Bill Treacher(1930-2022)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Bill was a proper London Cockney, born with the sound of London's
Bow Bells, but brought up in Hackney and Bethnal Green. He was one of
a family of six boys and two girls. He left school at fourteen, starting work as a tailboard
monkey -- hanging on to the back of railway lorries, carrying parcels to stations. He
did his national service in the RAF, after which he decided to be an actor. With
money being scarce, he enlisted for four years as a state room steward on a P &O liner
in order to pay his way through drama school. From there, he went into rep,
Summer School, radio and commercials. He was Sidney the milkman in Mrs Dale's
Diary on the radio, a greengrocer with a ring of confidence in a toothpaste commercial.
He married Kate, an Australian actress, three years after they met, when he was 35 and she
was 21. They had a son Jamie, born in 1974, and a daughter Sophie, born in 1978.
They made their home in a 19th century Suffolk gamekeepers cottage. Bill went on to
become known as Arthur Fowler in the BBC's Eastenders.
