Birthday: March 5, 1934
Birth Place: Banstead, Surrey, England
Birth Name: Nicholas Pilgrim Smith

A Walk With Love And Death - Pilgrim
Are You Being Served? The Movie - Cuthbert Rumbold
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Hastings
Martin Chuzzlewit - Mr. Spottletoe
Partners in Crime -
Racconti di Canterbury -
Salt And Pepper - Constable
The Fiction Makers - Bishop
The Twelve Chairs - Actor in play
What Rats Won't Do - Chaplain

CUTHBERT "JUG EARS" RUMBOLD is the bespectacled store manager at Grace Brothers. During the war he served in the Army Catering Corps, but now dedicates his efforts to mismanaging the archaic department store. Although believing he has the respect and support of all the staff, Rumbold, who spent most of his career in Hardware, is blind to his numerous inadequacies, including always being late for staff meetings.

His outdated, ineffective management style and narcissistic attitudes do nothing for morale, and in his desire to remain in Mr Grace's good books, he's always laying claim to any decent idea submitted by his subordinates. Rumbold's self-centred streak results in him keeping biscuits locked away securely in his office safe; and when the store cut the central heating to conserve fliel, Rum-bold, who's married and sleeps with a red koala bear, sneaked an electric fire into his office.

Then he picked up the script for the first time, Nicholas Smith had no
With doubts about how to play Rumbold. ~It was obvious he was an idiot; the man was a fool who understood nothing. How Mr Grace put him in authority will always be a mystery - but then, Grace Brothers was hopelessly inefficient.'
Nicholas suggested that the character should be played with enormous eagerness and enthusiasm, but still as an idiot. David Croft agreed and, with Nicholas donning his own glasses - the first time he'd worn them on screen - the character was conceived.
Nicholas, who lives in London with his wife Mary, had worked for David Croft in Up Pompeii! and was pleased to be offered the part of Rumbold.

~The scripts were excellent. Previous experience had taught me that the first couple of days of any TV production are usually spent rewriting scripts, but with Jeremy and David's we hardly ever altered a word. The shows were very coherent, never any loose ends.'
When the series reached the end of its life, Nicholas remembers David and Jeremy breaking the news to everyone. They called us around and said the BBC wanted another series, but they felt unable to come up with any more stories within the limitations of the shop set. They wanted to finish while the show was still popular with the viewers, and now was the right time - no one could argue with that.'
Nicholas was born in Banstead, Surrey, in ~ 934, and announced to his parents at the age of eight that he wanted to be an actor. 'My mother was a
keen anteater actress and singer,' he says. 'She organized a war charity show and got me to sing a song. Walking out on to the stage in front of four hundred people was so exciting. I couldn't have expressed it in words, but even at that young age I knew acting was for me.
The charity event is a performance Nicholas will remember for the rest of his life. 'I sang "Little Sir Echo" and remember thinking: "Who is this Surrecko, and why is he so little?" I got rather irritated with this girl standing behind a screen interfering with my song by singing "hell&'. Of course, she was the echo, but it was all of four years before anyone told me what an echo was.

During national service with the army, Nicholas gained experience in entertainment via a club in Aider shot which put on variety shows for Masonic lodges and other local organizations. 'I once got
Mr Rumbold's ineffective management style did nothing for morale with the shop floor staff, who were forced to operate his old-fashioned ways.

paid ten shillings, which was a lot of money then -my weekly army wages were one pound!'

After completing his stint with the army he went to RADA, graduating in 1957, and within a month was touring the country's schools with The English Children's Theatre. But if he hadn't forgotten a pair of shoes, he'd never have known about the job, as Nicholas explains. 'I'd left some shoes in the theatre t RADA and returned to pick them up. Whilst there, I popped in to see the secretary. She'd just poken to Caryl Jenner, who ran the Children's Theatre and knew auditions were taking place. I went and got my first job.'

The tour lasted nearly nine months, but was followed by six months' unemployment. During this period, taking his mother's advice, he took singing lessons.
Less of, a decision that had a major impact on his professional life. After four decades in the profession, he's appeared in a myriad of musical productions, beginning with The Beggar's Opera at Windsor in 1958, and including Me and M' Gzrl, The Mikado and A~ Fair Lady. 'Singing has been a big part of my career,' says Nicholas, who has writ-ten eight string quartets himself 'When I started in the business you had to be good-looking to get all the young, attractive roles, and I never was. I may have had hair in those days, but not looks,' smiles Nicholas. 'But because of my singing, I was doing chorus work in musicals while other actors my age were assistant stage managers or playing small parts in rep.'

Nicholas made his television debut as a man at an airport in ABC's Pathfinders to Mars in 1960, the first credit in a busy small-screen career. Over the years he's appeared in a host of shows, including three episodes of The Avengers; three episodes of Dr
Who as a West Country farmer who leads a revolt against the Daleks; three episodes of BBC's A Tale of Two Cities as Roger Cly; The Frost Report; The Champions, as a Scottish postmaster; and Z Cars, as PC. Jeff Yates. 'Yates was a semi-regular character,' explains Nicholas, 'and a lot of fun to play. I decided to play him as uncouth. He wore a dilapidated uniform, always ate with his mouth open and was a bit rough with the suspects. It was great flin.'

Although he's also appeared in films, his debut being as a non-speaking fireman in Those Magnificent Men in their Plying Machines, he'll forever be remembered as Mr Rumbold. 'Without a doubt, appearing in Are You Being Served? has restricted my TV career. When we started the show, David Croft warned us that if it took off it would almost certainly kill our chances of other TV roles. That's exactly what happened.'
But his first love is the theatre, for which the link with Rumbold has been a blessing. 'It's given my stage career a tremendous boost.