TV actor Ray Brooks, who starred in some of the UK's best-known programmes in a career spanning five decades, has died aged 86. Brooks narrated the classic 1970s children's show Mr Benn and played the male lead in the ground-breaking 1960s BBC drama Cathy Come Home.

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.

Ray Brooks - a prolific British actor who appeared in both film and TV across a five-decade-spanning career, and best known for narrating BBC’s beloved animated series Mr Benn and starring in the six-time BAFTA-nominated sex comedy The