Brian Trueman, who has died aged 92, was an actor and tv presenter earlier than making his best contribution to the display screen as a core member of the revolutionary Cosgrove Corridor animation studio’s staff. He wrote a lot of its hottest kids’s TV programmes, from Hazard Mouse and The Wind within the Willows to Chorlton and the Wheelies, Jamie and the Magic Torch and Cockleshell Bay, additionally offering the voices for among the beloved characters.
Hazard Mouse (1981-92), the cartoon collection created by the studio’s founders, Brian Cosgrove and Mark Corridor, featured a British secret service agent primarily based on Patrick McGoohan within the Nineteen Sixties collection Hazard Man. They conceived him as a mouse foiling the plans of an evil toad, Baron Silas Dollar, however switched from the intense tone of the pilot episode to parody after Mike Harding, who wrote the music, recommended they might make Hazard Mouse “as barmy as we wished”.
David Jason – solely simply making a reputation for himself because the star of Solely Fools and Horses – voiced the mouse whose temporary is to save lots of the world, saying he made him “softly spoken, very British, very heroic, but additionally a little bit of a coward”.
Trueman, who wrote many of the scripts, put into Jason’s mouth catchphrases similar to “Good grief!” and, in rebuking silly feedback made by the agent’s assistant, a timid hamster voiced by Terry Scott, “Penfold, shush!”
Hazard Mouse was a worldwide hit, whereas its deluded, fame-obsessed vampire duck, additionally voiced by Jason, was spun off into his personal programme, Rely Duckula (1988-93), with Trueman writing some episodes whereas voicing the housekeeper, Nanny, a careless hen, for the whole 4 collection.
By then, Cosgrove Corridor had loved one other success with The Wind within the Willows. Following Rosemary Anne Sisson’s 1983 feature-length tv movie adaptation for the studio, Trueman wrote many of the stop-motion episodes screened over 4 collection (1984-88).
He fantastically captured the attraction of Kenneth Grahame’s Edwardian novel about Toad (voiced by Jason), Mole (Richard Pearson), Ratty (Peter Sallis) and Badger (Michael Hordern). He was additionally the voice of Henchman Weasel, earlier than scripting an additional collection titled Oh! Mr Toad (1989-90) and a particular, A Story of Two Toads (1989).
His affiliation with Cosgrove Corridor started when the studio’s founders – former graphic designers on the ITV firm Granada Tv – commissioned Trueman to script its first collection, Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976-78), a couple of “happiness” dragon defending creatures on wheels from an evil witch. The character was named after the realm of Manchester the place the studio – owned by one other ITV firm, Thames Tv – was primarily based, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
It adopted this with the cartoon collection Jamie and the Magic Torch (1977-79), for which Trueman wrote, narrated and offered many of the characters’ voices. He did the identical for Cockleshell Bay (1980-86), stop-motion animation tales a couple of brother and sister residing by the ocean.
This success got here to him after virtually 20 years as a regional presenter with Granada Tv in Manchester and a number of other a long time as a radio actor. He noticed voicing animated productions as transferring these expertise, particularly in switching accents, and noticed: “There was much more sanity within the lunacy of the adventures of a one-eyed mouse and a vegetarian vampire duck than within the unpleasantly evolving ‘grown-up’ telly.”
Trueman was born in Barton, Lancashire, to Elsie (nee Valentine), a secretary, and Cyril Trueman, a newspaper print employee, and attended Stretford grammar college. He began appearing on radio in Kids’s Hour, from the BBC’s Manchester studios, on the age of 14, forged as Tubby the Cook dinner in Adventures of the Plover Patrol (1947). A fellow Kids’s Hour performer, Violet Carson, later to play Ena Sharples in Coronation Road, sponsored his Fairness union utility.
After nationwide service as a second lieutenant within the Royal Military Service Corps, Trueman gained a BA in English and American literature from Manchester College, the place he was a number one gentle in its drama group.
Radio and TV appearing roles saved coming till in 1957 he landed a job with Granada Tv as a regional information presenter on Northern Newscast. He grew to become a predominant presenter of its subsequent information journal, Scene at 6.30, from 1963, made native documentaries and hosted the movie evaluation collection Cinema (from 1967 to 1974). “Individuals would shout throughout the road, ‘Barry Norman!’” recalled Trueman of being mistaken for the presenter of the BBC Movie collection.
He additionally wrote, produced and offered the 1976 networked ITV collection A Home for the Future. It adopted the progress of a household shifting right into a derelict Peak District coach home and serving to to transform it into an ecological, energy-conserving property.
Throughout his time at Granada (1957-76), Trueman continued appearing on radio, together with a long term in The Clitheroe Child (1957-72), which included enjoying the Liverpudlian neighbour Harry Whittle from 1965.
He offered many factual collection for the BBC – from Individuals to Individuals (1977), taking a non-metropolitan view of points affecting the general public, to the dialogue present Brass Tacks (in 1977), in addition to the youngsters’s movie quiz Display screen Take a look at (from 1979 to 1983).
Different animated programmes Trueman wrote for Cosgrove Corridor included Alias the Jester (1985-86) and Truckers (1992), primarily based on Terry Pratchett’s novel.
He additionally scripted Budgie the Little Helicopter (1994-96), from Sarah Ferguson’s books, and The Treacle Individuals (1996-97), together with his son Jonathan, in addition to episodes for the sixth and seventh collection of Thomas & Buddies (2002-03).
In 1961, Trueman married Angela Philpot. She and their sons, Jonathan and Benjamin, survive him.
