Ray Brooks ( aka Robbie box )

I watched ca few episodes recently on youtube, RIP.

Great series in it's day. Looks a bit dated now but great nostalgia for us oldies.

with all todays restrictions/affordability checks,robbie box  would have been far more  wealthy today

Great character from a great series as was Mr. Benn
RIP

Had an excellent soothing voice, perfect casting to have him narrate Mr Benn (neat GOAT of Kids tv) just edged out by Top Cat and Scooby Doo

I do remember Big Deal, his girlfriends boss hung himself.  Shocking stuff for a schoolboy on a Sunday evening as it was for me.

Not talking about Mike Reid who also appeared in Big Deal

Roy?

Telegraph obituary
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2025/08/10/ray-brooks-actor-cathy-come-home-mr-benn-died-obituary/ (£££)

Ray Brooks, the actor, who has died aged 86, broke through to film stardom in the mid-1960s in the avant-garde comedy The Knack… And How to Get It (1965) but failed to capitalise on his first flush of fame.

The Telegraph review of The Knack observed: ‘he transforms every act – even removing his gloves – into a dangerous form of striptease’

He played the enigmatic Tolen in what was acclaimed one of the films of the year (it had won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival even before it opened in London). The “Knack” of the title was that of serial seduction, and Brooks’ character had it.

The first of a rush of Swinging London films that accompanied the stirrings of the permissive society, and directed by Richard Lester sandwiched between his two Beatles pictures, The Knack was both witty and visually stunning – shot in black and white – and the young Brooks (he was only 24 when it was made) found himself the toast of the town.

Superbly restrained as Tolen, Brooks turned in an understated performance opposite Michael Crawford’s awkward, edgy Colin, the frustrated teacher who persuades Tolen to teach him the knack of picking up girls.

Oozing confidence with every move, he excelled as the kind of smooth sexual athlete who, as The Sunday Telegraph noted, “transforms every act – even removing his gloves – into a dangerous form of striptease.” An ecstatic George Melly, reviewing it for The Observer, called the film “the new pop gospel… I saw it one morning and remember coming out afterwards into Piccadilly in a state of euphoria.”

Although Brooks followed up his success starring opposite Carol White in Ken Loach’s controversial and critically acclaimed film Cathy Come Home (BBC, 1966), he then seemed to melt away. “I think I was naive,” he explained many years later. “I thought that they would come to me. I was asked to go to a lot of places, lots of film festivals, people were offering me work, but the films that they were offering me very often didn’t materialise because they couldn’t get the money.”

It was another 20 years before Brooks returned, this time on the small screen, as Robbie Box, the dishevelled card sharp in the BBC low-life comedy drama Big Deal (1985). By then, the lucrative voiceover work that had carried him through his wilderness years had dried up and his financial woes were crowned by the Inland Revenue calculating that he owed more than £800,000 (eventually reduced to £70,000) in unpaid tax.

In real life, Brooks always fancied a bet, and shortly after Big Deal he bought a quarter-share in a greyhound called While It Lasts, which turned out to be an omen. “It won two races,” he remembered, “then banged its head in the third and that was the end of that. Now it’s someone’s pet.”

In 1990 he starred in The World Of Eddie Weary, a television play about a northern private detective written by Roy Clarke, creator of Open All Hours and Last of the Summer Wine, but plans to turn it into an ITV series the following year proved abortive. In 1992 he and his Big Deal co-star Sharon Duce appeared together as different characters in the short-lived series Growing Pains (1992), about a pair of middle-aged foster parents.

Raymond Michael Brooks was born on April 20 1939 in Brighton, his mother being an unmarried bus conductor, his absent father a cinema manager with a wife and two children of his own. When Ray was eight, his mother sent him to evening drama and elocution classes, and later he appeared in local amateur shows. He attended the Molly Ball school of dancing and Xaverian College, a local school for Roman Catholic boys.

In 1956 he gave up a job in the wages office of the local bus company to join Nottingham Rep in a production of Treasure Island. He followed this with a season as assistant stage manager with the Forbes Russell rep at Butlin’s, Clacton-on-Sea, and another in the same capacity at Ilfracombe in 1958. His first acting job was at the Jesmond Playhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne, as Simple Simon in Jack and the Beanstalk in 1959.

He began as a television actor with a fleeting role in Coronation Street and a bigger one in the series Taxi! (both 1963) with Sid James. He took small film roles in British films such as HMS Defiant (1960), with Billy Fury in Play it Cool and Some People (both 1962), before being cast in The Knack.

Shot in Shepherd’s Bush in six weeks and intended as a low-budget second feature, The Knack was based on a play by Ann Jellicoe that had been staged at the Royal Court. No one predicted how well it would do as a film, and Brooks was astounded when it was tipped for honours at the Cannes Film Festival.

He and his wife were whisked from their £4-a-week flat in Kilburn to Heathrow in a Rolls-Royce and installed in a suite at the Carlton Hotel. As he ruefully observed in his autobiography Learning My Lines (2009), “little did we know that it would all turn to dust.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Brooks appeared in several cult television series including The Avengers, Danger Man and Doomwatch. Substantial film roles continued to elude him, and he turned to writing and recording songs he had written, which he released as an album, Lend Me Some of Your Time in 1971.

Although he surfaced as an over-sexed waiter in Carry On Abroad (1972), he admitted to being disillusioned with film acting, and branched out into recording highly paid voiceovers for television and radio commercials to pay the bills.

He also voiced the children’s television series Mr Benn (1971-72), which featured the titular bowler-hatted hero who would dress up in a magical costume shop and be thrust into another new adventure. Although only 13 episodes were made, they were repeated for many years.

Stage work also continued to keep him afloat: he appeared alongside Maggie Smith in the comedy Snap (Vaudeville, 1974), with Peter Bowles and Richard Briers in Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends (Garrick, 1975), and with Frances de la Tour in John Bowen’s Singles (Greenwich, 1977). In 1981 he co-starred with Felicity Kendal in Tom Stoppard’s comedy On the Razzle (Lyttelton), hailed by John Barber in the Telegraph as one of that venue’s greatest comic successes.

Brooks’s television career took an upswing in 2005 when he joined the cast of EastEnders as Joe Macer. But 18 months later his character was written out following the departure of his on-screen wife, Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard). Joe confessed to killing Pauline before falling from a window to his death.

Ray Brooks married, in 1963, Sadie Elcombe, with whom he had three children. A daughter died in 2003.

Ray Brooks, born April 20 1939, died August 9 2025

sad news..

loved that series, was only about 11-14 watching it on a small black and white portable tv initially..he was very good in it..

didn't even know you could get it on dvd..might have to have a look

Sad news, he was brilliant as Bobbie Box, growing up around the South London snooker halls and betting shops in the 70s and 80s, there were many characters just like him... Chancers basically, but with personality
The shows were great

Paulo, a bookies shop?
I had a flat in nearby Belvedere in 1980, must have been in your shop a few times

Paulo, I vaguely remember it, most of the independents then were either Morris or Parry

I was in with a couple of big local punters then, putting on for them...
Does Big H ring a bell?

Paulo, should have said Coomes bookies, not Morris... He bet at Crayford and Catford dog tracks, but had an interest in Cooomes

Here is the very first episode.....follow the channel for all the episodes in full HD quality.


https://youtu.be/U8gQsl0mjKk?si=_-VJEYrFlvThbL1Z

I was at Kempton in 1985 when they filmed the racetrack scenes for the episode called, I think, 'I Gotta Horse'.

The filming was done after racing and the crowd were asked to stay behind if anyone wanted to. The cast turned up before the last two races and sat about on the member's enclosure lawn. I sat on a bench next to Sharon Duce and explained what the stuff on the race card meant. She was very sexy in real in life, as well.

I think either the last race, or the second last race, that day went to a 4/11 shot and one of the cast members came running back from the bookies pleased with himself because he had bet £110 to win £40! I don't know the actor's name and what role he had in the series - or even if he was only in that one episode - but he was a secondary character in plenty of stuff in the 1970's and 1980's, mostly in comic roles. I do recall that he played the shop assistant in one of the antique shops in 'Never The Twain'!!

Great memories of a great decade...RIP Ray Brooks.

Reg , my mate went to school with Jonnie H , we put a few on for him round the cheap side , Tony Morris stood up elsewhere . Happy days , I was just a recreational punter .

Dixie..yup, that's the guy.

I would have paid a bit more attention to him that sunny afternoon at Kempton had I not been engaged in trying to sneak a furtive glance down Sharon Duce's blouse - it was rather low cut, although in the actual episode it wasn't. I assume she did a quick change after I had gone and before filming began!!!