Brian Trueman, who has died aged 92, was an actor and television presenter before making his greatest contribution to the screen as a core member of the innovative Cosgrove Hall animation studio’s team. He wrote many of its most popular children’s TV programmes, from Danger Mouse and The Wind in the Willows to Chorlton and the Wheelies, Jamie and the Magic Torch and Cockleshell Bay, also providing the voices for some of the beloved characters.
Danger Mouse (1981-92), the cartoon series created by the studio’s founders, Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, featured a British secret service agent based on Patrick McGoohan in the 1960s series Danger Man. They conceived him as a mouse foiling the plans of an evil toad, Baron Silas Greenback, but switched from the serious tone of the pilot episode to parody after Mike Harding, who wrote the music, suggested they could make Danger Mouse “as barmy as we wanted”.
David Jason – only just making a name for himself as the star of Only Fools and Horses – voiced the mouse whose brief is to save the world, saying he made him “softly spoken, very British, very heroic, but also a bit of a coward”.
Trueman, who wrote most of the scripts, put into Jason’s mouth catchphrases such as “Good grief!” and, in rebuking foolish comments made by the agent’s assistant, a timid hamster voiced by Terry Scott, “Penfold, shush!”
Danger Mouse was a worldwide hit, while its deluded, fame-obsessed vampire duck, also voiced by Jason, was spun off into his own programme, Count Duckula (1988-93), with Trueman writing some episodes while voicing the housekeeper, Nanny, a clumsy hen, for the entire four series.
By then, Cosgrove Hall had enjoyed another success with The Wind in the Willows. Following Rosemary Anne Sisson’s 1983 feature-length television film adaptation for the studio, Trueman wrote most of the stop-motion episodes screened over four series (1984-88).
He beautifully captured the charm of Kenneth Grahame’s Edwardian novel about Toad (voiced by Jason), Mole (Richard Pearson), Ratty (Peter Sallis) and Badger (Michael Hordern). He was also the voice of Henchman Weasel, before scripting a further series titled Oh! Mr Toad (1989-90) and a special, A Tale of Two Toads (1989).
His association with Cosgrove Hall began when the studio’s founders – former graphic designers at the ITV company Granada Television – commissioned Trueman to script its first series, Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976-78), about a “happiness” dragon protecting creatures on wheels from an evil witch. The character was named after the area of Manchester where the studio – owned by another ITV company, Thames Television – was based, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
It followed this with the cartoon series Jamie and the Magic Torch (1977-79), for which Trueman wrote, narrated and provided most of the characters’ voices. He did the same for Cockleshell Bay (1980-86), stop-motion animation stories about a brother and sister living by the sea.
This success came to him after almost 20 years as a regional presenter with Granada Television in Manchester and several decades as a radio actor. He saw voicing animated productions as transferring those skills, especially in switching accents, and observed: “There was a lot more sanity in the lunacy of the adventures of a one-eyed mouse and a vegetarian vampire duck than in the unpleasantly evolving ‘grown-up’ telly.”
Trueman was born in Barton, Lancashire, to Elsie (nee Valentine), a secretary, and Cyril Trueman, a newspaper print worker, and attended Stretford grammar school. He started acting on radio in Children’s Hour, from the BBC’s Manchester studios, at the age of 14, cast as Tubby the Cook in Adventures of the Plover Patrol (1947). A fellow Children’s Hour performer, Violet Carson, later to play Ena Sharples in Coronation Street, sponsored his Equity union application.
After national service as a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, Trueman gained a BA in English and American literature from Manchester University, where he was a leading light in its drama group.
Radio and TV acting roles kept coming until in 1957 he landed a job with Granada Television as a regional news presenter on Northern Newscast. He became a main presenter of its subsequent news magazine, Scene at 6.30, from 1963, made local documentaries and hosted the film review series Cinema (from 1967 to 1974). “People would shout across the street, ‘Barry Norman!’” recalled Trueman of being mistaken for the presenter of the BBC Film series.
He also wrote, produced and presented the 1976 networked ITV series A House for the Future. It followed the progress of a family moving into a derelict Peak District coach house and helping to convert it into an ecological, energy-conserving property.
During his time at Granada (1957-76), Trueman continued acting on radio, including a long run in The Clitheroe Kid (1957-72), which included playing the Liverpudlian neighbour Harry Whittle from 1966.
He presented many factual series for the BBC – from People to People (1977), taking a non-metropolitan view of issues affecting the public, to the discussion show Brass Tacks (in 1977), as well as the children’s film quiz Screen Test (from 1979 to 1983).
Other animated programmes Trueman wrote for Cosgrove Hall included Alias the Jester (1985-86) and Truckers (1992), based on Terry Pratchett’s novel.
He also scripted Budgie the Little Helicopter (1994-96), from Sarah Ferguson’s books, and The Treacle People (1996-97), with his son Jonathan, as well as episodes for the sixth and seventh series of Thomas & Friends (2002-03).
In 1961, Trueman married Angela Philpot. She and their sons, Jonathan and Benjamin, survive him.
• Brian Richard Trueman, actor and presenter, born 16 May 1932; died 1 September 2024
