Peter Jones (12 June 1920 – 10 April 2000) was an English actor, playwright and broadcaster.
He was best known as the voice of The Book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for his lead role in the TV sitcom The Rag Trade, and for his elegant repartee on the BBC Radio 4 programme Just a Minute (where he excelled at the amusing one liners, but seldom scored many points due to his more relaxed approach to the game).
Jones was born in Wem, Shropshire and he was educated the Wem Grammar School and Ellesmere College. He made his first appearance as an actor in Wolverhampton at the age of 16 and then appeared in repertory theatre in East Anglia. In 1942 he acted on the West End stage in Doctor's Dilemma and in 1942 he made an uncredited film apppearance in Fanny by Gaslight.
Between 1952 and 1955 Jones starred alongside Peter Ustinov in the BBC radio comedy In All Directions. The show featured Jones and Ustinov as themselves in a car in London perpetually searching for Copthorne Avenue. The comedy derived from the characters they met along the way, often also played by themselves. The show was unusual for the time in that it was largely improvised – with the tape subsequently edited for broadcast by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, who also sometimes took part. Two of the more popular characters were Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, two rather stupid East End spivs whose sketches always ended with the phrase "Run for it Dudley" (or Morry as appropriate). One recording, from October 1952, survives in the BBC Sound Archives. Another notable radio role was as Bunter in Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey stories.
Following his seminal portrayal of 'The Book' in the original BBC radio and subsequent television and LP adaptations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he narrated (in similar style) Douglas Adams's radio series Last Chance to See. He also occasionally narrated television documentaries, such as the Equinox episode "Unravelling the Universe", first broadcast in December 1991.
On television, he had acting roles in the British comedy series The Goodies , the courtroom drama Rumpole of the Bailey, Holby City, Whoops Apocalypse and The Bill.
Jones featured in a number of films, including Private's Progress, School for Scoundrels (reprising his Dudley Grosvenor character as a used-car salesman), Chariots of Fire, Doctor at Sea with Richard Briers. and The Return of the Pink Panther.
A talented scriptwriter, he wrote and starred in the sitcom Mr Big and wrote and starred in J Kingston Platt's Showbiz Handbook.
He died of natural causes, aged 79, in 2000 at Westminster, London . His daughter, Selena Carey-Jones, is an actress and one of his two sons, Bill Dare, is a writer, and producer of BBC Radio's Dead Ringers. His wife, Jeri, died in 1999.
