Actor Peter Sallis dies aged 96

Peter Sallis, the actor best known for his work on Last of the Summer Wine and Wallace and Gromit, has died at the age of 96. The actor provided the voice for Wallace in the Nick Park films, three of which won Oscars, and spent decades playing Norman Clegg as part of the original cast of Britain’s longest-running sitcom.

“It is with sadness that we announce that our client Peter Sallis died peacefully, with his family by his side, at Denville Hall on Friday, June 2,” his agents, Jonathan Altaras Associates, said.

Sallis was already an experienced actor before he took the role on Last of the Summer Wine, with more than 25 years in the business. The programme made him a recognisable figure throughout the UK, while he found international fame late in life for his Wallace and Gromit appearances.

Recognition for Wallace and Gromit so late in his life also brought him happiness. “It is pleasing knowing millions are going to see your work and enjoy it. To still be involved in a project like this at my age is heartwarming. To have a legacy like this is very comforting. I am very lucky to have been involved,” he was quoted as saying.

He originally agreed to be involved with Wallace and Gromit in 1983 in return for a £50 donation to his chosen charity after Park, then a student, wrote to him. It was six years later that the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, reached the screen. The short film was nominated for an Oscar.

Its follow-ups, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave in the early 1990s, and the The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2006, were Oscar winners and each of the films won a Bafta.

Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, said: “Alongside Last of the Summer Wine, Peter Sallis featured in many of the BBC’s most popular programmes. He was a marvellous actor - who could forget that remarkable voice? Peter will be greatly missed by his many fans. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.”

Sallis was born in Twickenham in south-west London. His father was a bank manager, his mother a housewife. He did not initially show much interest in acting and his only link to the stage was his grandmother, who ran a theatrical boarding house in Northampton.

He followed his father into banking after leaving school, but signed up with the RAF when the second world war broke out. However, he failed his aircrew medical and instead became a radio instructor based at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire for the duration of the war.

It was at Cranwell that he was asked to appear in a performance of Hay Fever in 1943. An interest in acting was sparked and, when he was demobbed in 1946, he won a scholarship to Rada.

His first TV role came in 1947, playing Quince in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.