Last modified on Fri 28 May 2021 12.58 EDT
Roy Scammell, who has died aged 88 following a short illness, was one of Britain’s leading film and television stuntmen – for more than three decades he was considered the best high-fall man in the business.
He stood in for some of cinema’s most famous names during action sequences, including Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas and Deborah Kerr. Even though Steve McQueen did many of his own stunts, he still needed Scammell on hand for key moments in 1963’s The Great Escape (including parts of the famous motorcycle chase) and Papillon (1973).
As part of the TV stunt team Havoc, Scammell worked on Doctor Who several times, including doubling for the leading actor Caroline John for a dangerous sequence dangling over a raging weir in the episode The Ambassadors of Death (1970), and performed the highest fall hitherto attempted on the small screen from the top of a 50ft gasometer in another 1970 episode, Inferno. From 1971 he was also the regular stunt arranger for the popular seafaring saga The Onedin Line.