John Rapley

[DB7]

One from the mailbox, can anybody help?

John Rapley was school friend of mine and a local actor he appeared as Mr Dunwoody in the Onedine Line some years ago. he also worked on commercials such as Bradford & Bingley. I would like to know if he is still about he should be retired by now. Do you have any information about him?

[wearysloth]

A picture...from Blackadder I think.

nothing more.

[Dame Starry]

I remember him in 'The Duchess of Duke Street' - he played Louisa Trotter's father and June Brown played her mother. Loved that series.

There doesn't appear to be much info for him at all.



Starry x.

[DB7]

Wasn't he also the "Oi!" guy in Goodnight Sweetheart?

[penfold]

No DoD on imdb, and as he was still working in 2001 you would have thought someone would have picked it up if he had passed on. However, no mention in Spotlight, so...retired??

[dogstar]

Have not thought about this in years but I met him aeons ago when we were both involved in a kids performing arts project set up by a mutual friend with whom John had been at drama school. We sat on a stage together at the 'launch'. He was a nice man ( and yes he was the Oi! character in Goodnight Sweetheart :-) )

[Lord Brett]

name='wearysloth']

A picture...from Blackadder I think.

nothing more.

Crikey, I remember him from the Bradford and Bingley ads which must have been in the seventies.



I worked for them for as long time, and they used a sillouette of him and the other, taller actor (one was Mr Bradford and the other Mr Bingley) as part of their official logo even when I was working for them in the late eighties and into the nineties.



Rotten places to work for, banks. Don't miss the place one bit.

[JamesM]

I seem to recall him looking into camera on The Onedian Line a lot.

[cornershop15]

Bradford and Bingley (or vice-versa)?

Lord Brett's post confirms that John Rapley was one half of a 'double-act' in the once-popular Bradford and Bingley advertising campaign. I didn't know the actor's name until he started to appear on some of my DVDs, including Thriller and Upstairs Downstairs. For many years, I thought his partner in the commercials was Anthony Dawes (another "I know the face, but not the name"), but then several sightings of James Berwick, again on DVD, have made think it was him. Here they both are in a couple of films that were made some time after the B & B ads:

John Rapley in Terror (1978) and James Berwick in Outland (1981)

(credit: The Actors Compendium)

The first of my DVDs to include James Berwick was Thriller again. In that episode, Where The Action Is, he has a beard and speaks with an American accent. It wasn't until much later, while watching his (non-bearded) appearances in Armchair Thriller and then No-Honestly, as Pauline Collins' father, that I realised he was a familiar face from long ago. I now believe he was either Bradford or Bingley, but is it also possible that Anthony Dawes replaced James in later adverts? A Google search reveals nothing except the above reminiscences of Lord Brett. I haven't seen the ads since the 1970s and fear they may have been destroyed. Also worried about the Woolwich girl.

I'll come back to John's other performances another time, including his amusing cameo as a shoe salesman in Upstairs Downstairs.