Jeremy Nicholas

Jeremy Nicholas (born 20 September 1947) is an English actor, writer, broadcaster, lyricist and musician.

Early life Born in Wellington, Shropshire, he was raised in Stafford and educated at Flash Ley Primary School, Stafford (1952–57); Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire (1957–65) and Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art (1966–69).

Nicholas's first job between leaving school and going to drama college was as a trainee manager in Beatties department store in Wolverhampton (1965–66) from which he was sacked for rehearsing on the shop floor his lines for an amateur production. Lord Foppington in The Relapse; Young Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer, Len in Saved and The Emperor in The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria. which won him a nomination for an Olivier Award as Most Promising Newcomer. He subsequently re-adapted the book for BBC Radio 4 and again for a Channel 4 film, as well as also adapting Jerome's Three Men on the Bummel for Radio 4. Other theatre roles include Narrator in Side by Side by Sondheim (Haymarket Theatre, Leicester); Jack Chesney in Charley's Aunt (York); Richard II in Circle of Glory (national tour); Lord Brocklehurst in The Admirable Crichton (Greenwich Theatre), Greg in Relatively Speaking opposite Dora Bryan and Moray Watson; Lenny in The Homecoming (directed by Timothy West); national tours of Beyond the Fringe as Dudley Moore (for Cameron Mackintosh); Canaries Sometimes Sing (with Diana Weston); An Ideal Husband (with Jeremy Sinden and Stephanie Turner) and Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal (Derby and Nottingham). Nathaniel Winkle in The Pickwick Papers, Prospects (opposite David Suchet), The Upper Hand, Lewis Lake in Wish Me Luck, opposite Harry Enfield. Francis Poulenc's Babar the Elephant, and The Carnival of the Animals (1985), set to his own "eruditely witty and elegant new verses" and also those of Ogden Nash. In 2008 he became the first actor since Robert Donat in 1954 to give a live performance with orchestra of Alan Rawsthorne's Practical Cats (2009) with the BBC Concert Orchestra and broadcast on Radio 3. Since 2007 he has hosted and compiled the programme for the annual carol concert in Birmingham Town Hall. as well as Random Moments in a May Garden (1981) and A Month in the Country (1985) for BBC Television. From 1977 to 1991 he wrote the lyrics and music for nearly 150 songs for BBC Radio 4's Stop the Week chaired by Robert Robinson. One of the UK's most authoritative writers on the piano and pianists, he has written four highly-acclaimed reference books on classical music, as well as biographies of Leopold Godowsky and Frédéric Chopin.

He has composed the scores for many stage plays – among them the British premiere of Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carré, and Funny You Should Sing That and which have been recorded by Sarah Walker and Roger Vignoles, and Jody Applebaum and Marc-André Hamelin. and Lendalfoot for brass band were recorded by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band; Toccata giubiloso has been recorded by organist Kevin Bowyer, while his Toccata festiva was premiered by Thomas Trotter in Birmingham Town Hall in March 2012.

Radio Nicholas has written and presented over sixty radio features for BBC Radio. Their subject matter has ranged from the Shipping Forecast, the history of signature tunes, the lyricist Harry Graham, and the Vatican's Latin specialist Father Reginald Foster, to a series on the art of the comic song (Funny You Should Sing That) and the records played in the Light Programme's long-running request programme Children's Favourites (Hello Children…Everywhere). The latter resulted in a series of best-selling compilation albums for EMI which Nicholas curated. In 1996 he won a Sony Gold Award (Best Arts Programme) for England's Green and Pleasant Land, a two-hour celebration of England in verse, prose and music for BBC Radio 2. He has read and / or adapted more than twenty books for radio and spoken word recordings including Axel Munthe's The Story of San Michele and The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W. N. P. Barbellion. He played Dr. Watson to Peter Egan's Stamford Holmes in Second Holmes (1983), a BBC Radio 4 comedy six-part series following the adventures of the grandsons of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in contemporary England. In 2000 he dramatised and appeared in The Fast Gentleman by Keble Howard, also for Radio 4.

Writer His lifelong enthusiasm for comic verse led to his first book, Raspberries and Other Trifles (Hutchinson, 1984), a parody of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children. He edited and published his collection of Limericks for the Connoisseur (New Generation, 2019) followed in 2025 by an expanded and illustrated edition entitled Limericks for the Unwoke, while in 2022 Porter Press issued What Larks, a volume of his collected verses and song lyrics. A regular contributor as critic and feature writer to Gramophone and International Piano, he has previously written for Classic FM Magazine, Classic CD, BBC Music Magazine, Piano and International Record Review. His latest book, The Great Piano Makers (Chiselbury, 2026) tells the stories of more than 100 famous makers from the giants of today to once popular brands.

Other activities Nicholas is President of the Jerome K. Jerome Society He is an authority on the piano, pianists and Leopold Godowsky in particular.

Personal He is the eldest of four children adopted by Mary Cecilia Willson Woolcock (née White) (1909–2008), an interior design artist with Peter Jones before World War II; and Cleave Edward Woolcock (1910–1992), a chartered surveyor in the firm Barber & Woolcock which he co-founded and who served in the Royal Army Service Corps for six years throughout World War II before being demobbed in early 1946 with the rank of Major and resuming his former profession. Nicholas was adopted at the age of two months old and was named Jeremy Nicholas Woolcock.

He married Jill Elizabeth Rose in 1984 at St Paul's, Covent Garden (the 'Actors' Church') during filming for The Pickwick Papers. They have one child.

Television Z-Cars (1973), Geff Devlin The Snow Queen (1974), Basin The Avenue (1977), Vincent Boyd-Thomson Rhinestone Cowboy (1979), Michael C Regan The Duchess of Duke Street (1977), Nick Somers Bright Smiler (1985), Sir Jonathan Sibley Prospects (1985), Jocelyn Gummer Mog (1985), Tom Manners King and Castle (1986), Rodney Finch-Courtney Boon (1989), Tom Crime Story (1992), Hugh Rendell Stanley's Dragon (1993), Newspaper Editor London's Burning (1987), Berrington Crossroads (1988), John Maddingham