David Graham
- Publication: The Times
- Date: 2024-09-26
- Author:
- Page: 49
- Language: English
Actor who voiced the Daleks and Lady Penelope's butler-chauffeur in Thunderbirds
Although he could walk down the high street without being accosted by fans, David Graham was the actor behind two of the most distinctive characters and two of the most :- distinctive catchphrases on British television in the 1960s — "You rang, m'lady" on Thunderbirds and, rather more chillingly, "Exterminate!" on Doctor Who.
Graham reached a huge international audience providing the voice for Parker, Lady Penelope's slightly shady chauffeur in the phenomenally successful puppet show Thunderbirds in the 1960s, and he also helped to create the sinister voice of the Daleks on Doctor Who.
He appeared on screen in a few early episodes of Doctor Who with the original Doctor, William Hartnell, and he also created the menacing, inhuman voice of the Daleks in the first episodes to feature the Doctor's most deadly enemies, in 1963. "I created it with Peter Hawkins, another voice actor," he said. "We adopted this staccato style then they fed it through a synthesiser to make it more sinister." He worked on the first five Dalek adventures.
A few years later on Thunderbirds the voice Graham gave to Parker helped to make the character one of the most distinctive on the show, with Parker's cockney roots apparent in the way he added unnecessary aitches, despite his attempts at talking "proper". Parker had been in prison for burglary before his time in the "hemploy" of Lady Penelope. She recruited him to drive her distinctive pink Rolls-Royce FAB1 and to assist her work with the International Rescue organisation.
Graham did not so much create the voice for Parker as borrow it from a former retainer in the royal household who later worked in a Berkshire restaurant near the Thunderbirds studio. Gerry Anderson, who co-created the Space Age adventure show with his then-wife Sylvia, had suggested the man as a possible model for Parker. "Gerry took me to lunch because he wanted me to hear the voice of somebody, a wine waiter," Graham recalled in an interview in 2015 after he was called into action once more at the age of 89 to voice the character in a new computer-animated version of Thunderbirds.
"He claimed to have been a butler to one of the royals. He said, 'Would you like to see the whayne list, sir?' And that was the birth of Parker. I just made him a bit more villainous. I'm not sure the guy ever knew — he might have demanded a royalty!"
Although Parker was a great success, voice work was poorly paid in the 1960s and Graham recalled that his initial payment was £10 an episode, though he added that later he could have lived off the money he received for repeats.
With his angular features and a lugubrious manner, Graham looked more like the actor Richard Wilson than Parker, whose face was dominated by bushy eyebrows and oversized eyes and nose. Graham also appeared in front of the cameras, in films and on television, and acted in theatre, appearing in plays with Laurence Olivier and Leonard Rossiter.
On Thunderbirds he also provided the somewhat hesitant voice of Brains, the team's resident scientist, and voiced Gordon Tracy, one of the Thunderbirds pilots, all of whom were named after American astronauts. He reached a new generation when he supplied the voice of Grandpa on Peppa Pig, the hugely popular children's cartoon show.
David Graham was born in north London in 1925, the son of an insurance salesman. From an early age he felt the desire to entertain an audience. "At school I always wanted to say the poem or read the story," he told one interviewer. "I always wanted to act."
During the Second World War he served in the RAF as a radar mechanic. Subsequently, he worked as an office clerk for a while but hated it. His sister had married an American serviceman and invited him to go over to New York, where he trained as an actor.
Back in England, he found work in theatre and television and met Anderson. "It all started when I did a live-action TV film at Elstree which Gerry directed." he said. "Although he happened to be directing this 'cops and robbers' thing, his background was on the technical side of the business, and I think his mind was very set on puppet film-making. When I heard that, I pricked up my ears and said, 'I'm not bad on accents and voices:"
Graham supplied voices for several characters on Four Feather Falls. Anderson's puppet show featuring a sheriff called Tex Tucker, voiced by Nicholas Parsons. He also worked on Anderson's early science-fiction puppet shows Supercar — demonstrating his range by voicing both Dr Beaker and Mitch the Monkey — Stingray and Fireball XL5.
Playing three principal characters on Thunderbirds was a challenge. "If Parker was talking to Brains I had to do a bit of a pause," he said. "I loved comedy, so there are lots of laughs in Parker with his villainy and roguishness."
He also continued to work on screen, appearing in small roles in The Saint, The Bill and Doctors. He had a recurring role in the supernatural comedy series So Haunt Me in the early 1990s and played Einstein in a Horizon documentary in 2005.
But he acknowledged one of his greatest talents was his capacity to create a wide variety of different voices and characters, which he felt began with having "a good ear': And he took his voice work very seriously. "Just because it's a cartoon or puppet doesn't mean you don't take it seriously. I take it as seriously as working at the National."
On his own website he wrote: "So there we are. It has been a great ride — bumpy at times — but I have loved almost every minute of it."
David Graham, actor, was born on July 11,1925. He died on September 20, 2024, aged 99
Caption: David Graham with the puppet of Parker, the chauffeur, in 2018
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- APA 6th ed.: (2024-09-26). David Graham. The Times p. 49.
- MLA 7th ed.: "David Graham." The Times [add city] 2024-09-26, 49. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: "David Graham." The Times, edition, sec., 2024-09-26
- Turabian: "David Graham." The Times, 2024-09-26, section, 49 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=David Graham | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/David_Graham | work=The Times | pages=49 | date=2024-09-26 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=9 January 2026 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=David Graham | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/David_Graham | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=9 January 2026}}</ref>
