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The puppeteer Ronnie Le Drew, who has died aged 78, will be remembered for his long association with the irascible glove-puppet Zippy on ITV’s hit preschool series Rainbow. But to many in the British puppetry community, he was also an inspiring teacher, mentor and a generous on-stage colleague, as well as one of the country’s foremost marionettists.
Rainbow launched in 1972 as ITV’s answer to Sesame Street, and the following year Ronnie was asked to take over operating Zippy. Working with the voice actor Roy Skelton (also known as the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen in Doctor Who), Ronnie helped turn Zippy into the show’s unlikely star. Zippy was a moody, garrulous creature – his exact species was never defined, although Ronnie referred to him as “a unique” – who could only be silenced by forcibly zipping his mouth shut.
Ronnie developed a close connection with Skelton, who would deliver Zippy’s lines from a tiny booth at one side of the set, in between puffs on a cigar, while Ronnie operated the puppet from under a counter, with a tiny TV monitor wedged between his legs. Before long, they were so in sync that they could improvise together.
As Rainbow’s popularity soared over the decades, its human stars – the host Geoffrey Hayes and singers Rod Burton, Jane Tucker and Freddy Marks – became public figures, accosted by grown-up fans while out in the pub, and, in Hayes’s case, receiving propositions (and, apparently, knickers) in the post from enamoured mums. Ronnie, meanwhile, came to appreciate his own anonymity – Zippy might be famous, but he never would be, although the show ran continuously for two full decades, providing Ronnie with a reliable income – rare for a professional puppeteer.
Ronnie caught the puppet bug early. He was born in Toronto, and his parents, Edna (nee Brooker), a shop assistant, and Leslie, a schoolteacher, brought the family over from Canada to London when he and his twin sister, Bonnie, were three years old, settling in a council flat in Stockwell. As their marriage deteriorated, Ronnie escaped to the world of make-believe, joining the Educational Puppetry Association in Holborn while still at school and attending meetings of the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild. Back home, he performed on the concrete steps of the block of flats, where his father dismissed his efforts as “dolly-waggling”.
When Ronnie was 14, a friend from the Guild took him to see a show at the Little Angel puppet theatre in Islington – a formative experience that would launch him on his puppetry career. Ronnie was transfixed by a marionette performance of The Little Mermaid, begged the theatre’s owner, John Wright, for a job, and then persuaded his parents and headmaster to let him leave Priory Grove school to take it up.
Over the next few years, Ronnie gradually worked his way up at the Little Angel, from sweeping the floor of the workshop to operating the lights, and eventually taking over as lead puppeteer. His role there also opened the door to TV and film work. In 1966 he worked with Wright on the BBC film A Touch of Don Juan, operating the arm of a moving statue, and two years later he provided the elaborate opening-credit sequence for the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic. Then the regular TV gig of Rainbow beckoned.
In 1983 he married Caroline Astell-Burt, and they had two children, John and Liz. They eventually separated.
A workaholic by nature, Ronnie filled his summer breaks from Rainbow moonlighting as Sweep on The Sooty Show, and performing small roles in a range of projects for the Jim Henson company, including Labyrinth, Little Shop of Horrors, and The Muppet Christmas Carol. (He was impressed by Michael Caine, but truly starstruck in the presence of David Bowie.)
He also continued a lifelong association with the Little Angel, both as a performer and as director, and took part in productions at the Barbican Centre and the Royal Festival Hall in London.
After Rainbow was cancelled in 1992, Ronnie was the only member of the cast to return for two short-lived revival series, which ran between 1994 and 1997, and saw him providing Zippy’s voice as well as operating the puppet. This earned the disapproval of Hayes, who, despite Ronnie’s insistence that he had been forced to audition for the role, felt he should have refused to participate on principle.
They later patched things up before a gig at the Hammersmith Palais, part of the nostalgia-fuelled “Rainbow Revival” of the early 2000s, which saw members of the original cast touring the university circuit, performing the single It’s a Rainbow (by DJ George and MC Zippy) on Top of the Pops in 2002, and entertaining a 40,000-strong crowd at a retro music festival on Clapham Common.
After Rainbow, Ronnie continued to work in TV and film, providing the giant hand for the National Lottery’s “It Could Be You” campaign, motion-capture for the candlestick Lumiere in Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, and in countless appearances as Zippy on shows such as Children in Need, The Weakest Link and The X-Factor.
He also fulfilled a childhood dream of performing in musical theatre, operating a talking parrot in a national tour of Doctor Dolittle, to a voice track recorded by Julie Andrews.
Ronnie maintained his close relationship with the Little Angel, where he performed across all seven decades of his career. In 1991, Wright told Ronnie he wanted him to succeed him – although, after Wright’s death, and much to Ronnie’s disappointment, the board went in a different direction.
Ronnie continued to perform at the Little Angel, and when his memoir, Zippy and Me, which I co-authored, was published in 2019 (Ronnie was a ghostwriter’s dream: as talkative as Zippy, but with none of the puppet’s famous snark), the launch party was held in the theatre foyer.
In 2016, Ronnie was elected president of the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, which had kindled his love of puppets as a boy, and was described by them as “possibly the most active and supportive president we have ever had or will have”.
He is survived by his children, four grandchildren, Olive, Felix, Daisy and Theo, and a half-sister, Carol.
