Peter Jones
Birthday: Born in 1920-06-12 in Wem, Shropshire, England, UK
Deathday: 2000-04-10
Peter Geoffrey Francis Jones (12 June 1920 - 10 April 2000) was a distinguished British actor and radio personality known for his distinctive voice and narration. He gained recognition for his role as The Book in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," providing the voice of the eponymous guidebook in both the radio series and subsequent adaptations. Jones's soothing and authoritative voice lent a unique charm to the character, guiding audiences through the whimsical and absurd universe created by Douglas Adams. His contributions to the series as the voice of The Book became iconic and memorable for fans of the series.
TV Credits
Midsomer Murders
Character: Bunny Dawlish
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty. ...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Character: The Book
Don't Panic! The story of Arthur Dent, an average Englishman who life was spared by his friend, who turned out to be an alien, while the planet Earth is destroyed. His friend tells him about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a guide with anything you ever needed, and wanted to know. They travel across the galaxy, meeting friendly, and not so friendly characters in order to find the great question (the answer being 42)....
Q...
Character:
Q... was a surreal television comedy sketch show from Spike Milligan which ran from 1969 to 1982 on BBC2. There were six series in all, the first five numbered from Q5 to Q9, and a final series titled There's a Lot of It About. The first and third series ran for seven episodes, and the others for six episodes, each of which was 30 minutes long. Various reasons have been suggested for the title. One possibility is that it was inspired by the project to construct the Cunard liner QE2, launched in...
The Avengers
Character: Doyle
The Avengers is a British television series created in the 1960s. It initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed. Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King. Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity....
Whoops Apocalypse
Character:
Whoops Apocalypse is a six-part 1982 British sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles. The series has a big cult audience, and copies of videos are heavily sought after. The British budget label Channel 5 Video released a c...
The Goodies
Character:
A British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s, combining surreal sketches and situation comedy....
Rumpole of the Bailey
Character:
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes....
From a Bird's Eye View
Character: Clive Beauchamp
From a Bird's Eye View is a 1970 ATV and ITC Entertainment co-produced sitcom. In the United States it aired on NBC, which had originally ordered the series as an entry in the 1969-70 TV season but pushed it back to the 1970-71 season as a mid-season replacement. The series followed two International Airlines stewardesses, a scatterbrained Briton and a savvy American, as they flew the London-European routes. The series ran for 16 25-minute colour episodes. The series was not a big success in e...
The Agatha Christie Hour
Character:
This ten episode program was based on ten short stories written by Agatha Christie but with wide-ranging themes. Some were romances, some had supernatural themes and a couple were adventures. The common link was that all came from the talented pen of Agatha Christie, all were entertaining and each drama was carefully crafted and well cast with many of Britain's best known actors of the time represented....
One-Upmanship
Character:
A quintessentially British comedy-of-manners. Based at the fictional Yeovil College of Lifemanship, Richard Briers plays Stephen Potter and is joined by Peter Jones as the snooty Gatling-Fenn and Frederick Jaeger, complete with monocle, playing Cogg-Willoughby. "The world is divided into two types of people," Potter says, "winners and losers, the one-up and the one-down. He who is not one-up is surely one-down"....
The Rag Trade
Character:
Follows the humorous struggles of workers in a London clothing factory....
Minder
Character: Henry
This comedy drama series featured Terry McCann, a former boxer with a conviction for G.B.H., and Arthur Daley, a second-hand car dealer with an eye for a nice little earner. Alongside his many business ventures, Arthur would regularly hire Terry out as a minder or bodyguard, later replaced by nephew, Ray Daley....
The Upper Hand
Character: Mr. Baker
The Upper Hand is a British television sitcom, produced by Central Independent Television and Columbia Pictures Television and broadcast by ITV from 1990 to 1996. The programme was adapted from the American sitcom Who's the Boss?. As in the former series, an affluent single woman, raising a son with the help of her mother, hires a housekeeper only to have a man apply for the job....
The Goodies
Character: Minister for Sports
A British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s, combining surreal sketches and situation comedy....
Movie Credits
Nearly a Nasty Accident
Character: Flight Lt. Winters
The RAF Group Captain has a hard job to restrain the aircraft-man from tinkering with everything he can get his hands on...
Carry On Doctor
Character: Chaplain
Francis Bigger, a notorious charlatan who tours the country lecturing on the subject of mind over matter, slips off the platform in the middle of his performance and ends up in hospital under the care of Dr Tinkle. The hospital is about to enter a period of total chaos....
Carry On England
Character: Brigadier
Captain S. Melly takes over as the new Commanding Officer at an experimental mixed sex air defence base. It's 1940 and England is under heavy bombardment, but the crew seem more interested in each other than the enemy planes above. Captain Melly plans to put a stop to all this, and becomes the target of a campaign to abandon his separatist ideals......
School for Scoundrels
Character: Dudley
Hapless Henry Palfrey is patronised by his self-important chief clerk at work, ignored by restaurant waiters, conned by shady second-hand car salesmen, and, worst of all, endlessly wrong-footed by unspeakably rotten cad Raymond Delauney who has set his cap at April, new love of Palfrey's life. In desperation Henry enrolls at the College of Lifemanship to learn how to best such bounders and win the girl....
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Character: The Book
An Earth Man and his alien friend escape an exploding Earth, and set forth on an odd adventure across the universe with a known fugitive....
Press for Time
Character: Robin Willobey (photographer)
Norman is quite happy selling newspapers outside Westminster station but his Grandfather (the Prime Minister) wants to get him "a more responsible job". A few favours are called in and Norman becomes the newest reporter at the seaside town of Tinmouth. After causing chaos at a local council meeting and causing the demolition of a new house he tries to organise a beauty pageant. A slapstick tale of corruption in high and low places...
The Browning Version
Character: Carstairs
Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his position as the classics master at an English public school due to poor health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his wife, Millie, has been unfaithful to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, but that the school's students and faculty have long disdained him. However, an unexpected act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work....
Forbidden
Character: Pete
Set on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, Jim (Douglass Montgomery), a once promising scientist, sets up in business as a patent medicine man selling hair tonic at the fair with his ex-army colleague Dan (Ronald Shiner). Following a fight with local hoods over pitch spaces, Jim falls for Jane (Hazel Court), the girl on a nearby candy floss stall. The two begin dating but Jim fails to mention he is already married....
Home to Danger
Character: Lips Leonard
A young woman becomes a murder target after inheriting her estranged father's estate....
24 Hours of a Woman's Life
Character: Bill
A compulsive gambler stumbles towards losing everything when Merle Oberon decides to save him from himself....
The Mansion of Madness
Character:
The inmates of an insane asylum take over the institution, imprison the doctors and staff, and then put into play their own ideas of how the place should be run....
Miss Robin Hood
Character: Cyril Lidstone
In this delightful fantasy adventure, a mild-mannered writer of adventure stories for girls finds himself presented with an intriguing proposition from an elderly fan. She suggests that they conspire to steal a secret whiskey formula from ruthless distillers, who themselves stole it from her family in years gone by. With the recipe back in hand however, it's not long before they attract attention from the Inspectors of Scotland Yard....
John and Julie
Character: Jeremy
The adventures of two children who runaway to London to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth....
Cairo Road
Character: Ship Lieutenant
In colonial Egypt, a British police officer sets out on a daring hunt for drug smuggling gangs operating along the notorious Cairo Road....
The Long Memory
Character: Fisher
An innocent man is released from prison after 12 years and tracks down the witnesses who lied about him in court....
The Sandwich Man
Character: Escapologist
A man with a sandwich-board (advert) wanders around London meeting many strange characters....
The Yellow Balloon
Character: Spiv
A young boy is blackmailed by a crook who saw him unwittingly cause his friend's death....
Never Let Go
Character: Alec Berger
John Cummings, an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman, has his unpaid-for car stolen by one of the hoods in the employ of Lionel Meadows, the sadistic organizer of a London car conversion racket. The car was not insured, and since the police appear indifferent to his plight, Cummings decides to find it himself -- and gets himself involved in an underworld battle....
Romanoff and Juliet
Character: Otto
Political satire has Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet story updated for the cold war era, with the children of the US and Russian ambassadors falling in love....
A Day to Remember
Character: Percy Goodall
A group of men from a London pub are going on a darts team outing to Boulogne. Various members of the party have different reasons for going and get involved in various adventures....
The Blue Lagoon
Character: Michael-child
In the Victorian period, two British children survive a shipwreck in the South Pacific. After days afloat, they are marooned on a lush tropical island in the company of kindly old sailor. Together they survive solely on their resourcefulness and the bounty of their remote paradise....
Private's Progress
Character: Arthur Egan
Stanley Windrush has to interrupt his university education when he is called up towards the end of the war. He quickly proves himself not to be officer material, but befriends wily Private Percival Cox who knows exactly how all the scams work in the confused world of the British Army. And Stanley's brigadier War Office uncle seems to be up to something more than a bit shady too - and they are both soon working for him, behind the enemy lines....
The Franchise Affair
Character: Bernard Chadwick
An English country lawyer weighs the case of a schoolgirl who claims she was kidnapped by two women....
Angels One Five
Character: Sentry
The year is 1940 and Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow pilots, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history....
Just Like a Woman
Character: Saul Alexander
Lewis and Scilla's rocky marriage finally breaks apart – a situation made worse by the fact that Scilla is a key part of the television show that Lewis produces. But while Lewis copes by picking up a passing starlet, Scilla indulges her passion for bathrooms by getting one custom-designed by an ex-Nazi architect!...
Tender Loving Care
Character: Mr Davies
Night nurse Elaine Dobbs may be overworked and underpaid, but she has created a very special atmosphere in her ward and is extremely attentive to her patients. However, rather too many of them are dying.Inspired by the real-life case of four nurses in Austria who were tried for the murder of 42 patients in their care, this chilling drama stars comedian Dawn French in her first serious role, as an apparently irreproachable carer....
Innocents in Paris
Character: Langton
Romantic comedy about a group of Britons flying to Paris for the weekend....
Seven Nights in Japan
Character: Capt. Balcon
Handsome Prince George arrives on board his ship in Japan. Youthful, immaculate in naval uniform and smiling broadly, he goes through the complicated formalities of being greeted by a host nation. But housed with the Ambassador and his family, the Prince finds the atmosphere stuffy and dull; he longs for freedom and, for once, rebels against his upbringing with all its constraints and responsibilities, escaping for a week of romance, and unexpected drama…...
Milk
Character: Harry
Forty-five-year-old Adrian has been living with his mother Lucy and running their Wiltshire dairy farm all his adult life. When Lucy unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, a rogue's gallery of family members show up at the farm to argue over the execution of Ruth's will. The one object that everyone seems to want, and several people try to steal, is Ruth's valuable Modigliani painting. In the midst of all this confusion over Ruth's death, a mysterious visitor named Ilaria inserts herself onto the ...
Confessions of a Pop Performer
Character: Maxy Naus
Either you've got it or you haven't - some like randy young Timothy Lea (Robin Askwith), manage to get it all the time! Signing up with a pop group, our boisterous hero progresses rapidly from local gigs to scoring a titillating hit with The Climax Sisters, with plenty of ribald adventures along the way!...
The Magic Box
Character: Industry Man
Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved....
For Better, for Worse
Character: The Car Dealer
In postwar London a young graduate and his girlfriend decide to marry. Her well-to-do parents are not convinced, but they agree once he has got a £5.10.0 job and a 30/- a week single-room flat. The newly-weds find money fearfully tight, the flat cramped, the neighbours a trial, and her parents always hovering. Can faith conquer all? Is there some way of getting rid of tea-leaves except down the sink?...
Operation Bullshine
Character: Gunner Perkins
During World War II, a Royal Artillery officer is assigned to an anti-aircraft battery that is filled with female soldiers of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. His wife who has enlisted is mistakenly posted to the battery in violation of regulations of husbands and wives serving together in the same formation. She becomes jealous of what she perceives as him paying too much attention to the other Auxiliary Territorial Service women....
Smashing Time
Character: Dominic
Two young women arrive in London to make it big in show business, and become corrupted by money and fame in the process....
The Return of the Pink Panther
Character: Psychiatrist
The famous Pink Panther jewel has once again been stolen and Inspector Clouseau is called in to catch the thief. The Inspector is convinced that 'The Phantom' has returned and utilises all of his resources – himself and his Asian manservant – to reveal the identity of 'The Phantom'....
Chariots of Fire
Character:
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest....
The Good Beginning
Character: Furrier
After their honeymoon, Johnny Lipton and his wife Kit move into their small apartment. Kit runs the flat on a tight budget, for she hopes that one day with her support her husband will eventually run his own business. A lack of understanding of each other s character and aspirations, however, leads to many problems before Johnny and Kit are able to attempt a 'good beginning' to their marriage....
Chance of a Lifetime
Character: Xenobian
The workers in a small plough factory take over the firm, but when a large order falls through, the old management come back to help out....
Last Holiday
Character: Travel Agent
George Bird is a salesman of agricultural machinery who finds out that he hasn't long to live. On his doctor's advice, he goes to an exclusive seaside resort to spend his savings on one last holiday....
Albert R.N.
Character: Schoolie
The British inmates of a POW camp think they have an informer among them after several escape attempts fail. One of the prisoners constructs a dummy which they christen "Albert" and use at roll call in order to foil the German guards....
On Such a Night
Character: Second Gentleman
An American tourist on a day trip to Sussex from London inadvertently finds himself at Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex where he learns to appreciate Opera....
Time, Gentlemen, Please!
Character: Lionel Batts
Because of its high productivity and "almost" 100 per cent employment, the town of Hayhoe, England is expecting a visit from the Prime Minister. The "almost" is because of Dan Dance (Eddie Byrne), an old rogue who would rather drink and philosophize than work. The Village Council are determined to have a perfect record so they connive to have the old man put into the alms-house which has been unoccupied for many years, where he must abide by rules laid down 400 years ago. A new Vicar arrives and...
Adventures in Space and Time
Character: Narrator
A documentary on the history of Doctor Who (1963) featuring new interviews with cast and crew, transmitted as part of "Doctor Who Night" on BBC2....
The Children Of Dynmouth
Character: Mr. Dass
The plot follows Timothy Gedge, a socially inept yet intrusive teenage boy as he wanders around the dull seaside town of Dynmouth, spying on the town's residents. At first this behaviour is seen as merely annoying, even comical, until people begin to realise that his purpose may not be as innocent as initially thought....
Blue Murder at St. Trinian's
Character: Prestwick
With their headmistress under lock and key in her majesty's prison, the St Trinian's girls find themselves under the protection of the army. However, when the sixth form take a fancy to winning a trip to Italy through means fair or foul, the army discover this is one battle they can't win. Let loose in Europe, it is not long before St Trinian's have succeeded in endangering European relations....
Father Came Too!
Character: Charles II
When Dexter Munro and his new wife Juliet get married, they decide to escape Juliet's meddling father by buying a rundown cottage and doing it up themselves. But when the cottage proves to be more ramshackle than they thought, and the scale of the repairs needed far out of their budget, the newlyweds are forced into calling on Juliet's father after all. Before long he's employed incompetent builder Josh Wicks, and the situation goes from bad to worse....
I See a Dark Stranger
Character: Soldier in Pub (uncredited)
Proud Irishwoman Bridie Quilty journeys to Dublin while World War II rages across Europe. During her travels, she encounters J. Miller, who recruits her as a Nazi spy. She acquires the necessary information that leads to the breakout of a German spy who holds key information about the Allies' newest offensive plans. However, the arrival of British officer David Baynes and his romancing of Bridie lead to unexpected consequences....
Danger Within
Character: Capt. Alfred Piker
Drama set in an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War 2, where a group of British soldiers find their plans for escape thwarted by a mysterious traitor in their midst....
Dead of Night
Character: Fred, Barman (Segment "Golfing Story") (Uncredited)
Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales....
Fanny by Gaslight
Character: Young Client at 'The Shades' (uncredited)
Returning to 1870s London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny winesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke. She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home. When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young advisor Harry Somerford leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. Periodi...
Hot Millions
Character: Prison Governor
A con artist gains employment at an insurance company in order to embezzle money by re-programming their "new" wonder computer....
Vice Versa
Character: Chawner
Businessman Paul Bultitude is sending his son Dick to a boarding school. While holding a magic stone from India, he wishes that he could be young again. His wish is immediately fulfilled and the two change bodies with each other. Mr Bultitude becomes a school boy who smokes cigars and has a very conservative view on child upbringing, while his son Dick becomes a gentleman who spends his time drinking lemonade and arranging children's parties....