The actor Christian Rodska, who has died of cancer aged 78, landed his breakthrough role in a fondly remembered children’s television series of the 1970s, Follyfoot, inspired by Monica Dickens’s 1963 novel Cobbler’s Dream. Set on a farm providing sanctuary for veteran and rescue horses, it starred Steve Hodson as his namesake Steve and Gillian Blake as Dora, with Rodska playing Ron Stryker, the carefree, rebellious fellow worker often seen sitting astride his handsome Triumph Tiger motorcycle – the bad apple who shatters the calm of the countryside in more ways than one.
Shortly before being cast in the role, the actor had bought the bike for £5 off a scrapheap and lovingly restored it – he was particularly proud of its gold horn, which he found in an antiques shop – and it was written into the script.
Rodska told Jane Royston and Ray Knight, authors of Follyfoot Remembered (2011), that Ron was “quite a nasty individual” in Dickens’s book, but the author personally praised him with the words: “Stryker was never half as lovable a rogue as you make him.”
Follyfoot ran for three series from 1971 to 1973, with its adventures attracting audiences of up to 14 million and winning the 1972 Harlequin award for best children’s programme from the Society of Film and Television Arts (now Bafta). It was filmed in the West Riding of Yorkshire around the Harewood estate between Harrogate and Leeds.
In looking for a title, the producer, Tony Essex, grabbed a map of the area, asked his 11-year-old daughter, Tamara, to point randomly to a place, and she picked the village of Follifoot. Essex’s brother, Francis (under the pseudonym Stephen Francis), wrote the memorable theme song, The Lightning Tree. Performed by the Settlers, it became a Top 40 hit and was about a tree that had been hit by lightning and replanted in the Follyfoot farmyard to give colour to what had been a featureless expanse of cobbles.
In 2011, Hodson and Blake took part in a 40th-anniversary visit to the Yorkshire locations by nostalgia-seeking fans, but illness ruled Rodska out.
His post-Follyfoot television career as a character actor was prolific and wide-ranging, and punctuated by roles as politicians – Max Aitken, the first Lord Beaverbrook, also owner of the Daily Express, in Number 10 (1983); the Labour leader Neil Kinnock in Thatcher: The Final Days (1991); and Winston Churchill in the French drama The Days That Made History (2010) and two 2015 documentaries, Churchill: When Britain Said No, and Churchill: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. He also played President Harry Truman in the film The Monuments Men (2014), directed by George Clooney.
The Daily Mail wrote of his second Churchill portrayal: “It was almost like watching real footage of the old warrior himself.”
Rodska was born Christian Rodskjaer in Cullercoats, Northumberland, to Florence (nee White), known as Sheila, and Herluf Rodskjaer, who came from a family of Danish sea captains. Shortly after his birth, they moved to Basra, Iraq, where his father was harbour master and captained King Faisal II’s royal yacht. After the 1958 military coup, they returned to Britain and settled in Southampton. On leaving school, Christian became an assistant stage manager at Salisbury Playhouse, where he made his acting debut. He later changed his name to Rodska.
After Follyfoot he had a regular part as the mine owner’s gentle, vulnerable son Arthur Barras in The Stars Look Down (1975), Alan Plater’s adaptation of AJ Cronin’s novel set among an early-20th-century pit community in the north-east of England. Then, he co-starred as the hunter and freed Roman slave Esca in the Sunday-teatime serial The Eagle of the Ninth (1977), from Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel.
He popped up in endless dramas, but switched to sitcom to play Tom, one of a family of itinerant crooks, in The Nesbitts Are Coming (1980); and soap as Harry Newton, a new-build developer’s persistent sales agent trying to persuade Brian and Gail Tilsley to buy a house, in two 1980 episodes of Coronation Street.
While shooting Sharpe’s Mission (1996) with Sean Bean in Crimea, he established a rapport with Russian Cossack stunt artists and, afterwards, was invited to stay with them in St Petersburg, drinking vodka and learning to trick-ride horses.
He returned to the north-east of England to film the first series of 55 Degrees North (2004), playing Detective Inspector Dennis Carter, of a fictional Tyneside police force, restricting the activities of a whistleblowing subordinate – and ending up shot dead himself. He also played Arthur “Bomber” Harris in the 2006 German television film Dresden and Captain Smith in the 2011 documentary What Sank Titanic?
In more than 1,000 BBC radio broadcasts over the years, Rodska appeared in dramas and comedies by writers ranging from Peter Tinniswood, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse to JB Priestley and Jean-Paul Sartre, and was constantly in demand as a reader of books. He also had runs in the radio soaps Waggoners’ Walk, as Bill Ashton (1979-80), a business executive, and The Archers, as Russell Baxter (2009), a solicitor failing to save Matt Crawford from prison for committing fraud.
His expressive voice was heard as a narrator of Tinniswood’s radio comedy series following the adventures of Uncle Mort (1987-96) and Winston (1989-94), and many audio books, including Churchill’s epic tome The Second World War.
Rodska’s 1969 marriage to Jacqueline Mousny ended in divorce. He is survived by their children, Ben and Camille; his second wife, the actor Barbara Kellermann, whom he married in 2017 after 19 years together; his stepson, Freddie; and two grandchildren, Louis and Xavier.
• Christian Rodska (Rodskjaer), actor, born 5 September 1945; died 21 March 2024
