THE ACTOR and master voiceover artist Peter Hawkins created the voices for some of British television’s most memorable animated characters, including Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men, the Woodentops and Captain Pugwash. Most famously, he spoke for the Daleks in Doctor Who whose metallic cries of “Ex-ter-min-ate!” were imitated by millions of youngsters all over Britain in the Sixties and Seventies.

His inventive vocal talents were also used in Rainbow (he was Zippy in the first series) SuperTed, The Perishers and The Family-Ness and he dramatically announced the opening credits of Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin.

The son of a policeman, Peter John Hawkins was born in Brixton, South London, in 1924. From an early age he appeared in school plays and local amateur shows. He served in the Navy during the Second World War and in 1943 survived the sinking of HMS Limbourne. After recuperating he performed in touring forces shows throughout Europe.

Once demobbed, Hawkins trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and he made his West End debut in Sit Down a Minute, Adrian (Comedy Theatre, 1948).

He first appeared as a TV actor in 1949 in a production of The Good Companions but the following year he provided the voice of Mr Turnip, the obnoxious puppet in Whirligig, Britain’s first television magazine programme for children.

Hawkins had found his forte and was quickly in demand to voice other children’s programmes. He invented Bill and Ben’s “flobbadob” gibberish in Flower Pot Men (BBC, 1952-54) — flobbadob meant flowerpot — and he was the voice of The Woodentops (BBC, 1955-58), the industrious farmyard puppet family and their giant dog, Spotty.

His voice was used to great effect in Captain Pugwash, the animated series drawn by John Ryan which began life as a comic strip in the Eagle. A perennial favourite with young and old viewers, it featured tales of a podgy pirate Captain Horatio Pugwash and the hapless work-shy crew of the Black Pig. Hawkins voiced all the characters in the show and its successor in 1972, The Adventures of Sir Prancelot.

With a fellow actor, David Graham, Hawkins developed the sinister staccato voice of Doctor Who’s notorious adversary, the Daleks. Programme producers had planned for the Daleks to have human voices, but the sound engineer Brian Hodgson, together with Graham and Hawkins, came up with the peculiar metallic tones by speaking through a ring modulator. Hawkins voiced the Daleks from 1963-67 and in 1966 extended his contribution to the programme by providing the voices of the aggressive silver humanoids, the Cybermen.

Throughout his career Hawkins continued to appear in small roles on television, often cast as a policeman or officials. He played a variety of characters in Dave Allen at Large (1971) and was also seen in series such as Father Brown (1974) and Dial M for Murder (1974). Much in demand for commercials, he was memorably the voice of the laughing Martian robots in the Cadburys’ Smash advertisements in the Seventies.

Hawkins was a noted lover of art and among his considerable collection were works by Pisarro, Sutherland and Monet.

In 1956 he married the actress Rosemary Miller, with whom he had a son.

Peter Hawkins, actor and voiceover artist, was born on April 3, 1924. He died on July 8, 2006, aged 82.