He became an actor after ten years of working as a laboratory assistant with a firm making ceramic products, when his hobby took over. He was trained at the prestigious Rose Bruford College
He became famous for his role as Claudius in the 1968 British television series The Caesars. He tends to play eccentric and insane characters.
He has a noted flower fetish, displayed in his voicing of the award-winning video Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind.