Brian Trueman, who has died aged 92, was an actor and television presenter before making his greatest contribution to the screen as a core member of the innovative Cosgrove Hall animation studio’s team. He wrote many of its most popular children’s TV programmes, from Danger Mouse and The Wind in the Willows to Chorlton and the Wheelies, Jamie and the Magic Torch and Cockleshell Bay, also providing the voices for some of the beloved characters.
Danger Mouse (1981-92), the cartoon series created by the studio’s founders, Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, featured a British secret service agent based on Patrick McGoohan in the 1960s series Danger Man. They conceived him as a mouse foiling the plans of an evil toad, Baron Silas Greenback, but switched from the serious tone of the pilot episode to parody after Mike Harding, who wrote the music, suggested they could make Danger Mouse “as barmy as we wanted”.
