Bill Wallis dies at home in Bath

An actor with one of the most distinctive voices in the business has died at his home in Bath at the age of 76. Bill Wallis was in the long-running Radio 4 topical satire show Week Ending in the 70s and 80s but was also a familiar face on TV and stage.

This series is odd for several reasons. Not only is this a show featuring monologues from various animals living in a seaside rock pool, but it's actually a remake of a show, using most of the same performers.

Created back in 1997 by Lynne Truss (her of the totalitarian approach to grammar fame), the original series consisted of six 15-minute monologues with no audience laughter. This version, recorded in front of a live audience at Radio 4's More Than Words festival, consists of three 30-minute shows, two stories per edition, with Truss introducing the stories.

The first of these tales featured Bill Wallis as a periwinkle who is fond of telling old gags, almost akin to an end-of-the-pier comic, who rants about how the English enjoy eating him. The second stars Geoffrey Palmer as moaning hermit crab who doesn't get along with the amoeba that lives and protects him.

I wasn't expecting much from this, but I rather enjoyed it in the end. The hermit crab story was my personal favourite out of the two, especially when he was panicking about being fished out of the pool by children with nets, causing him to exclaim that he actually likes the amoeba in a sudden outburst...

Overall, a likeable series and rather diverting. Fun in an unusual way.

Lynne Truss, whose phenomenal bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves was born from the response to a programme on punctuation she did for Radio 4, puts on her fiction writing hat for three imaginary dialogues, all recorded at the recent More Than Words festival in Bristol. To start, here's The Periwinkle and the Hermit Crab, respectively played by Bill Wallis and Geoffrey Palmer. The Periwinkle is cheerful, mischievous, jaunty. The Hermit Crab is a bit of a misery, although for pretty good reasons. Turns out they share a common enemy.