Roy Holder

Roy Holder was born in Birmingham in 1946. His first major film roles were in 1961 in “Whistle Down the Wind” with Alan Bates and Hayley Mills and “Term of Trial” with Laurence Oliver and Sarah Miles. He was in Franco Zefferelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968 and “Loot”.

IMDB entry:

Roy Holder was born on June 15, 1946 in Birmingham, England as Roy Trevor Holder. He is an actor, known for Pride & Prejudice (2005), Robin Hood (2010) and Romeo and Juliet(1968).Educated at Upper Thomas Street School Aston, Birmingham.

Lived in Park Lane, Aston, Birmingham.

Has 2 children with his partner Pauline.

Sisters Doreen and June, brothers Kenny and Malcolm.

Plays in several celebrity golf tournaments a year and has been 1st team captain at his home club.

Roy Holder died in 2021. Stage and screen actor who appeared in several popular TV series including Ace of Wands, Doctor Who and Sorry!

Michael Mackenzie, left, and Roy Holder in Ace of Wands, 1970. Holder played Chas Diamond, a photographer. Photograph: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock

Anthony Hayward

The actor Roy Holder, who has died aged 75 of cancer, performed in the classics on stage and was directed by Franco Zeffirelli in film versions of two Shakespeare plays, but he will be best remembered by a generation of young television viewers for his role in a teatime fantasy series.

Ace of Wands, devised by Trevor Preston – later to write for The Sweeney and create the hard-hitting dramas Out and Fox – began in 1970, starring Michael Mackenzie as the psychic magician Tarot, fighting evil with his young assistants, played by Judy Loe and Tony Selby. Tarot, who was described in publicity as “a 20th-century Robin Hood, with a pinch of Merlin and a dash of Houdini”, also had a pet Malay fishing owl called Ozymandias.

Holder was introduced a year later as Chas Diamond, a photographer living with his sister, Mikki, a journalist, in a studio above an old London street market. They became Tarot’s new assistants for the final series, in 1972, when Holder’s storylines included sharing a dream about ancient Egypt with the mystery-solving magician and, under hypnosis, robbing a post office. “I went in as the baddie,” he recalled. “Then, they asked me to do the next series as the goodie.”

In recent years, Holder appeared at fan conventions and autograph-signing sessions for cult series such as Ace of Wands and Doctor Who, in which he appeared in the 1984 story The Caves of Androzani as Krelper, an impatient gun smuggler working for a mercenary selling weapons to an outlaw who creates androids.

Roy Holder in the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind. Photograph: ITV/Shutterstock

Holder’s longest-running television role was in the sitcom Sorry! (1981-88) as Frank, drinking pal of the neurotic middle-aged librarian Timothy Lumsden (Ronnie Corbett), who lives with his domineering mother. “Just shut up about your mother!” Frank tells Timothy in one of his attempts to find him a partner. “Over there is a girl who likes you very much. You like her very much. Now, get to it or you’re going to find yourself neutered!”

Roy was born in Birmingham, to Florence (nee Clifford) and Frederick Holder. He was three when his father, a factory worker, died and his mother later remarried. He acted in plays while attending Upper Thomas Street secondary modern school. At the age of 15, he was plucked from a shortlist of 150 pupils by the BBC to play a “rough-looking” boy with a broad Birmingham accent for a leading role as Robert Shaw’s son in The Train Set (1961), a play written by David Turner and performed live.

Roy Holder, left, with Robert Shaw in The Train Set, 1961. Photograph: AF Archive/Alamy

Richard Attenborough was so impressed by Holder’s performance that, in his role of producer, he cast him alongside Hayley Mills as Jackie, one of the children encountering a murderer (Alan Bates) whom they mistake for Jesus Christ, in Whistle Down the Wind, one of the most popular films of 1961. Holder showed his adaptability by adopting a northern accent, reflecting the resetting of Mary Hayley Bell’s novel from Kent to Lancashire. He played a schoolboy again, alongside Laurence Olivier’s alcoholic teacher, in the film Term of Trial (1962).

After returning to TV as Bugs in the children’s serial The Chem Lab Mystery (1963), Holder established himself as a character actor in dozens of series and plays, as well as bringing his comedy skills to light entertainment in The Little and Large Show (from 1987 to 1991) and The Les Dennis Laughter Show (1990-91).

Roy Holder

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