Graham Skidmore, known to viewers as Blind Date’s “Our Graham”, has been remembered as a “fantastic father and husband” by his son, Neil, following his death aged 90. He became known as “Our Graham” thanks to the show’s host Cilla Black who gave him the nickname while he established himself as the voice of the show for 17 years between 1985 and 2002.
He died in December 2021 on Boxing Day, Neil told the PA News Agency, with the news only reported on now after it was mentioned in the In Memoriam section in the Spring/Summer 2022 journal from actors’ union Equity. Neil, 54, a former ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet company who is now a party organiser, told the PA news agency: “He was a fantastic father and husband to us and the family. He had an amazing celebrity voice.”
He confirmed his father had suffered from vascular dementia in his later years. Graham was also the voice of BBC Two’s comedy panel show Shooting Stars, hosted by comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
Neil said of his father: “(It) was getting towards the end of his career that he had Blind Date, so he was loving it. He’d been doing (voice work) his whole career as, I think he started off with modelling, theatre, he did some musical work, and then he did tonnes of… a working kind of background artist and all this kind of stuff.
“And then he did various adverts on TV, so he was a real jobbing, kind of actor-voice artist and Blind Date was his big thing. It was fantastic to get that and he loved it and did it for years. And then, from that, he got Shooting Stars as well, which was good fun.”
His daughter Catherine Johnson, 52, said: "He was a marvellous man. He looked after people and made sure other people were taken care of.
"He was very modest. He was not a theatrical 'look at me person.' He never really wanted his face to be seen, that's why he liked doing the voiceovers."
