Terrence Hardiman, who has died aged 86, was an actor whose military bearing and deadpan, silently sinister look naturally led him to be cast as authority figures – most memorably as the star of the BBC television children’s drama The Demon Headmaster, in which the description “authoritarian” was more appropriate.
The programme, which began in 1996, was compulsive viewing with its stories of Hardiman’s terrifying megalomaniac exerting hypnotic powers over his pupils. In the opening episode Dinah Glass, an orphan, sits at the head’s desk as he takes off his dark glasses, stares at her with his piercing green eyes and says: “Funny you should be so tired so early in the morning. So tired you can hardly move your arms and legs. You are tired, so tired. You feel your head begin to nod and, slowly, your eyes are starting to close. So tired.”
