Nicholas Smith made an ineffectual manager worth watching by letting his speech race ahead of his understanding. We value the eagerness and comic timing of his supporting performances, even when the jokes themselves have worn thin.
Fi1m perspective
Mr Rumbold speaks quickly enough to suggest that he knows what he is talking about, and Nicholas Smith lets the eagerness give him away. In Are You Being Served? (1972–85), his department-store manager has the authority to speak but little understanding of what needs saying. Smith makes the speed funny without making the man contemptible. We laughed at Rumbold's readiness to help, because Smith makes him so keen that his failure to grasp the problem scarcely seems to trouble him.
His television work had included Wells in Doctor Who (1964), but Rumbold was the part that fixed his public image. Smith returned to the manager in the 1977 film of Are You Being Served? and in Grace & Favour (1992–93). That persistence also narrowed the way he was seen, despite his work in farce, period drama and, later, animation. It is a familiar difficulty for a supporting actor: being dependable in one sort of part can make the other work easier to overlook.
We recommend the programme with reservations, and Smith is no reason to withdraw them. Frank Thornton, John Inman and Mollie Sugden give it much of its personality, but the worn jokes still show their age. Smith's quick delivery suits the broad farce and gives an otherwise slow-witted manager a useful comic rhythm. There is a limit to what such skill can do with familiar innuendo, and it would be unfair to mistake affection for Rumbold for an endorsement of every script.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) gives him a different sort of authority as the voice of Reverend Clement Hedges. His clerical eccentricity fits Nick Park and Steve Box's affectionate monster comedy, a film attentive to small gestures even when the plot stretches to fill a feature. We recommend it for its humour and precision, though not principally on Smith's account. For Smith himself, start with a half-hour on the shop floor.
Biography
Nicholas Smith (also credited as Nicholas John Smith) was an English actor. Born in Banstead, Surrey, he trained at RADA after national service and began his career in theatre and television in the 1960s.
He is best known for playing the bumbling manager Mr Cuthbert Rumbold in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? (1972–1985) and its spin-off Grace & Favour (1992–1993). Other credits include roles in Doctor Who (1964), The Avengers (1960s), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Fellini's Casanova (1976). In 2005 he voiced Reverend Clement Hedges in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, earning an Annie Award nomination for voice acting.
Smith was the last surviving member of the original Are You Being Served? cast. His daughter, Catherine Russell, is also an actress. He died in 2015.
