Martin Jarvis

Martin Jarvis, OBE is an English actor.

He has had three main roles in Doctor Who. He played Hilo, one of the Menoptera in the 1965 story The Web Planet, Butler in the 1974 story  Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and The Governor in the 1985 story Vengeance on Varos.

Jarvis was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the son of Denys Harry Jarvis and Margot Lillian Scottney, and grew up in South Norwood and Sanderstead, South Croydon. 

He was educated at Whitgift School, an independent school in Croydon in south London before training at RADA, where he won the Vanbrugh Award and the Silver Medal. He has acted in many stage productions in London and abroad, most recently starring alongside Diana Rigg and Natascha McElhone in Joanna Murray-Smith's Honour at London'sWyndham's Theatre until May 2006.

He read Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities for the Chivers Audio Books production on cassette, later released on CD by Barnes and Noble Audio Classics.

Jarvis has had a long association with the BBC, particularly BBC Radio 4. In the 1980sMichael Frayn's columns for the Guardian and the Observer, described by some as models of the comic essay, were adapted and performed in many voices for BBC Radio 4 by Jarvis. He performs regularly in radio dramas and readings, both comic and serious. In David Mamet's Mind Your Pantheon he played the actor Strabo. He is probably best known for his long series of readings of Richmal Crompton's Just William stories, which show his characteristic and flexible reading voices. He has also narrated the Billy Bunterseries, by Frank Richards. As a result of this extensive work Jarvis is satirised by the radio show Dead Ringers by Mark Perry, highlighting his seeming ubiquity on Radio 4 programmes and as a guest in Dictionary Corner on Countdown.

In America, Jarvis and his wife Rosalind Ayres perform frequently in audio drama with the L.A. Theater Works and Hollywood Theater of the Ear.

In 2011 he appeared in a Radio 4 production of Rattigan's In Praise of Love

Jarvis became a familiar face on television when he played Jon in the BBC's landmark 1967 adaptation ofThe Forsyte Saga, the lead in a BBC serialisation of Nicholas Nickleby (1968), Uriah Heep in the 1974 BBC version of David Copperfield and the male lead in the sitcom Rings On Their Fingers (1978-80) with Diane Keen. In 1993 he starred with Ewan McGregor andRachel Weisz in the BBC adaptation of Scarlet and Black. He also appeared in the 2002 BBC children's miniseries Bootleg.

His appearances on American television include such series as Murder, She Wrote,Walker, Texas Ranger, and, more recently, Stargate Atlantis and Numb3rs.

Jarvis has also voiced various characters in animated series such as Billy and Mandy(where he voiced Nergal, replacing David Warner) and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. An interesting note is that in the former's case, he inherits the role of the character Nergal from his Titanic co-star David Warner. In 2000 he voiced "John Dread" in the TV seriesMax Steel. He has also voiced all the characters in the children's stop-motion animated series Huxley Pig and narrated an episode of Shakespeare: The Animated Tales.

Jarvis was the subject of BBC television's This Is Your Life in 1999.