Don Warrington

Don Warrington MBE (born Don Williams, 23 May 1951) is a Trinidadian-born British actor. He is best known for playing Philip Smith in the ITV sitcom Rising Damp (1974–78), and Commissioner Selwyn Patterson in the BBC detective series Death in Paradise (2011–present). His son, Jake Fairbrother, is also an actor.

He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

Warrington was born in Trinidad but moved to Newcastle upon Tyne with his mother and brother at the age of seven, whilst his sister stayed in Trinidad. His father, Basil Kydd, was a Trinidadian politician who died in 1958.

Warrington attended Harris College (now the University of Lancashire) and trained as an actor at the Drama Centre London. As there was already an actor called Don Williams when he joined Equity, he took the stage surname Warrington after Warrington Road, the street he grew up in. He started acting in repertory theatre at the age of 17.

Warrington originally became well known for playing Philip Smith in Rising Damp, from 1974 to 1978, alongside Leonard Rossiter, Richard Beckinsale, and Frances de la Tour. Warrington also appeared as series regular in the crime drama C.A.T.S. Eyes, as government contact Nigel Beaumont (1985–1987); as General Harris in Impact Earth (2007), and as Judge Ken Winyard in New Street Law.

In 1993 Warrington played television reporter Graham Gaunt in To Play the King, the second part of the BBC's House of Cards trilogy.

He has had smaller roles in many programmes including Red Dwarf, Lovejoy, Manchild, and Diamond Geezer. Warrington portrayed the founder of Time Lord society, Rassilon, in several Doctor Who audio plays, and also appeared as the President of an alternative-universe Great Britain in the Doctor Who episode "Rise of the Cybermen" (2006). Soon after, he recorded an abridged audio book of the Doctor Who novel The Art of Destruction by Stephen Cole.

He is one of the interviewees on the BBC 2 series Grumpy Old Men, and he appears in a series of Kenco coffee advertisements in the United Kingdom in which he plays an African coffee plantation owner. He regularly provides voice-overs for both BBC television and radio.