Geoffrey Bayldon

Geoffrey Bayldon (born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire) is a British actor. 

After playing roles in many dramas including Shakespeare, he became known for portraying the title role of the children's series Catweazle (1970-72), after turning down the opportunity to play both the First and Second Doctors in Doctor Who. Bayldon's other long-running parts include the Crowman in Worzel Gummidge (1979-81) and Magic Grandad in the BBC television series Watch (1995).

Bayldon made several film appearances in the 1960s and 1970s, including King Rat (1965), To Sir, with Love (1967), Casino Royale (1967), the Envy segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), the Marc Bolan/T. Rex film Born To Boogie and the film version (Porridge) of the television series Porridge (1979) as the Governor.

Among his more recent television appearances was the Five game show Fort Boyard (1998).

He also had a guest appearance in Doctor Who as Organon in The Creature from the Pit (1979). More recently, he has played an alternative First Doctor in two audio plays based on theDoctor Who television series by Big Finish Productions in the Doctor Who Unbound series: Auld Mortality and A Storm of Angels.

Other television roles include parts in the dramatisation of Blott on the Landscape (1985) and in two episodes of The Avengers (1961, 1967) and of Star Cops (1987). He was in the Tales of the Unexpected episode "Down Among the Sheltering Palms" (1983). He has also appeared in a number of BBC Schools programmes,[1] where he has displayed a number of otherwise unexploited talents (such as singing). In 1993 he played Simplicio in the Open University video Newton's Revolution. In 2007 he made a guest appearance in New Tricks as Leonard Casey.

In 1986 Bayldon provided the vocals on Paul Hardcastle's "The Wizard" which was also used (without the vocal) as the theme for BBC TV's Top of the Pops.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA