Actor Terrence Hardiman who played The Demon Headmaster in hit CBBC show dies at the age of 86

Actor Terrence Hardiman, best known for playing the title role in the CBBC series The Demon Headmaster, has died aged 86, his agent has said.

The stage and screen star also appeared in TV series such as The Crown, Wallander, Doctor Who and Prime Suspect.

The Londoner also narrated hundreds of audiobooks, including series by Colin Dexter, Anne Perry and Ruth Rendell, among others.

But it was The Demon Headmaster and his signature tinted glasses that made Hardiman a household name.

The series was a huge hit in the mid-1990s, when Hardiman played the sinister schoolmaster who used the power of hypnosis to carry out his evil plans.

The plot was based on the series of books written by Gillian Cross.

Speaking in 2019 about originally taking on the role, Hardiman told Radio Times, “I thought, ‘What a terrible character.’ How lovely. A real villain of a piece. Why not?”’

He said he had ‘no idea’ it would be such a success, adding: ‘I started to get recognized on the street, especially because I lived near schools here, in North West London.

“And there were people – young people – who looked at me, shouted at me and laughed at me, which is very healthy. It stopped me from being too big!

‘But the slightly more remarkable thing, I thought, was that it wasn’t just kids watching. They were also parents and other people.’

Hardiman returned to the series for a guest appearance when it rebooted in 2019.

Hardiman was the son of a police officer and excelled at school before studying English at Cambridge University.

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