Voice actor found fame on Rainbow as well as Doctor Who
Roy Skelton, the voice of the Daleks and George and Zippy from Rainbow, has died aged 79.
He brought Doctor Who's arch-enemies to life between 1967 and 1988, and also provided voices for the Cybermen.
But viewers will probably know him best as the voices of Zippy and George, the orange and pink puppets from ITV's long running children's show Rainbow.
Geoffrey Hayes, who fronted Rainbow, told BBC News that Skelton was 'fabulous at improvising if something went wrong'.
'The most wonderful thing was if Zippy and George were having an argument between themselves, it sounded like he'd double-tracked it as they seemed to be talking over each other. It was a wonderful technique and I don't know how he did it.'
Rainbow was axed in 1992, but Skelton reprised Zippy's voice in the BBC1 retro-drama Ashes to Ashes in 2008, and again in a special puppet edition of Weakest Link.
Skelton's agent Carole Deaner told MediaGuardian.co.uk: 'He was an unassuming and brilliant man ... He had been ill for some time and was in a wheelchair. We kept hoping he was going to improve but sadly he did not. He was a lovely man, everyone who worked with him said that.'
In addition to writing around 100 scripts for Rainbow, Skelton also wrote Naughty Rainbow, a humerous double-entendre laden version that became a cult hit.
Skelton's wife Hilary told Mediaguardian.co.uk: 'Roy had a great sense of humour. He wrote Naughty Rainbow for a competition. We still have the original script.'
She said that the Brighton-based actor and musician was not the first voice of Zippy: 'Originally he was played by Peter Hawkins, a great friend of Roy's who he worked with on Doctor Who.
'Zippy was a very benign sort of puppet then. Roy felt he needed to have a bit of an alter ego so he changed him to be a troublesome character. George came along later as they didn't have a foil for Zippy.'
Hilary added: 'Roy loved going to work every day. His first love had been theatre but he brought theatre to Rainbow.'
She said Skelton had requested a 'green funeral', to be buried in a cardboard coffin which he wanted people to write on.
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