Brian Blessed - The Bearded Foghorn!

I’ve never actually been in the presence of Brian Blessed. I write that with a high degree of certainty because I imagine that, like a gathering thunderstorm or an approaching steam locomotive at full speed, I’d hear him long before he hove into view. Surely I’m not alone in automatically associating the actor not with a specific role but his extraordinary booming baritone.

And his beard runs the voice a close second. That forest of facial fur has been part of his persona since the days when I thought beards were the sole preserve of pirates and possibly seventeenth-century French swordsmen. I’m too young to have witnessed Blessed’s big break in Z Cars back in 1962 but am pretty sure my six year-old self re-enacted with sticks or knitting needles scenes from the BBC’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers. I’m not convinced however, that Porthos’ neatly sculpted goatee was natural. 

By the late Sixties, Mum and Dad were in the habit of watching The Avengers and on a Saturday evening (I think) I was sometimes allowed to join them. I don’t suppose I could follow the plots; not sure anybody could, but for me it was all about dapper Steed’s lethal furled umbrella. I may have seen the episode in 1969 featuring a pencil-moustachioed army sergeant who loved to shout. Yes, Brian Blessed was perfectly cast! 

I can’t recall whether or not he was shaven for appearances in gentle Welsh medical soap Owen MD but, in accordance with Imperial Rome’s disdain for facial hair, his generous jawline was clean for one of his most celebrated dramatic parts as the Emperor Augustus in I Claudius. This was more Dad’s cup of tea than mine but, as a teenager with some interest in history, I did my best to follow the rather heavy, studio-bound action.  The series also introduced me to young actors of the calibre of John Hurt and Derek Jacobi but I do recall Blessed dominating the stage in several episodes, either raging or, in an extraordinary death scene, being completely silent for several minutes, acting only with fading eyes. 

By the mid-Seventies, Augustus apart, the dye was cast with our Brian portraying all manner of bearded baddies. In The Sweeney he came to a sticky end while in the gripping BBC series Survivors he was a brutal bully who runs his post-apocalyptic community his way or no way. In Blake’s 7, his megalomania extended to designs on the entire galaxy then in the convoluted Cyprus thriller The Aphrodite Inheritance he made an excellent armed brigand.  

Blessed’s physical qualities also makes for an imposing king in the traditional style. For example, he was a romping Richard IV in the original Black Adder series and the fearsome warlord Yrcanos in a 1986 Doctor Who serial, not to mention assorted Barons, Squires and Shakespearean dukes but even when he appears as himself he’s always formidable and a tad unpredictable. With an infamous potty mouth the bleeping machine and editors have doubtless worked overtime after recordings of Room 101, A Question of Sport and his ‘Gotcha!’ sequence whilst being ‘pranked’ on Noel’s House Party. He certainly made an idiosyncratic presenter of Have I Got News For You?! 

Brian is also famed as a real-life adventurer. Who else would climb some of the world’s highest peaks, undergo full astronaut training in Russia and become the oldest man ever to reach the North Pole on foot. His expeditions have provided fertile ground for anecdotes on programmes including QI and The Kumars. Legend has it he even punched a polar bear on the nose. From anyone else you’d write it off as fanciful fiction but with Mr B, anything is possible.

Yet the actor can be a sensitive soul. I loved his journey back in time to discover the highs and lows experienced by his bookbinder ancestor on Who Do You Think You Are, revealing both his bombastic Yorkshire bluster and a more reflective side. Nevertheless it’s that deafening delivery which is Brian Blessed’s USP. It continues to bolster his bank balance through numerous, audioplays, computer game voicing. His Grampy Rabbit on Peppa Pig episodes is always a delight (wasted on young children!) but it’s his TV ads which always stand out. Only a few minutes ago he was urging me to buy Terry’s Chocolate Orange and his larger-than-life persona was exploited in a recent Ladbroke’s campaign. Ah, Brian Blessed: never knowingly under-voiced!