Gareth Hunt

Alan Leonard Hunt (7 February 1943 – 14 March 2007) was a British actor, known as Gareth Hunt, best remembered for playing the footman Frederick Norton in Upstairs, Downstairs and Mike Gambit in The New Avengers.

Alan Leonard Hunt was born in Battersea, London in 1943; he was the nephew of actress Martita Hunt. His father was killed in the Second World War when Hunt was two years old, and he was brought up by his mother Doris and stepfather. At the age of 15, he joined the Merchant Navy. After six years, he jumped ship in New Zealand and worked in a car plant for a year before he was caught and served three months in a military prison. Hunt was then deported back to Britain and while taking a BBC design course he held a variety of jobs, including stagehand, road digger, butcher's assistant and door-to-door salesman. Having had an interest in acting since his early years, he subsequently trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. Following that, Hunt did rep across the United Kingdom and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre in the early 1970s. Among the many stage productions he appeared in were Twelfth Night, Oh! What a Lovely War and West Side Story.

Hunt started his television career in 1968, playing a private Kitson in one episode of series Frontier. In 1972, Hunt played a policeman in For the Love of Ada, the same year he appeared in A Family at War and The Organisation. In 1974, Gareth had roles in the Doctor Who story Planet of the Spiders and Bless This House. In 1975 he played Thomas Woolner in The Love School.

In 1974, Gareth Hunt appeared in the Upstairs, Downstairs episode "Missing Believed Killed" as Trooper Norton, batman to James Bellamy. The character was a minor one; however, his performance led producers John Hawkesworth and Alfred Shaughnessy to ask him to come back as a regular for the fifth series in 1975.

Hunt continued playing Frederick Norton, who had by now become the footman, until the eleventh episode of the fifth series, "Alberto". In 1975, Hunt made appearances in The Hanged Man, Softly, Softly and Space: 1999.

In 1976, the year after leaving Upstairs Downstairs, Hunt starred alongside Joanna Lumley and Patrick Macnee in The New Avengers. The show's producers said he was cast because of his part in Upstairs, Downstairs. Hunt played secret agent Mike Gambit and starred in the show until its end after two series in 1977. In 1979 he appeared in the films Licensed to Love and Kill, in which he portrayed secret agent Charles Bind, and The World Is Full of Married Men. After that in the late 1970s and 1980s, Hunt made appearances in Sunday Night Thriller, Minder and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense. Hunt appeared alongside Julia McKenzie in That Beryl Marston...! in 1981. He also appeared in the films Funny Money (1983) and Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984), and in 1988 he played many parts in the Pet Shop Boys' film It Couldn't Happen Here.

Hunt starred in a series of television adverts for the coffee brand Nescafé in the 1980s, with a trademark move: to shake his closed hand then open it, to reveal coffee beans, and smell the aroma. In more recent years his name has been used in cockney rhyming slang for an expletive.

Gareth Hunt continued to have minor roles in many television programmes in the 1990s and 2000s, with appearances in The New Adventures of Robin Hood, the TV movie The Incredible Adventures of Marco Polo, Harry and the Wrinklies, Absolute Power (as himself), New Tricks, Sooty & Co., Powers and Doctors. From 1992 to 1993 Hunt had a leading role in the sitcom Side by Side, and had a main role in the short-lived soap opera Night and Day in 2001. He appeared in the films Fierce Creatures (1997), Parting Shots (1999) and The Riddle (2007), and in 2001 played Ritchie Stringer, a crime boss who was an unlikely suspect in the shooting of Phil Mitchell, in EastEnders. For a brief time he abandoned acting and started a project called Interactive Casting Universal, a computer system that presented actors' details and showreels.

Hunt suffered a heart attack in December 1999 and withdrew from a pantomime in Malvern. In July 2002 he collapsed while performing on stage in Bournemouth.

He died of pancreatic cancer, from which he had suffered for two years, on 14 March 2007 at the age of 64, at his home in Redhill, Surrey. He was married three times and had a son by each marriage. Hunt's remains were cremated and scattered in Battersea.

A picture of Gareth Hunt from a Nescafe advert has become a much loved meme on Twitter.