The second youngest of five children of Frank, an engineering company foreman, and Ethel, a former tailoress who died when her son was 19, Geoffrey Hinsliff was born in Leeds on November 23 1937. He left Middleton Secondary Modern aged 15 with no qualifications for a job as a trainee window dresser and began his acting career with a local youth theatre group, appearing aged 16 in a production of Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound at the Civic Theatre in Leeds.
A voracious reader, Hinsliff was largely self-educated and, after National Service, ended up going to Rada on a scholarship. He made his television debut in an episode of Z-Cars and went on to appear in numerous television series including Adam Adamant Lives!, Dixon of Dock Green, Crown Court, Emmerdale, The Professionals and Heartbeat.
His stage roles ranged from Doctor Astrov in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a 1979 production at Leeds Playhouse to Widow Twankey in Aladdin at Swindon’s Wyvern Theatre in 2000-01. He had a few small roles in films, including playing a wireless operator in A Bridge Too Far (1977).
Before arriving on “the Street” as Don Brennan, he had previously appeared in a couple of small roles on the soap, in 1963 and 1967.