, a schoolteacher, in Peter McDougall's BBC supernatural drama Tarry-Dan Tarry-Dan Scarey Old Spooky Man. He appeared as Samson Brass in another BBC Dickens production, The Old Curiosity Shop (1979), and in another version of Great Expectations (1981), this time as Wemmick. The same year he played a recurring UFO-obsessed character in the sci-fi comedy Kinvig. His most critically acclaimed role during this period was as the neglected and abused child, Donald, in Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (1979).