Ken Barrie

Leslie Hulme (9 January 1933 - 29 July 2016), better known as Ken Barrie, was an English voice actor and singer who served as the original voice actor of Postman Pat, various other male characters, and Granny Dryden in the Postman Pat television series, as well as serving as the narrator in the first and second series.

He was born in Tunstall, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire in England. In the first series in 1981 he voiced all the characters, serving as the narrator. Starting with Postman Pat takes the Bus, Carole Boyd did the voice acting for all the female characters and children, while Barrie voiced all the male characters and Granny Dryden.

A singer by trade, Barrie sang the famous theme tune and the various songs in "Postman Pat", as well as the theme tune and songs for "Charlie Chalk", another Ivor Wood TV series.

In 1986, Barrie narrated, voiced the characters and sang a parody of the theme for a Postman Pat spoof called "Postman Pete" for Bobby Davro on the Box.

When Barrie was not recording dialogue for the TV series, he was narrating special audiobooks. He originally narrated the audiobooks for the first thirteen stories written by John Cunliffe. Between 1987 and 1991, he narrated new audio stories such as Postman Pat and The Dinosaur. (The latter was also the last one he did all the voices on.) Between 1993 and 2000, he narrated the original audio stories again, but with Carole Boyd doing the female voices this time.

In 1989, Barrie also sang two Christmas singles, "The Christmas Pudding Song" and "The Christmas Tree", produced by Bryan Daly who also composed the Postman Pat theme song.

In 1992, Barrie sang a parody of the Postman Pat theme for an advertisement of HP's Postman Pat Spaghetti Shapes.

With the launch of Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service in 2008, Barrie's role of Pat was taken over by Lewis MacLeod as Barrie felt it was time to hand over "Pat's postbag", but he continued to voice his other characters, until eventually stepping down, not returning for the seventh series.

After a short battle with liver cancer, Barrie died at his home in Denham, Buckinghamshire on 29 July 2016. He was 83 years old.