John Savident, who has died aged 86, was a talented, vibrant, typically broad however at all times memorable actor who performed considered one of TV’s greatest liked cleaning soap opera characters – the bombastic however lovable butcher Fred Elliott within the ITV collection Coronation Avenue – for greater than a decade.
Fred, who first appeared in 1994 and have become a daily two years later, was quickly a favorite with viewers, thanks partly to the enjoyably imitable repetitive vocal tic that Savident invested him with: “Ashley, I say, Ashley,” he would utter when addressing his younger nephew (later revealed to be his son), Ashley Peacock (Steven Arnold).
Savident claimed his supply was impressed by a mix of the Looney Tunes cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn, loud males whose voices he had heard booming throughout northern pubs, and manufacturing facility staff in Lancashire mills who would talk in bellows and have been pressured to repeat themselves due to the din from the looms.
Expansively performed and using each one of many appreciable variety of comedic tips at Savident’s disposal, Fred was the right Coronation Avenue participant – completely truthful beneath the broader strokes of the characterisation. Along with his imposing body and a rumbling voice that could possibly be heard behind the stalls even at a whisper, Savident nailed the present’s quirky northern humour with masterful comedian timing. Crucially although, he additionally had the dramatic abilities to hold off Fred’s emotional, typically weak scenes with a heartfelt and quietly spoken pathos.
And there was loads of emotion available: Fred married thrice and had proposals turned down by each Rita Sullivan (Barbara Knox) and Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls).
For his portrayal of Fred, Savident received the very best comedy efficiency award on the first British Cleaning soap Awards in 1999. The next yr, he was concerned in a harrowing incident when he was robbed by a customer to his flat close to the Granada TV studios in Manchester – whom he had invited again after a charity occasion – and stabbed within the neck. Savident was fortunate that the knife missed his artery: his assailant was jailed for seven years.
He left Coronation Avenue in 2006, declaring that he wished to spend extra time together with his household, however later admitted to being disillusioned that his bosses didn’t attempt more durable to maintain him on. Fred died of a stroke – after a final minute heart-to-heart with Audrey – on the day he was attributable to marry Bev Unwin (Susie Blake): unfortunate in like to the final.
Savident was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey, the one son of John, a fisherman, and his Swiss spouse, Karoline (nee Pfrinder). The household escaped from the German-occupied island in 1940 and settled in Ashton-Beneath-Lyne, Larger Manchester. He was educated on the grammar faculty there (now Ashton Sixth Kind School) and in 1955 joined the Manchester police pressure as a cadet. He patrolled the east aspect of town for quite a few years and was seconded to the vice squad.
He had carried out in novice dramatics since childhood and when his native Prestwich Newbie Dramatic and Operatic Society’s manufacturing of South Pacific was overseen by a visiting director, Savident jokingly requested to audition for his subsequent present. To his shock this resulted within the alternative of an expert debut enjoying the Sheriff of Nottingham reverse Max Wall within the Hanley Christmas pantomime, Robin Hood (1961).
Newly married – to Rona (nee Hopkinson), a instructor (later a theatre director), whom he had met after they performed husband and spouse as amateurs in Rochdale, and wed earlier that yr – and lately promoted to accident prevention officer in Manchester’s C Division, Savident was cautious about accepting the provide, however determined to make the leap, figuring he may at all times return to policing if it didn’t work out. He by no means needed to: he quickly joined Lincoln repertory theatre and two years later was on the Nationwide Theatre in London enjoying O’Dwyer in Trelawny of the Wells.
He received sturdy notices for a lot of of his later roles on the Nationwide, together with a drily manipulative Archbishop of Rheims in Saint Joan (directed by Ronald Eyre), an ebullient comedian flip because the silly duped husband Nicia in Machiavelli’s Mandragola, and – for the director Peter Corridor – a powerfully savvy Cominius to Ian McKellen’s Coriolanus (all 1984).
He was additionally the comically officious Monsieur Firmin within the first manufacturing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty’s theatre, 1987), a task he recreated with the unique firm within the filmed The Phantom of the Opera on the Albert Corridor (2011).
After breaking into tv in 1966, he eschewed common roles in an try to keep away from typecasting, preferring as a substitute myriad visitor turns in each style. That stated, he tended to specialize in sardonic institution sorts, bossy ministers and despicable toffs: the air of haughty disdain and undercurrent of testiness they required got here simply to him.
He was sometimes tempted by recurring components, corresponding to a plummy and eccentric intelligence officer within the kids’s spy caper Tightrope (1972), a blustering residence secretary within the dystopian drama 1990 (1977), the cheerfully conniving Sir Frederick “Jumbo” Stewart within the superior sitcom Sure Minister (1980), and the inebriate blackmailer Raffles in Middlemarch (1994).
He endeared himself to science-fiction followers with a memorably vivid flip because the duplicitous scientist Egrorian, a gloriously preening grotesque, within the 1981 Blake’s 7 episode Orbit, and a short-lived however enjoyably peevish, dyspeptic Squire within the Physician Who serial The Visitation (1982).
On movie he shared the display screen together with his boyhood idol Laurence Olivier in Battle of Britain (1969), and labored with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Richard Attenborough on Gandhi (1982). Then there was the Hollywood blockbuster Hudson Hawk (1991), Service provider Ivory’s The Stays of the Day (1993) and Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995).
After he left Coronation Avenue, Savident returned to the stage, enjoying Henry Hobson in Hobson’s Alternative (on the Chichester Competition theatre, 2007), and to tv in Above Suspicion (2009), Lodge Babylon (2009) and Holby Metropolis (2012).
He’s survived by Rona and their kids, Romany and Daniel.
