The actor Christian Rodska, who has died of most cancers aged 78, landed his breakthrough position in a fondly remembered kids’s tv collection of the Seventies, Follyfoot, impressed by Monica Dickens’s 1963 novel Cobbler’s Dream. Set on a farm offering sanctuary for veteran and rescue horses, it starred Steve Hodson as his namesake Steve and Gillian Blake as Dora, with Rodska taking part in Ron Stryker, the carefree, rebellious fellow employee typically seen sitting astride his good-looking Triumph Tiger bike – the dangerous apple who shatters the calm of the countryside in additional methods than one.
Shortly earlier than being forged within the position, the actor had purchased the bike for £5 off a scrapheap and lovingly restored it – he was significantly happy with its gold horn, which he present in an antiques store – and it was written into the script.
Rodska instructed Jane Royston and Ray Knight, authors of Follyfoot Remembered (2011), that Ron was “fairly a nasty particular person” in Dickens’s e-book, however the creator personally praised him with the phrases: “Stryker was by no means half as lovable a rogue as you make him.”
Follyfoot ran for 3 collection from 1971 to 1973, with its adventures attracting audiences of as much as 14 million and profitable the 1972 Harlequin award for finest kids’s programme from the Society of Movie and Tv Arts (now Bafta). It was filmed within the West Using of Yorkshire across the Harewood property between Harrogate and Leeds.
In in search of a title, the producer, Tony Essex, grabbed a map of the world, requested his 11-year-old daughter, Tamara, to level randomly to a spot, and she or he picked the village of Follifoot. Essex’s brother, Francis (underneath the pseudonym Stephen Francis), wrote the memorable theme track, The Lightning Tree. Carried out by the Settlers, it grew to become a Prime 40 hit and was a couple of tree that had been hit by lightning and replanted within the Follyfoot farmyard to provide color to what had been a featureless expanse of cobbles.
In 2011, Hodson and Blake took half in a Fortieth-anniversary go to to the Yorkshire places by nostalgia-seeking followers, however sickness dominated Rodska out.
His post-Follyfoot tv profession as a personality actor was prolific and wide-ranging, and punctuated by roles as politicians – Max Aitken, the primary Lord Beaverbrook, additionally proprietor of the Every day Specific, in Quantity 10 (1983); the Labour chief Neil Kinnock in Thatcher: The Last Days (1991); and Winston Churchill within the French drama The Days That Made Historical past (2010) and two 2015 documentaries, Churchill: When Britain Stated No, and Churchill: Profitable the Warfare, Shedding the Peace. He additionally performed President Harry Truman within the movie The Monuments Males (2014), directed by George Clooney.
The Every day Mail wrote of his second Churchill portrayal: “It was virtually like watching actual footage of the outdated warrior himself.”
Rodska was born Christian Rodskjaer in Cullercoats, Northumberland, to Florence (nee White), referred to as Sheila, and Herluf Rodskjaer, who got here from a household of Danish sea captains. Shortly after his start, they moved to Basra, Iraq, the place his father was harbour grasp and captained King Faisal II’s royal yacht. After the 1958 army coup, they returned to Britain and settled in Southampton. On leaving college, Christian grew to become an assistant stage supervisor at Salisbury Playhouse, the place he made his appearing debut. He later modified his identify to Rodska.
After Follyfoot he had a daily half because the mine proprietor’s mild, susceptible son Arthur Barras in The Stars Look Down (1975), Alan Plater’s adaptation of AJ Cronin’s novel set amongst an early-Twentieth-century pit neighborhood within the north-east of England. Then, he co-starred because the hunter and freed Roman slave Esca within the Sunday-teatime serial The Eagle of the Ninth (1977), from Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel.
He popped up in countless dramas, however switched to sitcom to play Tom, certainly one of a household of itinerant crooks, in The Nesbitts Are Coming (1980); and cleaning soap as Harry Newton, a new-build developer’s persistent gross sales agent attempting to influence Brian and Gail Tilsley to purchase a home, in two 1980 episodes of Coronation Road.
Whereas capturing Sharpe’s Mission (1996) with Sean Bean in Crimea, he established a rapport with Russian Cossack stunt artists and, afterwards, was invited to stick with them in St Petersburg, consuming vodka and studying to trick-ride horses.
He returned to the north-east of England to movie the primary collection of 55 Levels North (2004), taking part in Detective Inspector Dennis Carter, of a fictional Tyneside police drive, limiting the actions of a whistleblowing subordinate – and ending up shot lifeless himself. He additionally performed Arthur “Bomber” Harris within the 2006 German tv movie Dresden and Captain Smith within the 2011 documentary What Sank Titanic?
In additional than 1,000 BBC radio broadcasts through the years, Rodska appeared in dramas and comedies by writers starting from Peter Tinniswood, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse to JB Priestley and Jean-Paul Sartre, and was continually in demand as a reader of books. He additionally had runs within the radio soaps Waggoners’ Stroll, as Invoice Ashton (1979-80), a enterprise government, and The Archers, as Russell Baxter (2009), a solicitor failing to avoid wasting Matt Crawford from jail for committing fraud.
His expressive voice was heard as a narrator of Tinniswood’s radio comedy collection following the adventures of Uncle Mort (1987-96) and Winston (1989-94), and lots of audio books, together with Churchill’s epic tome The Second World Warfare.
Rodska’s 1969 marriage to Jacqueline Mousny led to divorce. He’s survived by their kids, Ben and Camille; his second spouse, the actor Barbara Kellermann, whom he married in 2017 after 19 years collectively; his stepson, Freddie; and two grandchildren, Louis and Xavier.
