Peter Sallis, Last of the Summer Wine star and voice of Wallace, dies aged 96

The veteran character actor Peter Sallis has died aged 96. Sallis is known to millions as the voice of Wallace, the cheese-loving inventor hero of Nick Park’s clay animation Wallace & Gromit films, and as the longest-serving cast member in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine.

He played Norman Clegg in the original lineup of Last of the Summer Wine, first broadcast in 1973, going on to become the only cast member who would appear in all 295 episodes, until the show finale in 2010.

Sallis made both of these quintessentially northern characters his own, despite the fact that he was born in Twickenham.

Beginning his career on stage, including a part in Orson Welles’s West End version of Moby Dick–Rehearsed in 1955, he became a familiar face in British films of the 1960s and 70s, including an early, uncredited role in the kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and in a number of Hammer horrors, such as The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970).

He also appeared in several cult TV shows of the time, including episodes of Danger Man, Doctor Who and The Persuaders!, later providing the voice of Rat in Cosgrove Hall’s 1980s animated series The Wind in the Willows.

Sallis first voiced the eccentric inventor Wallace in the award-winning 1989 animation A Grand Day Out, produced by the Bristol-based studio Aardman Animation. Together with his beloved dog, Gromit, Wallace returned in the short films The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995). They made their big-screen debut in 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Following the series Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention (2010), Sallis retired from acting duties, handing on the role of Wallace to Ben Whitehead.