Roy Castle
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Roy Castle OBE (born August 31 1932 in Scholes, near Holmfirth; died September 2 1994) was a British dancer, singer, comedian, actor and musician. He was a talented jazz trumpet player, and attributed his lung cancer (of which he died) to years of passive smoking in music clubs. He had never smoked himself. In the final years of his life, he started the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and raised money to fund a cancer centre in Liverpool. The centre opened after his death in 1998.
In the mid-1960s he starred in the BBC television show The Roy Castle Show. In 1965, he appeared in the film Dr. Who and the Daleks, playing the role of Doctor Who's first male assistant, Ian Chesterton, quite differently from the way it had been played in the original television series, and in Dr Terrors House of Horrors as a jazz musician suffering a curse after copying voodoo tunes. He also appeared in Carry On up the Khyber in 1968. From the 1970s he presented Record Breakers, a children's show. He recorded the theme song for the show himself. While presenting the show, he broke several world records himself, including
- Fastest tap-dancer
- Longest wing walk
- Playing the same tune on 43 different instruments in four minutes
He was married to the dancer Fiona Dickson from 1963 to 1994. They had four children. Their youngest son, Benjamin Castle, is a successful jazz saxophonist.
See also
External links
- h2g2 page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A810073)
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