Reply With QuoteHe was also the younger brother of writer Richard Waring.
Obituary
Derek Waring
Versatile actor best known on television but happiest on stage
by Dennis Barker
Thursday February 22, 2007
The Guardian
The actor Derek Waring, who has died of cancer aged 79, was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, appeared in many successful West End plays and starred or featured in numerous television series. Even so, his career tended to be overshadowed by that of his more flamboyant wife and fellow RSC member, Dorothy Tutin (obituary, August 7 2001).
One executive who worked with Waring on the BBC television series Moody and Pegg (1974-75), in which the actor played Moody, found him to be the ideal "company chap" rather than a star - very good at what he did, but lightweight. On the other hand, another ex-colleague pointed out that, unlike many actors, he had appeared in almost a directory of British television series.
Waring was best known on the small screen in the late 1970s, when he starred on the BBC in George and Mildred - though as neither of the two main characters. He played their lodger, delighted to display his skills as handyman, cook or anything Mildred might want while her less than dynamic husband George (Brian Murphy) sat around on the sofa complaining it was all too much for him.
In 1973 Waring had handed in his notice as Detective Inspector Goss, whom he had played for three years in the pioneeringly gritty Z Cars series, which showed the police in a rougher mould than Jack Warner's Pc Dixon of Dock Green. He was determined to concentrate more on theatre and film work.
In the 1970s he was - sometimes fleetingly - in a number of highly rated television serials, series and single programmes, including Public Eye, in which Alfred Burke played the downbeat British private eye, The Informer, Sherlock Holmes, Callan (with Edward Woodward), Mother Makes Three, Crown Court and The New Avengers. For the cinema, he appeared in the epic The Battle of Britain, and also in Barnacle Bill, Dunkirk, Robin Hood, Charlie Chan, Ivanhoe, Hitler: the Last Ten Days, and Indian Summer.
Waring was born in London, the son of Wing Commander HJ Barton-Chapple, who worked on the development of television with John Logie Baird. After a spell in the army, he won a scholarship to Rada and spent some years in rep, revues, television and cabaret, before making his West End mark in 1958 in the highly popular The World of Suzie Wong. His stage work was more important to him than long runs in television series, and he appeared in many if not most theatres in the country as well as some abroad. He joined the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon in the early 1960s, promptly playing the Earl of Richmond and Charles the Dauphin in Peter Hall's Wars of the Roses arrangement of Shakespeare history plays, which opened in London on January 11 1964.
He also met Tutin. He was living in a cottage near the theatre at the time, she on her famous houseboat moored at Chelsea. They eventually compromised, moving into a handsome home in Barnes, south London.
In the West End, Waring appeared in Call it Love at Wyndhams; Not to Worry, with Alec McCowen and Prunella Scales, at the Garrick; Cowardy Custard at the Mermaid; Sextet at the Criterion; Cards on the Table at the Vaudeville; and The Boyfriend at the Albery. Other venues included Hong Kong for Blithe Spirit; Guildford for Two Into One; various theatres on a national tour of Francis Durbridge's thriller Nightcap; the Scottish Opera for My Fair Lady; the Bristol Old Vic for Portrait of a Queen - in which he played Prince Albert to Tutin's Queen Victoria - and the Henry Miller Theatre in New York for the same production.
His later stage work included Shaw's You Never Can Tell at the Haymarket theatre, but he also appeared in Sherlock Holmes: the Musical at Exeter; Dear Charles at Guildford and a national tour of the macabre Susan Hill thriller, The Woman in Black. His presentable but relatively bland looks helped make it possible for him to work steadily in such plays or television productions while many other actors "rested" for months or years.
Waring's later years were less high profile, and he even brought his television fame to theatre roles in pantomime. In 1986, while appearing in Cinderella at the Bristol Hippodrome, the comedian Jim Davidson pushed him onstage in a Sinclair C-5 car when all the lights went out, and Waring's face was apparently in collision with some of the scenery. He is survived by his children, Amanda and Nick, also an actor.
Derek Waring (Derek Barton-Chapple), actor, born April 26 1927; died February 20 2007
He was also the younger brother of writer Richard Waring.
he plays a lodger in one of george and mildred episodes inthe 70s.......cant remember z cars though........sad....another gone
name='fred kite']he plays a lodger in one of george and mildred episodes
As you say just one episode, they make it sound like he was a regular character, and since when was it on the BBC?
I remember Derek particularly from MOODY AND PEGG - 1974, in which he played Roland Moody to Judy Cornwell's Daphne Pegg.
This was a very gentle one hour, comedy drama series which went out on ITV on a weekday evening at nine o' clock - the sort of programme which could not conceivably be produced these days.
As previously stated, another one gone.
Derek Waring
Star of 'Moody and Pegg'
The Independent
Published: 23 February 2007
Derek Barton Chapple (Derek Waring), actor: born London 26 April 1927; married 1963 Dorothy Tutin (died 2001; one son, one daughter); died Petworth, West Sussex 19 February 2007.
At a time when ITV was screening long-running, raucous sitcoms such as Love Thy Neighbour and Bless This House, the actor Derek Waring was starring in a gentler comedy that brought the channel another winner with audiences, albeit for only two years.
In Moody and Pegg (1974-75), he was the divorced antiques dealer Roland Moody, who moved into a London flat but found himself sharing it with the single civil servant Daphne Pegg (played by Judy Cornwell). Both had what appeared to be a valid lease on the same property from a rogue estate agent, so they reluctantly agreed to share.
Up to 15 million viewers regularly tuned in to the series, following the comedy - cleverly mixed with drama in the scripts by Julia Jones and Donald Churchill - that had a permanent undercurrent of antagonism between the two singletons, who each regarded the other as a squatter.
The actor was born Derek Barton Chapple in Mill Hill, north London, in 1927, the son of Wing Cdr Harry Barton Chapple, an electrical engineer who assisted John Logie Baird in his early television experiments. (Derek's elder brother, Richard, went on to become a sitcom writer and BBC script editor, under the name Richard Waring.)
After serving in the Indian and British armies, and gaining a scholarship to train at Rada, he adopted Derek Waring as his professional name and spent five years in repertory theatre. He made his cinema début as an RAF officer in Call Back Yesterday (1956) and followed it by playing a surgeon in the comedy Barnacle Bill (1957) and taking other parts credited and uncredited, in various forgotten British films.
On television, Waring appeared in episodes of early ITV series such as The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1957, 1958), Ivanhoe (1958), William Tell (1959) and No Hiding Place (1959), and was even seen modelling men's spring fashions in Flair, a 1959 advertising magazine - a type of programming finally banned three years later.
Following his 1958 West End début in The World of Suzie Wong (Prince of Wales Theatre), Waring acted on stage in Call It Love (Wyndham's Theatre, 1960) and the revue Not to Worry? (Garrick Theatre, 1962). Then came three years with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1962-64).
While at the RSC, Waring met and married the actress Dorothy Tutin and, together, they later starred as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Portrait of a Queen, both in the West End (Vaudeville Theatre, 1965) and on Broadway (Henry Miller's Theatre, 1968). He returned to the West End for the musical Cowardy Custard (Mermaid Theatre, 1972), Michael Pertwee's Sextet (Criterion Theatre, 1977), the Agatha Christie thriller Cards on the Table (Vaudeville Theatre, 1981), a revival of The Boy Friend (Albery Theatre, 1984), George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell (Haymarket Theatre, 1987) and Leslie Bricusse's short-lived Sherlock Holmes - The Musical (as Dr Watson, Cambridge Theatre, 1989).
In between these stage runs, Waring found more prominent television roles, first as Detective Inspector Neil Goss (1969-73) in the groundbreaking police series Z Cars, before becoming a familiar face in sitcoms. After Moody and Pegg, his biggest role was in Partners (written by his brother, Richard, 1981), in which he played Rupert Bannister, the boss of a bathroom fittings company.
Waring also played Commander Flint in the Royal Navy Second World War comedy Thundercloud (1979), Robert, one of the British expatriates in Spain, in The Sun Trap (1980) and Bassington, an ice-cream salesman in The Happy Apple (1983), as well as appearing with Derek Griffiths, Debbie Arnold and others in the sketch show The Funny Side (1985).
Anthony Hayward
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