Roy Castle - Definition and Overview

Roy Castle (born August 31 1932 in Scholes, near Holmfirth; died September 2 1994) was a British dancer, singer, comedian, actor and musician. He was a talented jazz trumpet player, and attributed his lung cancer (of which he died) to years of passive smoking in music clubs. He had never smoked himself. In the final years of his life, he started the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and raised money to fund a cancer centre in Liverpool. The centre opened after his death in 1998.

In the mid-1960s he starred in the BBC television show The Roy Castle Show. In 1965, he appeared in the film Dr. Who and the Daleks, playing the role of Doctor Who's first male assistant, Ian Chesterton, quite differently from the way it had been played in the original television series, and in Dr Terrors House of Horrors as a jazz musician suffering a curse after copying voodoo tunes. He also appeared in Carry On up the Khyber in 1968. From the 1970s he presented Record Breakers, a children's show. He recorded the theme song for the show himself.

His youngest son, Ben Castle, is a successful jazz saxophonist.

See also

• In the box!