Archers and EastEnders actor Ian Pepperell dies at 53
Ian Pepperell, best known for playing Roy Tucker in The Archers, has died aged 53, the BBC has announced.
The actor, who played the hotelier in the long-running BBC Radio 4 drama for 22 years, died on Friday following a long illness.
He also acted in numerous stage productions and appeared in BBC soap opera EastEnders for a short stint during his career.
The Archers editor Jeremy Howe said: “Ian was the perfect Archers actor – he loved being part of an ensemble, relished the camaraderie and gossip of the Green Room, and had a seemingly effortlessly fine tuned vocal technique.
Ian Pepperell is best known for playing Roy Tucker in The Archers. Pic: Gary Moyes/BBC
“Like all the very best radio actors he could think on his feet and change the way he played a scene in the blink of an eye.
“Thanks to Ian’s brilliance, he created in Roy a character who managed to face in two directions simultaneously in almost every scene he played.”
The character featured in a number of dramatic storylines within the show, including a New Year’s Eve episode in which Roy asked Hayley Jordan, played by Lucy Davis, to marry him.
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Mr Howe said: “He captured Roy as both genial and anxious, funny and sad, easy-going and permanently stressed – a man who could hold down with ease a top job, yet who always carried with him Hamlet’s sense of failure.
“It all made perfect sense because of Ian’s uncanny and laser-guided ability to find humour in the emotional scenes and find pathos in the comedy that he always played so unerringly well.
“Ian had a lot more gas in the tank and was desperate to return to Ambridge once his health permitted.
“It is tragic that he died in his prime, we will miss him dearly and our hearts go out to his family and friends and everyone who knew him.
“Ambridge loved Roy – The Archers and our millions of listeners loved Ian’s Roy Tucker.”
In the theatre world, he played Hamlet for the Oxford Stage Company and Richard III at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester.
The actor also appeared in a number of episodes of EastEnders in 1993 and featured in police drama The Bill.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
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