Noel Johnson

Life

Johnson was born 28 December 1916 in Birmingham, England and attended Bromsgrove School, where his fictional character Dick Barton was listed on the honours boards. He married Leonora Peacock in 1942: they had one son. He died 1 October 1999.

Career

After wartime service in the Royal Army Service Corps, including evacuation from Dunkirk, he was invalided out, and joined the BBC Repertory Company in 1945. He was the original voice of Dick Barton from 7 October 1946, performing over 300 episodes before quitting in 1949 to pursue a stage career. He was paid £18 per week but felt that he deserved much more for such a popular character. He returned to play Dick Barton once more in a special series in 1972. He later played Dan Dare on the Radio Luxembourg serial, but his name was kept secret. His assured upper class voice cadence made him ideal for certain characters, notably in the BBC Radio 4 dramatic adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. This was broadcast as 26 one-hour episodes between 1978 and 1981; Johnson played the novel sequence's narrator Nicholas Jenkins, while the younger Nicholas was played by Gareth Johnson in the first 18 episodes. In the last quarter of the series – in which Jenkins is in late middle-age – Johnson plays Jenkins alone.

His movie career included roles in Frenzy, The First Great Train Robbery, Withnail & I, and For Your Eyes Only, and numerous television dramas, including Dixon of Dock Green, Coronation Street, Out of the Unknown, Doomwatch, Death of an Expert Witness, Colditz, Rumpole of the Bailey, Doctor Who (in the serials The Underwater Menace and Invasion of the Dinosaurs), Inspector Morse and A Touch of Frost, amongst many others.