Graham was born in Hornchurch, Essex, and commenced his career there in 1977 at the Queen’s Theatre.
This is his second tour for UK Productions having playing Bert Barry last year in 42nd Street.
Graham created the roles of the Commentator and Phillips in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – currently holding the record for the longest running musical at the London Palladium. Other West End roles include Lumley Lancaster in Mr Cinders (Fortune); Roscoe Dexter in Singin’ in the Rain (London Palladium); Francis in Elegies (Criterion) and Abe Greenbaum in Some Like It Hot (Prince Edward).
Following Chitty, Graham played “Fingers” McFidget in The Burglar’s Opera for Opera della Luna. Other roles for the same company include Baron Zeta The Merry Widow, Pooh-Bah The Mikado, Dick Deadeye (and Sir Joseph Porter’s aunt!) in HMS Pinafore on tour and for the Covent Garden Festival. Last Christmas he played an Ugly Sister in Cinderella at Stoke on Trent, having played the same role the previous year with Patrick Duffy and Susan Hampshire at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking. His many pantomime appearances include Sarah the Cook in Roy Hudd’s Dick Whittington at the Watford Palace, following his great success at the same theatre as Widow Twankey in Aladdin.
Graham has appeared in national tours of Crazy for You, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; Singin’ in the Rain, Cluedo, Salad Days, Just a Verse and Chorus and many others, also frequently playing in repertory all over the country, most recently at the Derby Playhouse, for Karen Louise Hebden’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
Fringe work includes The Chairs and McCorquodale in Funeral Games. At the King’s Head, Graham co-devised and appeared in the critically acclaimed Meet Me at the Gate, a tribute to the Gate revues of the 1930s. He also alternated with Lily Savage in the role of Roscoe, the drag queen in Elegies there, prior to its West End run.
Film and television credits include Jimmy in Blunt, with Anthony Hopkins and Ian Richardson, Flywheel as Boss Plunkett, The Snow White Files as Baptiste and Sightings as Jack
the Ripper!
A frequent radio broadcaster, Graham was one of the four regulars in the award-winning BBC comedy series Flywheel Shyster and Flywheel and recently recorded a pilot of The Adventures of Sexton Blake, playing the villain Totween Kemmle. Last Christmas he was heard as Gino in A Night in the Ukraine on BBC Radio 4, in which he was reunited with his former Flywheel colleagues.
Graham also performs regularly in cabaret and music hall all over the world, regularly appearing with the Concordia Theatre Company on the QE2 for Cunard. He has compèred several variety tours, and was a popular Chairman at the former Players’ Theatre in London.
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