Geoffrey Toone

Who was Geoffrey Toone?

Geoffrey Toone was an Irish character actor based in the United Kingdom.

Most of Toone's film roles after the 1930s were in supporting parts, usually as authority figures, though he did play the lead character in the Hammer Films production The Terror of the Tongs in 1961

Toone was born in Dublin, Ireland to English parents and was educated at Charterhouse School. Toone appeared:

As Sir Edward Ramsay in the musical film The King and I.

The BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who:

As Temmosus in the film of Dr. Who and the Daleks

As Hepesh in the television story The Curse of Peladon in 1972.

In Yes Minister.

In Freewheelers as the Nazi officer Von Gelb who continually tries to avenge Germany's WWII defeat.

As Lord Ridgemere, owner of the stately home where Delboy and Rodney dropped a chandelier in the Only Fools and Horses episode, "A Touch of Glass".

As Lord Bittlesham, a recurring character in the TV adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster.

He died from natural causes, aged 94. At the time of his death, Toone was one of the last survivors of the Old Vic theatre company of the 1930s, having appeared alongside the likes of John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier in productions of Shakespeare. He was also the longest-lived actor to have appeared in Doctor Who. For many years he had shared a house with the actor Frank Middlemass.