Cyril Shaps

Early radio

Born in Highbury, London, his Polish father was a tailor. Shaps was a child broadcaster, at the London School of Broadcasting providing voices for radio commercials from the age of 12. After grammar school and Army service he was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and then worked for two years as an announcer, producer and scriptwriter for Radio Netherlands. His short stature and round face then led to a steady flow of character roles in film and television in a career spanning nearly 50 years.

Film

Shaps's film appearances included bit parts in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), as the officer's club bartender, To Sir, with Love (1967), as Mr Pinkus, and the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), as Dr Bechmann. In The Madness of King George (1994), he portrayed Dr Pepys, a royal physician obsessed with the colour of the king's stool. In 2002, at the age of 79, Shaps performed his last film roles: as a pew opener in The Importance of Being Earnest, and as concentration camp victim Mr. Grun in The Pianist.

Television

In TV, his work ranged from science fiction (including appearances in the Doctor Who serials The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara) to classic literature (such as the BBC's 1990s serialisations of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Our Mutual Friend) to detective series (with appearances in The Saint, Lovejoy, and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady—as Emperor Franz Joseph—in 1991). He appeared in the first episode of the sitcom The Young Ones, playing a neighbour. He appeared in two Jim Henson Company television films: Gulliver's Travels (1996) as an elderly madman, and Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001) as the "Bent Little Man". He supplied the voice of Professor Rudolf Popkiss in the second series of Supercar, broadcast in 1962. He also voiced the characters of Mr. Gruber in The Adventures of Paddington Bear, and Great Grandfather Frost in one episode of Animated Tales of the World.

Other notable work

Other series featuring Shaps were Quatermass II, Danger Man, The Mask of Janus, The Spies, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, The Saint, Out of the Unknown, Alexander the Greatest, The Rat Catchers, Man in a Suitcase, Randall and Hopkirk, Department S, The Liver Birds, When the Boat Comes In, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, The Onedin Line, The Persuaders!, Porridge, The Sweeney, Jesus of Nazareth, Wilde Alliance, Private Schulz, The Young Ones, The Bill, Dark Season, Midsomer Murders and Doctors.

Shaps' radio work included a stint with the BBC Drama Repertory Company in the early 1950s. Broadcast parts (his characters often being old men or priests) included Firs in The Cherry Orchard, Justice Shallow in Henry the Fourth, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, Polonius in Hamlet and Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.