Bernard Cribbins Autograph Page Mounted

Bernard Joseph Cribbins, OBE (born 29 December 1928) is an English actor and comedian whose career spans over seventy years.  Leaving school at the age of 13, he found a job at a local theatre club as assistant stage manager and occasionally playing small acting parts and then served an apprenticeship at the Oldham Repertory Theatre. In 1947, he interrupted his apprenticeship to undertake national service with the Parachute Regiment in Aldershot and in British-administered Mandatory Palestine.

Cribbins made appearances in comedy films including Two-Way Stretch (1960) and the Carry On series. During the 1970s, he appeared as Albert Perks in The Railway Children (1970), as the barman Felix Forsythe in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) and as the pretentious guest Mr. Hutchinson in “The Hotel Inspectors” episode of Fawlty Towers (1975). He narrated the BBC children’s television programme The Wombles (1973–1975) and was a regular and prolific reader for the BBC’s Jackanory from 1966 to 1991.