British actor and writer Arnold Yarrow, 104, died on Dec. 9. Yarrow was a busy stage actor—mostly playing Shakespeare—and wrote the plays Brogan’s Luck and Stitch. He wrote numerous episodes of Softly Softly (a police spinoff of Z Cars) and its own spinoff, Barlow at Large. He also wrote numerous books, many tied-in with his TV shows: Softly Softly Casebook, Softly Softly Murder Casebook, Death is a Z, and The Grease–Paint Monkey. As an actor, Yarrow played character parts in such shows as Dial 999, Armchair Theatre, Coronation Street, The Man in the Mirror, Dr. Who, and EastEnders. Of his Dr. Who experience as the tree-gremlin-like Bellal, he told Toby Hadoke, “I was shown sketches of what he would look like. I visited a zoo and saw some marmosets and bush babies and this inspired me – looking at the way they conveyed their feelings. I was stuck in there [the costume] for three hours at a time. I was filled with horror the first time I put it on. There were two tiny pinholes for eyes to look out of and nostrils to breathe through. It was a brief episode in a jobbing actor’s career… until the fan mail started coming in!”
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