Allister Bain, the Grenadian-born actor, playwright, dancer and choreographer whose television credits ranged from The Professionals to Doctor Who, has died at the age of 94, according to Daily Star.
Bain died peacefully on 24 September, and his cremation took place in Islington on 13 October. The death was confirmed by his friend Caroline Muraldo in an Instagram post accompanied by a black and white photograph of Bain in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat, umbrella in hand, the very image of the dapper showman his colleagues remembered.
A life that traced the arc of post-war British culture
Bain's story is inseparable from the story of Black British cultural life after the Second Empire Windrush generation arrived. Born in St Andrew's, Grenada, he came to England in 1958 with his dance company, according to Express.co.uk. His troupe, the Bee Wee Ballet of Grenada, performed in the street gatherings that would grow into the Notting Hill Carnival, an institution now woven into the fabric of London life and, fittingly, one that liberal Britain can claim as proof of what migration gives a nation rather than what it takes away.
His television career began in 1964 with a role as a nurse in an episode of Theatre 625 titled With Love and Tears, at a time when parts for Black actors on British screens were scarce and often thankless. He worked steadily through the decades that followed, appearing in Us Girls, Vanity Fair, Bugs, The Professionals, Love Thy Neighbour and Waking the Dead.
Winston Rampaul and a new generation of fans
For many viewers, Bain's most familiar face belongs to Doctor Who. In the 2009 Christmas Special The End of Time, Part One, he played Winston Rampaul, a spirited pensioner and friend of Bernard Cribbins' beloved Wilfred Mott. The episode opened the two-part story that brought David Tennant's tenure in the TARDIS to its close, one of the most-watched departures in the programme's history, as Brit Brief also reported.
It was a supporting role, but Bain made it memorable, and it introduced him to an audience that had not been born when he first appeared on British television. Few actors can claim a career of that reach: from the experimental studio drama of the 1960s to the family viewing figures of a Christmas Day special.
Playwright to the end
Bain was also a writer of conviction. He was part of the original cast of Michael McMillan's play The School Leaver, staged at the Royal Court Theatre's Young Writers' Festival in 1978, a venue that did more than most to open British theatre to voices the establishment had long ignored.
His debut play as a writer, People, appeared in 2001. He did not stop there. In January 2012, at the age of 80, he premiered Pardon My Simplicity, a reminder that creative vigour owes nothing to retirement age and everything to the will to keep working.
Tributes from colleagues and admirers
Muraldo wrote: