Charles Stapley, 85, actor ("Crossroads"), stepfather of Heather Mills
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/apr/03/charles-stapley-obituary
Charles Stapley obituary
Actor known for his role as Ted Hope in Crossroads
Anthony Hayward
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 April 2011 18.16 BST
An actor with a military bearing, Charles Stapley, who has died aged
85, was best known to television viewers as Ted Hope in the soap opera
Crossroads. Ted was the retiring navy captain who arrived in the
fictional village of Kings Oak in 1970, then wooed and married his
namesake, Tish Hope (Joy Andrews). Together, they ran the antiques
shop The Hope Chest, but Ted's philandering ways led him to have
numerous affairs. Stapley remained in the serial, on and off, until he
was written out in 1979, after Ted had a fling with an American
psychiatrist's daughter.
Born in Ilford, Essex, Stapley attended Ilford county high school
until his family moved to Portslade, East Sussex, and he was educated
at Brighton and Hove grammar school. His father worked for the Blue
Circle cement company, in London. During the second world war, they
were evacuated to Waunfawr, Gwynedd, and Stapley finished his
schooling in Caernarfon. He then became a technical assistant in the
Ministry of Supply's ballistics research team in Cambridge, before
serving in the RAF, flying Lancaster bombers.
On demobilisation, Stapley returned to Hove with his family and took a
business training course, then joined J Arthur Rank's General Film
Distributors division, in London. He was bored by the work but
successfully auditioned for an offstage singing role in The Heiress at
the Haymarket Theatre in 1949. He then joined a repertory company at
the Pier Pavilion, South Shields, making his debut as Charles
Condomine in Blithe Spirit.
Stapley was back in the West End with a non-speaking role in a group
of American sailors, alongside Tyrone Power, in Mr Roberts (Coliseum
Theatre, 1950), before touring with Margaret Rutherford in Miss
Hargreaves (1953).
His first screen role was as the Rev Alexander Mill in a BBC
adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play Candida (1955). Then, Stapley
suddenly found himself in demand on television, taking a different
role every week in all 26 episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood
(1955-56). Various character roles followed, in programmes such as
White Hunter (1957) and Ivanhoe (1958), but the actor then returned to
the West End stage to succeed Rex Harrison and Alec Clunes as
Professor Higgins in the London production of My Fair Lady (Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, 1961-63). Among a dozen other West End appearances
were roles in The Mousetrap (as Major Metcalfe, 1979, and the
unexpected guest, Paravicini, 1989) and No Sex, Please – We're British
(Duchess Theatre, 1987-88). He also appeared on television in The
Benny Hill Show (1978, 1985), Number 10 (as Lord Auckland, 1983) and
Cold Warrior (as Group Captain Harvey, 1984).
Three times married and divorced, Stapley is survived by a son and a
daughter by each of his first two marriages. His first wife was Nan
Winton, a Panorama reporter and BBC television's first newsreader.
Stapley's relationship in the 1970s with Beatrice Mills brought him
back into the spotlight more recently. In 1979, Beatrice had left her
husband, Mark, to move in with Stapley in London. After Mark Mills was
jailed for fraud, Beatrice's daughters Heather and Fiona joined them.
Heather, who became a model and the second wife of Paul McCartney,
later referred to Stapley as "evil" and claimed in her 1995
autobiography Out On a Limb that she ended up homeless. When asked by
the press to comment in 2006, once divorce proceedings had begun
between Mills and McCartney, Stapley described her as "a very confused
woman for whom reality and fantasy have become blurred".
• Charles Henry Stapley, actor, born 23 July 1925; died 8 January 2011
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