John Leeson

John Leeson was born John Francis Christopher Ducker on 16 March 1943 in Leicester, England. He trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and took the professional name John Leeson. Under his birth name he later pursued his other interests, including wine education and public service.

Leeson's stage and screen career spanned more than half a century. He worked in repertory and in the West End, including Neil Simon's Plaza Suite (1969), Flint (1970) and Don't Start Without Me (1971). On television he played character roles in Dad's Army (1969), Crown Court, Blake's 7, Sorry!, The Great Egg Race, 'Allo 'Allo!, Shadow of the Noose, The Bill, Minder, the 1998 Vanity Fair, Doctors and ChuckleVision. In 1972 he played the original Bungle in ITV's children's series Rainbow.

In 1977 he was cast as the voice of K9 for the Doctor Who serial The Invisible Enemy. Producer Graham Williams liked the robot dog so much that it was kept as a regular character to appeal to younger viewers. Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, disliked the character but got on well with Leeson. Concerned that working only as a voice would hurt his prospects, Leeson left after the 16th season in 1979, during which he also appeared on screen as Dugeen in The Power of Kroll. David Brierley voiced K9 for a season before Leeson returned in 1980.

He went on to voice K9 in the pilot K-9 and Company (1981), the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983), Dimensions in Time (1993), the 2006 episode School Reunion and Journey's End (2008). K9 then became a recurring character in The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Leeson voiced him in all 26 episodes of the spin-off series K9 (2009 to 2010). He also voiced the Nucleus in The Invisible Enemy and a Dalek in Remembrance of the Daleks, reprised K9 in Big Finish and BBV audio dramas, and toured a one-man show, A Dog's Life.

He was a regular continuity announcer on Channel 4 and read extensively for the Calibre Audio Library. Film work included Tarka the Otter (1979) and Whoops Apocalypse (1986). In 2026 he reunited with Tom Baker in the Kickstarter funded audio drama series Sir Sherlock, playing Dr Watson to Baker's Holmes.

In 1969 Leeson married Judy Griffiths, an assistant at the BBC. Their son, Guy Ducker, born in 1972, is a film editor and director. As John Ducker he was an accredited tutor for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, a member of the Association of Wine Educators and the Circle of Wine Writers, and lectured on wine on land and at sea. He served as a justice of the peace in Ealing for more than 25 years, six of them as deputy chairman of the bench, and stood for the Liberal Democrats in Perivale ward in the Ealing council elections of 2002 and 2010. He published two volumes of autobiography, The Flight of the Budgerigar (2011) and Tweaking the Tail (2013), and a recipe collection, Dog's Dinners (2014).

John Leeson died on Sunday, 1 November 2026, aged 83. His son Guy announced the news on Facebook the same day, writing that his father had died at 3:03pm "after a summer of illness" and that "the end was peaceful". The family did not give a specific cause of death. Doctor Who fans responded with tributes recalling how his voice for K9 had shaped their childhoods. Funeral arrangements had not been made public at the time of reporting.

For many viewers John Leeson was K9: the clipped, eager voice of the Doctor's metal dog, heard across five decades from Tom Baker's era to The Sarah Jane Adventures and its own spin-off. He was also the first Bungle in Rainbow, giving him a place in two of the most remembered children's programmes in British television. Beyond acting, his years as a magistrate and wine educator reflected a life of wide interests and public service.