Creator / Bob Grant

A Jack the Lad if we ever knew one.

"For me the worst time was when the panto ended. To have a taste of what work could be like again, then to have that snatched away from me, was awful."

Bob Grant, born Robert St Clair Grant, (14 April 1932 — 8 November 2003), was a British actor best known for playing Jack Harper in On the Buses.

After training at RADA in 1952, he made his stage debut in Worm's Eye View as Sydney. Come The '60s, he began to appear in films such as Sparrows Can't Sing and the first spin-off film of Till Death Us Do Part. He also appeared in the play Mrs Wilson's Diary alongside Stephen Lewis, which led to the two of them being cast in On the Buses, where Grant played Jack the conductor in every episode and the three spin-off films.

Once On the Buses ended, Grant struggled to find work that didn't Typecast him in the role of Jack. In 1975, he wrote a pilot called Milk-O, in which he starred alongside Buses co-star Anna Karen, but it flopped, and he never acted on TV again.

The lack of work and piling debts led to him being diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder and other mental health problems in The '80s. Grant had hoped to return for the Buses Revival Back on the Buses, but it never came to fruition.

He committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 71.

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Works on TV Tropes he appeared in:

Films

• Help! (1965) — Man (Uncredited Role)
• On the Buses (1971) — Jack Harper
• Mutiny on the Buses (1972) — Jack Harper
• Holiday on the Buses (1973) — Jack Harper

Series

• Quatermass and the Pit, 2 episodes:
  • "The Wild Hunt" (1959) — Man in Crowd (Uncredited Role)
  • "Hob" (1959) — Sightseer (Uncredited Role)
• Z Cars, 2 episodes^{show list} "Punch-Up: Part 1", "Punch-Up: Part 2" (1968) — Ted Griffin
• On the Buses, 74 episodes (1969-73) — Jack Harper

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