As the voice of Parker, Lady Penelope’s butler and chauffeur in the TV series Thunderbirds, the actor David Graham, who has died aged 99, became a cult figure in television animation. “Yus, m’lady”, spoken in nasal cockney, was the catchphrase of Parker, a reformed safe-cracker employed at Creighton-Ward mansion to drive Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls-Royce with the number plate FAB 1.
Gerry Anderson, who created the Thunderbirds with his wife Sylvia, provided the inspiration for the puppet’s heavy cockney voice when he took Graham to lunch at a pub in Cookham, Berkshire, where they encountered a waiter called Arthur. Graham recalled: “A lovely grey-haired old gentleman came over and said, ‘Would you like to see the wine list, sir?’ I looked at Gerry and Gerry looked at me. We kept him talking and it turned out that he had ‘worked for ’is majesty at Windsor Castle’. It interested me the way he kept dropping his aitches and putting them somewhere else.”
