Ray Brooks ( aka Robbie box )

See he was in an old Daleks film the other day with Peter Cushing & Bernerd Cribbins.
Good series Big Deal.

I watched ca few episodes recently on youtube, RIP.

never missed Big Deal, RIP Robbie.

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

mr benn

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

ta for the game rob, brilliant series R.I.P.

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

All the episodes of this excellent series are available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@Forgotten-British-TV

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

should have asked mr benn to pick his horses out

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

And the bloke who played him later played Pat Butchers fella

Not talking about Mike Reid who also appeared in Big Deal

Have  the book too , wonderful series , was compulsive viewing as was Sharon Duce !

Roy?

Yes!

The show it replaced I have never seen sight or sound since Give Us A Break, Robert Lindsay and Paul McGann

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

Thats a shame - loved that series......its on youtube....

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

As an aside, he was a spanish waiter in the superb, Carry on Abroad, having his way with Joan Whitfield aka Mrs "Blunt".

and i didnt have to google that...

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

Agreed Reg , we owned a shop in Erith in those days , had  dogs at Catford and my mate's parents ran a pub in Lee Green , he was fantastic .

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

Yep the old Albert Stammers shop in Slade Green , changed to Sevenoaks Racing .

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

loved robbie box RIP

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

I could be wrong,but wasn’t it Bobbie box,given it rhythms,

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

Only saw a few episodes of Big Deal, very entertaining. I remember Ray playing a character in the somewhat underrated House Of Whipcord which starred the lovely Penny Irving. Was quite a controversial film in its day , now Talking Pictures show it !

Cardinal S - you mentioned the series Give Us A Break with Robert Lindsay - all 8 episodes are easily accessible on You Tube if you wish to view them.

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


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

can't believe I'd never realised he did Mr.Benn...now in fairness I was largely 4 or 5 but I have heard it subsequently and never clocked it..

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.

Knighty - I think the actor you are referring to is Derek Deadman.   He appeared as you say in many a tv series and lots of films too.

Had what you might call a "lived in" face.

He seems to have been in just the one episode of Big Deal and it was indeed 1985, he played a character called Mark.

He was a regular in Never the Twain playing Ringo.

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 .

Paulo, Tony Morris and John Humphries were the 2 big layers at both Catford and Crayford dogs... They would stand a bet 50 years ago that some shops would be ringing HQ for permission to lay today!
So many characters in the shops back then, I'm sure Robbie Box was more than loosely based on 1 or more of them

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!!!

https://youtu.be/UZUuO8-CuVY?si=YnNmru3OOtQc36wS


I gotta horse, episode.

According to the Times obs
His sucess was due to smoking Old Holburn baccy and
drinking LOTS of
BEER!!!

Good on him

rip ray brooks - probably like many on here of a certain age big deal was a must watch for me - loved it then and still watch it now either on video or YouTube

Ray Brooks obituary: actor who starred in Cathy Come Home
Actor in Ken Loach’s tragedy who also provided the voice to the cartoon Mr Benn but was unable to capitalise on the success, dies aged 86
new
The Times
Sunday August 10 2025, 5.52pm BST, The Times
Black and white photo of Ken Loach, Carol White, and Ray Brooks with two children from the film *Cathy Come Home*.
Brooks with Carol White and her children in Cathy Come Home. Brooks had met White’s children before, helping him to get the part
ALAMY
Ray Brooks was a jobbing actor living with his wife in a £4-a-week flat when he was given the part of a lifetime. It was 1966 and on a recent trip to Manchester he had befriended a man called Mike King whose wife, Carol White, had just landed the lead role in Ken Loach’s new television drama Cathy Come Home. The Brookses were invited over for dinner, where Ray took a shine to their two children, Sean and Stevie, who were to star as Cathy’s children in the show. Carol suggested Brooks play her husband. “Her children had got to know me,” Brooks said, “and she thought they would feel more relaxed in my company.”
Written by Jeremy Sandford and directed by Loach, Cathy Come Home, the story of a young couple’s descent into homelessness and poverty, was watched by 12 million people and pricked the national conscience. Reg, a truck driver, and his wife Cathy cut forlorn figures as he loses his job, they lose their home and by the end their children are taken away.
There was very little dialogue and it was a mastery in improvisation — “like playing jazz”, said Brooks. When Cathy and Reg were looking for a place to stay the actors would turn up in Camden Town and answer real flat-to-let adverts. Brooks would ring the bell and say they were looking for a room. “The woman would take one look at Carol’s bump — which was a pillow up her coat — and say: ‘Oh, no, we can’t have children.’ Then we’d go back and say we were making a film and could we use the footage if we gave them a tenner.”
Black and white photo of Carol White and Ray Brooks from the film *Cathy Come Home*.
The film was watched by 12 million people on its broadcast in 1966 and tackled subjects previously ignored
COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL/BBC/ALAMY
For Brooks, a 27-year-old actor hitherto best known for The Knack, Cathy Come Home proved a blessing and a curse. It brought him sudden fame but his career failed to kick on. “Like many other actors,” he said, “I’d had my head above the parapet a few times and it would never stay up there for too long.” Years later, despite good work on television and the stage, Cathy Come Home would still be the most important entry on his CV and the part which more than any other defined him.
He said later that he had been naive. “I thought casting directors would come to me. But although people did offer me work, very often the films did not materialise because they couldn’t get the money together. And actually, I don’t think I was ever that good an actor. I was more of an image as a young man.” And with contemporaries including David Hemmings and Terence Stamp, he admitted there was a lot of competition.
Raymond Michael Brooks was born in Brighton in 1939, the illegitimate son of a bus conductress who had fallen pregnant after a fling with a young soldier called John Brooks — a fact Ray found out only aged 20, though a paternity test proved inconclusive. His mother took him to variety theatres across Brighton’s seafront, and, thinking he had a better chance of getting on in life if he spoke well, sent him for elocution lessons. “She wanted better for me,” he said.
Brooks took acting classes, got into amateur dramatics and gave up his office job with the local bus company, writing to countless repertory companies and eventually securing a part in Treasure Island at Nottingham. In 1960 he moved into television with a small part in a BBC drama, The Secret Kingdom, and early films included HMS Defiant, Play It Cool with the pop singer Billy Fury and Some People, in which he had second billing, after Kenneth More, as a troubled teenage factory worker who is shown how to mend his ways.
Black and white photo of Michael Crawford, Ray Brooks, and Donald Donnelly in The Knack...And How To Get It (1965).
Brooks, centre, with Michael Crawford and Donald Donnelly in The Knack, which won a Palme d’Or for its portrayal of swinging Sixties London
UNITED ARTISTS/ALAMY
The Knack ...and How to Get It Official Trailer #1 - Donal Donnelly Movie (1965) HD

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There was a short stint in Coronation Street (1964) and then his first notable film, The Knack, a slice of swinging Sixties London directed by Richard Lester, who had just made A Hard Day’s Night with the Beatles. Brooks played the enigmatic Tolen, a womaniser with a taste for sharp suits and Thelonius Monk records who is asked by Michael Crawford’s schoolteacher to pass on the “knack” of picking up “birds”. Made on a modest budget, the film recovered its cost many times over and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
In 1966, the year of Cathy Come Home, Brooks had a good role in Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD, a cinema spin-off from Doctor Who. Cathy had the greater impact, but not for Brooks. He was seldom out of work in the years that followed but instead of getting lead roles he had to make do with guest spots on series such as The Avengers, Softly Softly, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Z Cars and Doomwatch.
He told children’s stories on Jackanory, narrated the children’s animated series Mr Benn, played Yasha in The Cherry Orchard in a BBC Play of the Month production and also Giorgio, the waiter in a decrepit hotel, in Carry On Abroad in 1972. But the 1970s were a difficult time and he was forced to look for other outlets. He wrote songs and produced an album, but there were few takers and with a young family to support he was relieved to be offered voice-over work on television commercials. Among many others, he was the voice of Flora margarine and a London car dealer with a tag line: “Nice people to do business with”. But for the voice-overs, he said, he might have given up acting.
He returned, with some success, to the theatre. In 1974 he was in Charles Lawrence’s play, Snap, at the Vaudeville Theatre with Maggie Smith, directed by Bill Gaskill, followed by the London premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends, with Richard Briers and Peter Bowles, which had a long run at the Garrick. In 1979 he was in CP Taylor’s And a Nightingale Sang (Queen’s) with Patricia Routledge and Gemma Jones. In 1981 he joined the National Theatre for On the Razzle, Tom Stoppard’s farce based on a play by Johann Nestroy, supporting Felicity Kendal, Dinsdale Landen and Michael Kitchen.
Ray Brooks with his sons Will and Tom playing cards at home.
Brooks in 1987 with his sons Will and Tom
ALAMY
Ray Brooks and Jon Wise with Albert Square sign.
Brooks’s stint on EastEnders was full of dramatic twists and turns in its 18 months
ALAMY
The 1980s were better. He played a doctor in the PD James whodunit Death of an Expert Witness, and in 1984 got his best opportunity since Cathy as Robby Box, the loveable, luckless, cockney card player in the comedy-drama Big Deal, which ran for 30 episodes and made his character into a working-class hero. Soon after it finished he starred in the ITV sitcom Running Wild as a 45-year-old trying unsuccessfully to return to his Teddy Boy youth. He was reunited with Sharon Duce, his co-star on Big Deal, in the BBC comedy Growing Pains, about the travails of middle-aged foster parents.
In 2005, white-haired and balding where once he sported a prominent dark quiff, he joined EastEnders as Joe Macer, who marries the long-suffering Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard). But in his final appearance in January 2007 Joe confesses to killing Pauline on Christmas Day before falling from a window to his death. Brooks later voiced his disenchantment with the show, criticising its “shabby sets and poor scripts” and lack of rehearsal time and admitting that his relationship with Richard had broken down.
When Brooks married his wife, Sadie (née Elcombe), in 1961, he was appearing in a television drama and the suit and shoes he wore for the registry office ceremony belonged to the BBC. His daughter, Emma, a social worker, died of cancer in 2003. His sons, Will and Tom, survive him.
Brooks was shy of the limelight and on occasion lacked confidence. He recalled in the first few pages of his autobiography that the actress Miriam Margolyes had once told him: “The trouble with you, Ray, is that you don’t like yourself and you’re ill-educated.” He loved Fulham FC — in the 1980s he was among the celebrity fans to fight against the club’s proposed merger with QPR, wearing a “Save Fulham” badge during an interview on Wogan — and he wrote two novels.
Your History: Dame Stella Rimington - first female head of MI5
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Though he was most proud of his work on Cathy Come Home he would perhaps be best known for Mr Benn, a 13-episode cartoon about a bowler-hat wearing gentleman who finds himself in a new adventure every episode by dressing up in a magical costume shop. People continually asked him to say the catchphrase, “As if by magic!” He reckoned his voice resonated with the public because it sounded so comforting and sincere. His secret, he said, was smoking Old Holborn tobacco and drinking “lots of beer”.
Ray Brooks, actor, was born on April 20, 1939. He died of the effects of dementia on August 9, 2025, aged 86

I was 11 going on 12 when we all watched C.C.H. and the impact it had on me was, I have realised over the years, enormous.  And the reality of a lot of it has now been explained after all these years.  The street scenes were so raw and real.
Have we progressed any do you think.?
R.I.P. Ray Brooks and deepest commiserations and admiration to his family who have had to deal with the desperation and misery of this dreadful illness.

one of my favourite episodes is when some posh girl wanted Robbie to play at some posh gentleman’s club - the opponents were a bunch of ****s but Robbie dismantled and humiliated them

jan also thought Robbie was going to propose and then thought she was getting dumped for the posh girl

And Robbie gave his winnings to dick Meyer to pay of a debt that was going to get him a serious kicking from the mob

just the usual chaos wrapped-up into one episode

Now, this is absolutely true!

In the ensuing 40 years since Big Deal filmed I Gotta Horse at Kempton I have watched that episode two or three times - always just to fill in time. This evening, a couple of hours ago, I watched it again after my wife passed comment that she had not heard that Ray Brooks had died.

Anyway, just before the Kempton race Booby Box is dashing around (to be fair, Box did a great deal of rushing around in nearly all of Big Deal and could be quite irritating as he did so!) and runs down to the bit of grass either at the front of the members' stand or the grandstand. The scene then cuts away to Sharon Duce and the betting shop regulars standing on the rails at the side of the racetrack and then back to Box in the betting ring.

Much to my amazement, coming into the latter shot to the rear of Box, and for around three seconds at most, is ME!!!

I  nearly fell off the sofa. I am on the right side of the screen and am the young, good looking lad, with a moustache. I was almost 24 at the time but my wife thinks I looked no more than 30 (we got together the following year).

I knew they were filming scenes during the racing, but they waited until after racing for the paddock and race itself. I had no idea I was in a shot.

In all the years I have been racing, from Hackney Wick Dogs through to Royal Ascot, I have often seen filming taking place and idly wondered if I had ever been picked up in shot. Well, that question was answered tonight because I was!

Tell you what, though. In my three seconds of fame I look more like a pro punter than Ray Brooks ever did!!! They should have dumped Brooks and had me take over...LOL!!!

the knight

lucky escape especially if you backed the favourite as there were bad guys running about with shooters at that meeting

We’re not worthy!  Brilliant.

I should have asked, sorry.   Do you think fame will change you? 

The knight, your post encouraged me to watch that episode on YouTube with the football on in the background... Thanks for that, gonna watch some more old episodes now...
I was looking for a Peter Wyngarde type character, as you sort of described yourself, in the racetrack scenes, but unfortunately couldn't see you
Anyway, thanks again for giving me some future evenings viewing of old Big Deal shows

Loyal..LOL, I may ask Betfair to have my forum logon surrounded in stars but as for coming over all pretentious? pretentious..MOI!!!

Reg...well that's my moment of fame spoiled!! Seriously, my moustache was never in the Wyngrade league. Much more subtle...and I am only in it for 3 seconds max. I certainly spent very much longer trying so hard to peer down Sharon Duce's blouse, as per my post before last!

Mind you, had I known I was to co-star with her in that episode I would have given her the chat!!!

BTW - my error in the earlier post, I was almost 25 at the time, not 24. And, now, next Monday I will be 65!! **** me!!!!