BBC Radio 4 must have the most fiercely loyal listeners of any sizeable network in the world. Some may be rather too averse to even evolutionary change but they listen avidly for year and years, relish the sound of familiar voices. They may be newsreaders, comedy show panellists, correspondents, gardeners, historians or actors. Surely one of the most beloved of radio thesps must be Martin Jarvis.
Towards the end of my enjoyable stint as Radio 4 research manager, I was invited to address a gathering of independent producers keen to win commissions for their various programme ideas. As I took my chair in the meeting room, I looked up and there, seated directly opposite me was the aforementioned Mr Jarvis. Many producers, when introduced to someone who analyses audience figures, roll their eyes and get twitchy but I was reassured by the kindly smile of Martin, who had pitched yet another adaptation of the Just William stories – read by himself, of course.
His voice has graced hundreds of videos, cassettes, Audiobooks (his Wodehouse is legendary), as well as broadcasts but that smile was one I’d seen so many times on television, too. Sporting a fair, now silver, hairstyle that has barely changed in more than half a century, Martin Jarvis was, especially in the late Sixties and Seventies, a staple of TV drama.
Nineteenth century costumes seemed to fit particularly well, although the likes of Galsworthy and Dickens were not a draw for this young boy who much preferred Doctor Who or Scooby Doo. And yet my first memory of him on screen came in the BBC serialisation of David Copperfield in 1974. Uniquely for Dickens I found myself immersed in the story. Arthur Lowe’s Micawber and Patience Collier’s Betsy Trotwood have stuck in the mind more than Anthony Andrews’ Steerforth or David Yelland’s eponymous hero, but it was Martin Jarvis’ snivelling, unctuous Uriah Heep which leapt out at this thirteen year-old. “Ever so ‘umble”, my arse! The blonde barnet had been replaced by spiky ginger wig but from that moment on I would come to recognise the actor’s name forever more.
For someone with such a warm speaking voice, it’s perhaps surprising how often Martin Jarvis has played unsympathetic characters. That same year he played one of the baddies in Doctor Who’s ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ although it was in a role totally overshadowed by the state-of-the-art animated rubber monsters – Jurassic Park, it was not!
Maybe it’s the narrow eyes and small mouth which so easily switches to sneer mode, but there have been several other instances of Jarvis as middle-class slimeballs. In 1991, he was a shifty-looking Ancient Greek scholar in Inspector Morse and, three years later, a criminal art dealer set up by the equally dodgy Lovejoy. Back in the ‘80s Jarvis played a suspicious monk in one of Anglia TV’s first-class PD James dramatisations, The Black Tower. Spoiler alert: on this occasion it wasn’t him whodunit, it was that evil long-haired Art Malik!
As on radio, he has a lighter side to his TV CV, too, even his characters were perfectly-judged pantomime villains. In 1991, he was the slimy, sleazy politician who came up against Dawn French’s Brazilian maid in Murder Most Horrid. He got his just desserts, coming to a sticky end soon after we had a rare glimpse of his naked backside – assuming it didn’t belong to an anonymous stunt man, that is! Later that decade, he was one of a wonderful cast as another randy old goat in Guy Jenkin’s feature-length comedy Sex ’n’ Death.
This millennium I watched the BBC’s re-telling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, in which he played the newsroom boss of main protagonists Damien Lewis (when he was in almost everything!) and Sarah Parish but the only time I can remember him actually in a lead role was in the sitcom Rings On Their Fingers back in 1978. Written by Richard Waring, who was also responsible for all the Wendy Craig And Mother Makes…. and My Wife Next Door series, it wasn’t the funniest but kept me reasonably amused for a few autumn half-hours before I hopped off to university.
I am now very unlikely to hear his voice on a video game and my neglect of Radio 4 has become nothing short of shameful but it’s always a pleasure to see Martin Jarvis on the box, be it as mocking, middle-class crook or kindly old gentleman with the twinkle in his eye that once put this nervous presenter at ease.
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