Elder brother of actor Keith Bell.
Father of Polly Bell by his partner of 30 years, the costume designer Frances Tempest, with whom he also had a step-daughter, Nellie.
His stage career dated back to 1948.
In 1962 he was arrested for picking flowers from someone's garden in Hampstead.
In 1982 he appeared before a bankruptcy court over trouble with non-payment of income taxes. He was subsequently discharged from bankruptcy.
In March of 1961, he and his wife Lois Daine were to star together in a BBC live television play, Cottage For Sale, but she couldn't take part because, two weeks before, she gave birth prematurely to their son, Aran Bell, who weighed just 3lb 13oz.
The son of a merchant seaman he hardly knew, he was a child evacuee during the war, and lived with three different families in the Morecambe area.