On visits to schools and children’s centres he always had time for children and staff. Hardiman was also a favourite on the pantomime circuit, memorably as Squire Skinflint in Mother Goose and a truly malicious Abanazer in Aladdin – and he delighted audiences round the country in Classic Ghosts, comprising two stage adaptations of famous ghost stories, MR James’s Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad and Dickens’s The Signalman.īut the actor in person was as far removed from his screen persona as it was possible to be.
Hardiman often found himself cast as villains, his roles including German soldiers in Second World War television drama series such as Colditz (as a Gestapo officer) and Wish Me Luck (as a German general), though there were notable exceptions.Īs Luftwaffe Major Hans Dietrich Reinhardt in the third series (1979) of the BBC’s acclaimed Secret Army, he was a “good German”, a melancholy war hero and recipient of the Iron Cross, who sees that Germany is losing the war but is nevertheless determined to penetrate the Brussels-based resistance group Lifeline – only to end up betrayed by his Gestapo nemesis Standartenführer Ludwig Kessler (Clifford Rose) and shot by a firing squad. He brainwashes them into saying like automatons: “The headmaster is a marvellous man,” but his ultimate aim is revealed to be even more sinister – to genetically alter the human race, wipe out all children and take over the world. With lines like “It’s a pity there should be children at all childhood is such a useless waste of time,” Hardiman sneers splendidly as the power-crazed Headmaster (as he is known), who controls children by lifting his dark glasses and staring at them with his mesmerising greenish eyes.
An extraordinary 60 per cent of children aged four to 14 watched the first series, and pre-broadcast trials were so successful that a second series was commissioned months before the first was screened. Terrence Hardiman, the actor, who has died aged 86, spent much of his career playing authority figures and was probably best known as the Demon Headmaster, terrifying children witless in the eponymous CBBC production, which ran for three series from 1996 to 1998.Īdapted by Helen Cresswell from Gillian Cross’s series of stories, The Demon Headmaster was an immediate hit.
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