Don Warrington MBE played Town and Country Planning student Philip Smith in all but the Leicester performances of the original play The Banana Box, all 28 episodes of the TV series, and a medical student in The Movie.
Don Warrington was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad on May 23rd 1952. His father was the politician Basil Kydd. He moved with his family to England when he was five years old, and settled in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. One of very few black families in the North East at the time, he had the nickname 'The Pele Kid' at school. With a theatrical interest since his childhood, Don left school and started work at Newcastle's Playhouse Theatre, where he worked his way up to ASM (assistant stage manager). Determined to become a full-time actor, he moved to London in 1969 where he trained at The Drama Centre for three years. This helped him land a part in the controversial play Hair, with which he toured Europe in 1972. The following year was to be Don's breakthrough as an actor. As well as roles at Lincoln Rep. including Measure For Measure, Erpingham Camp and A Taste Of Honey, he also landed the part of the black student Philip Smith in Eric Chappell's play The Banana Box. When the play became a TV series, it was Don who again got the part, his first television role, for which he was paid £150 per episode to begin with, an amount he now describes as "a fabulous sum back then". It was to become his most famous.
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