Women stripped naked for him and Tarantino begged for dinner but To The Manor Born’s Peter Bowles only had eyes for wife
SUAVE actor Peter Bowles was Britain’s favourite toff – despite being the son of servants and growing up in modest circumstances.
Peter, who died yesterday of cancer aged 85, shot to stardom as nouveau riche supermarket owner Richard DeVere in BBC sitcom To The Manor Born from 1979 to 1981.
Audiences of 20million tuned in to see his will-they-won’t-they, love-hate relationship with Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, played by Penelope Keith.
And an astonishing 27million watched a one-off special in 2007 when Richard and Audrey celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.
Paying tribute to him last night, Sun columnist Piers Morgan said Peter was a “wonderful actor who exuded roguish British charm”. Broadcaster Gyles Brandreth added: “He was a lovely friend and the most devoted husband in the business.”
For most of his 66-year showbiz career, Peter played smooth-talking aristocrats and cads in TV hits including The Bounder, Lytton’s Diary and Perfect Scoundrels.
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More recently, he played the Duke of Wellington in ITV’s Victoria, which starred Jenna Coleman as Queen Victoria.
Off screen and away from the theatre, the 6ft 3in actor lived like an upper-crust gent. He smoked cigars, drank claret and always drove a Rolls-Royce or Porsche.
‘It isn’t very erotic’
Many of his TV shows were screened in America, which is how he charmed a transatlantic audience and some major Hollywood names.
Peter recalled coming face to face with Quentin Tarantino in a pub one night and discovering the acclaimed director a fan. Peter revealed: “He said, ‘Forgive me for disturbing you but my name is Quentin Tarantino and I admire your work enormously. I see your shows in the States all the time.
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“I’m in a restaurant across the road with my girlfriend and I wonder if you would care to join us for dinner.’ I replied, ‘It’s so kind of you, but I’ve just ordered a sandwich’.”
“So he said, ‘OK, let’s take a rain check. Love your work’, and left me sitting there feeling very stupid, having turned down dinner with Tarantino for a ham sandwich.”
He was a hit with the opposite sex, too — and women would often break into his hotel room and even his home to try to seduce him. But he was proud of the fact he was so in love with wife Sue that he never cheated on her. The couple were happily married for six decades.
Peter recalled: “I have had women breaking into my house and into my hotel bedrooms. I have had women take all their clothes off and say, ‘Take me, I’m yours’. When that happens, it isn’t very erotic. I have never been tempted to get into trouble. The simple fact is that I love my wife so there is no competition.”
Born in 1936, Peter grew up in a mansion but his early life was more Upstairs Downstairs than To The Manor Born.
Dad Herbert was a valet and chauffer to Drogo Montagu, son of the Earl of Sandwich, while mum Sarah Jane worked as a nanny for the family of the Duke of Argyll.
I have had women breaking into my house and into my hotel bedrooms. I have had women take all their clothes off and say, ‘Take me, I’m yours’.
Peter Bowles
The couple met at a country estate in Northamptonshire where they lived until Peter, their only child, was four. During World War Two they moved to Nottingham, where Herbert was an engineer at the Rolls-Royce factory, making aircraft engines.
The family lived in a two-up, two-down terrace with an outside toilet and no bath in one of the poorest parts of the city. Peter said: “We were in a Coronation Street environment but everyone was extremely friendly and there were lots of kids. It was terrific.”
After appearing in amateur plays in Nottingham he won a scholarship to leading drama school Rada. He was to meet wife Susan Bennett at the Bristol Old Vic where they appeared in a play together.
Peter said: “This extremely beautiful woman arrived to be the company’s leading lady. I was playing her 80-year-old butler in a white wig. I asked her to come to the pub across the road. I bought her a drink and asked her to marry me.
“Of course, she said no because she thought I was mad. Also, she had seen me on stage the night before playing a homosexual called Princess Grace, so she thought I was probably gay as well.”
Eventually Susan said yes and gave up her career to look after their three children, Guy, Adam and Sasha — and help Peter become a star. Although he worked on dozens of films and TV shows, including hospital sitcom Only When I Laugh, Rumpole Of The Bailey and Rising Damp, fame and fortune eluded him for 22 years.
'Played lots of villains'
Peter said: “I played lots of villains and was regularly being ‘killed’ by the likes of Tony Curtis and Roger Moore. I never got the girl until Penelope Keith.”
He had first been offered the part of Penelope’s husband Jerry in The Good Life, which eventually went to Paul Eddington. But Peter turned it down because he had just landed a part in a play with Richard Briars.
Peter recalled: “Richard asked me why I’d turned it down and I said, ‘Because I’m doing this play’. He said, ‘Didn’t anybody tell you they record The Good Life on Sundays?’.
“Nobody had. So every week during the play’s run, Dicky would knock on my dressing room door and shout, ‘I’ve just had another cheque from the BBC’.”
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By the time the BBC approached him for To The Manor Born, Peter, then 42, had almost given up acting and was planning to move to Australia to become a theatre director.
But for 40 years after saying yes, Peter finally got to live the good life.
