The actor and writer Arnold Yarrow, who has died aged 104, made an impact on a number of popular television programmes.
He achieved the unique distinction of both starring in and writing for EastEnders, joining the long-running soap opera in 1988 as the recurring character Benny Bloom, a retired bricklayer. He was briefly engaged to Ethel Skinner (Gretchen Franklin) until his refusal to accept her pug Willy into his home ended their relationship. Benny subsequently died off screen, but Yarrow returned to the programme to script 10 episodes between 1992 and 1994.
At the time of his death he was the longest lived actor to have appeared in Doctor Who. His memorable turn as the helpful alien Bellal opposite Jon Pertwee in Death to the Daleks (1974) remains popular due to Yarrow’s ability to project benign likability and charming alien qualities, despite his 5ft 3in frame having been entirely encased in latex. He approached the part seriously: “I visited a zoo and saw some marmosets and bush babies and this inspired me – looking at the way they conveyed their feelings.”
He was born Arnold Stein in Mile End, London, to Jack Stein, a furrier, and his wife Leah (nee Montlake). Jack died when Arnold was eight and Leah married Philip Yarrow, a doctor, who brought her children up as his own and gave them his name.
Arnold was educated in Stepney and initially embarked on a career in advertising until the outbreak of the second world war, when he served as an infantryman in the UK. He was later posted to India and China and became an officer in the Royal Corps of Signals.
Having always dabbled in amateur dramatics, when posted to Germany in peacetime he became the administrator of a small theatre there, directing plays and running the company as a weekly repertory. On his return to the UK he enrolled at drama school in Bradford and became a professional actor in 1948. He was soon working with York repertory company and then toured Shakespeare with the Dolphin theatre company, before joining Bernard Miles at the Mermaid theatre in London, where his roles included Adam in As You Like It and the Porter in Macbeth (both 1953).
After a small break from the business he became the administrator and senior stage manager at the Library theatre, Manchester, in 1955. He then moved back to London, after which his play Ripple in Texas won a playwriting competition and was professionally produced by Oldham repertory theatre, and later dramatised for BBC Home Service.
He got his television writing break courtesy of the 1959 Associated TV drama award, which resulted in a £500 first prize and the broadcast of his play The Tip Off in 1960. In 1968, when the producer Leonard Lewis (a former Library theatre colleague) needed a script editor to handle the fourth series of Softly, Softly (a spin-off from the popular police procedural Z-Cars), he called on Yarrow, who joined the show for two years. Yarrow also wrote for and script-edited two other related shows, Softly, Softly: Task Force (1969-71, and writing episodes until 1976) and Barlow at Large (1971, 1973-74), and wrote episodes of Crown Court (1974) and Warship (1976) among others.
His radio plays included After Moscow (1980, speculating on the future of Chekhov’s Three Sisters after the play) and His Master’s Voice (1983). By now he had moved to Faversham, Kent, becoming involved in the Marlowe theatre, Canterbury, and running drama classes for the Workers’ Educational Association.
After his television acting debut in 1956 he had enjoyed a steady trickle of character parts – including in a BBC Macbeth (as the First Witch, 1958), the science fiction sequel serial The Andromeda Breakthrough (1962), Dr Finlay’s Casebook (1968), The Onedin Line (1980) and London’s Burning (1993) – bowing out in Elijah Moshinsky’s 1993 BBC film Genghis Cohn.
After a European tour of School for Scandal (1984) starring Donald Sinden and Dulcie Gray, he was considering retirement when he was asked to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he had a happy time playing character parts – from Justice Shallow (a favourite role) in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1985-86) to Verges in Much Ado About Nothing (1990-91). While there he performed a four-hour recital of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets to secure funding for his own play, Stitch (1986), about an exploitative East End sweatshop: his 1986 Stratford production subsequently transferred to the Almeida theatre.
He also wrote two novels, The Grease Paint Jungle (1966) and Death Is a Z (1978), and The Softly, Softly Murder Casebook, a collection of stories based on the TV series (1973).
In retirement he remained a sharp and genial correspondent and could still recite swathes of Shakespeare word for word. He was delighted when informed of the outpouring of affection on social media that greeted the occasion of his 100th birthday – a milestone passed by both his older sister Beatrice (who died in 2017) and his younger brother Alfred, who survives him.
• Arnold Yarrow, actor, born 17 April 1920; died 9 December 2024
