Glyn Houston

Glyn Houston: 

† Oct 23 1925 – Jun 30 2019

Here's one of the old guard, an authentic character actor with his own small place in British entertainment history. Gimlet-eyed Welshman Glyn Houston started his film career in the 'Dixon of Dock Green' prototype, 'The Blue Lamp' in 1950, before hitting a rich vein of rugged stoker and sailor roles in a sequence of warship and shipwreck dramas, including 'Waterfront' (1950), 'The Cruel Sea' (1953), 'The Sea Shall Not Have Them' (1954), 'A Night to Remember' (1958) and 'Sink the Bismarck' (1960).      

In the Norman Wisdom comedy 'Follow A Star' (1959)

With the decline of the British film industry starting in the early '60s, he found himself in some demand in television, with appearances in Welsh classic 'How Green Was My Valley' and the newsroom drama series 'Deadline Midnight'. As the decade went on, potboiler movies like motor-racing thriller 'The Green Helmet (1961) and prisoner-of-war pic 'The Secret of Blood Island' (1964), gave way to regular roles in 'Softly Softly' and 'Z-Cars', and the odd 'Danger Man' and 'The Saint'. 

In the Doctor Who adventure 'The Hand Of Fear'
with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen  

In the early '70s he got a useful leg-up with a casting as Lord Peter Wimsey's valet, Bunter, in the Ian Carmichael-fronted  adaptations of the Dorothy L Sayers whodunnits. He also played Nigel Havers' trusty foreman in 'A Horseman Riding By', before finding a curiously lasting fame as Robert Gillespie's exasperated editor in 'Keep It In The Family'. 

He also appears in this forgotten gem of scenery-rattling TV drama: Beasts     

Glyn Houston - imdb