Bud Tingwell

William volunteered as a surf lifesaver at Coogee Surf Life Saving Club where, in 1922, a colleague noticed Enid's pregnancy and asked, 'What's budding there?', and 'Bud' became the nickname for their infant son.

As an adolescent, Bud was encouraged by his father to train as an accountant, but Tingwell failed the entrance exam.

While still at school, he became a cadet at Sydney radio station 2CH, soon becoming the youngest radio announcer in Australia.

Charles William Tingwell AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009), known professionally as Bud Tingwell or Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor.

His war service earned him the 1939–45 Star, Italy Star, Defence Medal, War Medal 1939–1945, and Australia Service Medal 1939–1945.

He joined Doris Fitton's Independent Theatre company and appeared on stage from the mid-1940s in such classics as The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman and Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot

In 1941, aged 18, Tingwell volunteered for war service overseas with the Royal Australian Air Force.

Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, personnel from Commonwealth air forces formed part of a joint training and assignment system.

Consequently, Tingwell trained as a pilot in Canada during 1942.

Despite damaging a Harvard training aircraft in August, he later qualified as a pilot and was commissioned as a pilot officer that December.

He was posted to the Mediterranean Theatre and underwent operational training with No. 74 Operational Training Unit RAF, in British Palestine, and qualified to fly the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire.

He was promoted to flying officer in June 1943 and flight lieutenant in December 1944.

Towards the end of the war, Tingwell was transferred back to Australia.

In January 1944, he was posted to No. 680 Squadron RAF, a photo reconnaissance unit, and flew 75 sorties in Mosquitos and Spitfires during the Italian campaign.

Other aircraft that Tingwell was qualified to fly included the Bristol Blenheim, Martin Baltimore, Bristol Beaufighter and Airspeed Oxford.

He was posted to No. 5 Operational Training Unit RAAF as a flying instructor in June 1945, and then in December 1945, after the war had ended, he was posted to No. 87 Squadron RAAF, flying photo-reconnaissance Mosquitoes, until his demobilisation in March 1946.

One of the veterans of Australian film, he acted in his first motion picture in 1946 and went on to appear in more than 100 films and numerous TV programs in both the United Kingdom and Australia.

Tingwell was born in the Sydney suburb of Coogee, the son of William Harvey Tingwell and Enid (née Green).

In 1946, Tingwell was given his first film role, in Smithy, cast as an RAAF control tower officer – winning the role since he could supply his own RAAF uniform.

Tingwell remained a reservist into the 1950s.

After returning to Australia, Tingwell married his childhood sweetheart, Audrey May Wilson.

They were to have two children, Christopher and Virginia.

Tingwell had an excellent supporting role in Bitter Springs (1950), made by Ealing Studios with Chips Rafferty; Tingwell played Rafferty's bigoted son.

He had a similar role in Kangaroo (1952), a Hollywood-financed film shot in Australia for 20th Century Fox.

He then appeared in I Found Joe Barton (1952), the first TV show filmed in Australia.

Fox liked Tingwell's work in Kangaroo and invited him to Los Angeles to play the role of Lt. Harry Carstairs in The Desert Rats, in which he appeared opposite Chips Rafferty, James Mason and Richard Burton.

They offered him a long-term contract but Tingwell turned it down because he wanted to return to Australia.

Tingwell played the lead in King of the Coral Sea (1954) alongside Rafferty.

In 1954, he co-starred with Gordon Chater in Top of the Bill, the first of the famous satirical revues staged at Sydney's Phillip Street Theatre.

The Australian film and radio industry slumped with the advent of television and Tingwell decided to move to the UK.

He used the opportunity of a role in Ealing's The Shiralee (1957), which was filmed in Australia and London.

Tingwell travelled to England to complete his scenes and decided to stay.

He had small roles in Ealing's Dunkirk (1958), then Bobbikins (1959), Cone of Silence (1960), and Tarzan the Magnificent (1960).

The following year, he took on his first recurring television role, as Australian surgeon Alan Dawson in the live TV serial Emergency Ward 10 and its film spin-off Life in Emergency Ward 10 (1959).

In the late 1960s, he performed various minor voice roles for the Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" TV series Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, besides appearing in the first series of Catweazle.

He was the recurring character of motel manager Kevin McArthur in Crossroads in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Tingwell played the role of Inspector Craddock in all four films of the Miss Marple series, starring Margaret Rutherford, from 1961 to 1964: Murder, She Said (1961), Murder at the Gallop (1963), Murder Most Foul (1964) and Murder Ahoy! (1964).

For Hammer Films he appeared in The Secret of Blood Island (1964) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966).

He had the lead in a TV series An Enemy of the State (1965).

In 1969 until the end of the play's run, he appeared as Robert Danvers in the long running farce There's a Girl in My Soup at the Comedy Theatre, London.