James Grout 1927 - 2012 RIP

The character actor James Grout, best known as Chief Superintendant Strange in the Inspector Morse series, has died at the age of 84.

James David Grout was born in London on October 22 1927, the son of a shoe shop owner, and educated at Trinity Grammar School in Wood Green, where his English teacher encouraged him to become an actor.

He did National Service in the RAF, trained at Rada and made his first professional appearance at The Old Vic in 1950 as Valentine in Twelfth Night. For The Old Vic he went on to appear in Henry V, The Mousetrap Man, Bartholomew Fair, Captain Brassbound’s Conversion and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

He gained further experience between 1953 and 1955, at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, playing Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew; Ajax in Troilus and Cressida; Lennox in Macbeth; and the Chief Weasel in Toad of Toad Hall.

Grout was regularly on stage throughout the rest of that decade, including a spell in The Mousetrap as the owner of the snowbound guesthouse Monkswell Manor. During the Sixties he was performing in both London and New York; one of his favourite parts was as Harry Chitterlow in the Tommy Steele musical Half a Sixpence, with which, after 679 London performances, he went to Broadway for a year. Grout was nominated for a Tony award.

He enjoyed a long run in William Douglas Home’s Lloyd George Knew My Father (Savoy, 1972) as the son to Peggy Ashcroft’s Lady Sheila; and after a spell in Restoration comedy as Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife (Greenwich, 1973), he toured North America, Korea and Japan with the RSC in The Hollow Crown.

At the Vaudeville in 1977, he was Inspector Craddock in A Murder is Announced, and in Michael Frayn’s study of modern business life Make and Break (Lyric, Hammersmith, and Haymarket, 1980) he strutted elegantly and smugly at a salesmen’s conference. At the Haymarket in 1982 he appeared with Peter O’Toole in Shaw’s Man and Superman.

Grout’s many television credits included the roles of Judge Ollie Oliphant in Rumpole of the Bailey and George in Shelley. He also appeared in All Creatures Great and Small; The Falklands Factor; A Fine Romance; as the Government Chief Whip in Yes, Minister; and Titmuss Regained, among many other shows .

But his most famous role came towards the end of his career when he played the role of Chief Superintendant Strange in the Inspector Morse series. Grout, a burly man with an avuncular air, was distinctive for his comic timing and impassive manner. In his role as Strange, he exhibited an exasperated affection for the brilliant but temperamental Inspector Morse, always doing his best to keep his mercurial detective out of trouble.

Grout retired to Wiltshire, and had been ill for some time.