16 Facts About Richard Murdoch

Richard Bernard Murdoch was an English actor and entertainer.

Richard Murdoch made his first radio broadcast for the BBC in 1932 and in 1937 and 1938 he featured in early television broadcasts.

Richard Murdoch came to national fame when cast with the comedian Arthur Askey in the radio show Band Waggon in 1938.

Richard Murdoch appeared on air and on stage in Australia, Canada and South Africa, and continued acting and broadcasting into his eighties.

Richard Murdoch was born on 6 April 1907 at his family's home in Keston, Kent, the only son of Bernard Richard Murdoch, a tea merchant, and his wife, Amy Florence, daughter of the Ven Avison Scott, archdeacon of Tonbridge.

Richard Murdoch was educated at Charterhouse School in Surrey, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree.

Richard Murdoch made his professional stage debut in March 1927 at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, in the chorus of The Blue Train, a musical comedy starring Lily Elsie and directed by Jack Hulbert.

The BBC transmitted a live radio relay of Stand up and Sing in April 1932, and Richard Murdoch was in another such relay in 1934 in an entertainment called Bubbles.

The smooth West End style of Richard Murdoch contrasted with the down-to-earth humour of Askey, whose background was in seaside concert parties.

Richard Murdoch was conscripted into the Royal Air Force in 1941, serving as a pilot officer in the intelligence section of Bomber Command, before being posted to the Department of Allied Air Force and Foreign Liaison as a flight lieutenant.

Richard Murdoch finished the war with the rank of Squadron Leader.

Horne and Richard Murdoch quickly became friends and as both were regular broadcasters they invented a fictitious RAF station Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh for a programme of the same name.

Richard Murdoch worked again with Askey in 1958 in the television series Living It Up, running a pirate TV station from the roof of Television House.

Richard Murdoch's character, Richard Lamb, was a well-meaning but not conspicuously bright civil servant, who, together with his equally disaster-prone superior, Roland Hamilton-Jones and later Deryck Lennox-Brown, continually found the wrong answers to the pressing problems of government.

From 1978 to 1990, Richard Murdoch had a long-running regular role as "Uncle Tom", the briefless senior barrister of chambers, in Rumpole of the Bailey.

In 1932, Richard Murdoch married Peggy, the daughter of solicitor William Rawlings.