Bob Weighton

**Robert Grant Pitts "Bob" Weighton** (29 March 1908 – 28 May 2020) was a British supercentenarian who was recognised as the oldest living man in the world by Guinness World Records at the time of his death. His age is also validated by the Gerontology Research Group. Outside of that, he is best known for being the voice of Patrick Star in *SpongeBob SquarePants*, which is also his most famous voice acting role to date. Weighton also served as the franchise’s voice director after the death of Paul Winchell (a position he shared with June Foray) and was succeeded by Ralph Bakshi after his retirement.

## Biography

### Early Life

Weighton was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK on 29 March 1908. He was one of seven children. He said that his earliest memory was contracting mumps at the age of five. He also recalled watching fires caused by Zeppelin raids from his bedroom window during the First World War.

Weighton's father paid an extra £3 a term so he could stay at school until he was 16, which enabled him to take up a marine engineering apprenticeship. After qualifying, Weighton struggled to find a job, so decided to work abroad as a teacher. He moved to Taiwan in 1933 to teach at a missionary school, but first had to spend two years in Japan learning the language.

### Mid-life

In 1937, Weighton married his wife, Agnes, a teacher he had known since they studied together in England. After marrying in Hong Kong, they returned to Taiwan, where their first child, David, was born. The family decided to return to England in 1939, but were diverted to Toronto, Canada, due to the onset of the Second World War. While in Canada, the couple had two more children, Peter and Dorothy.

Weighton later moved with his family to the United States, where he worked in a factory that made aeroplanes for Britain to help them fight the war. His knowledge of Japanese meant that he went on to work for the British Political Warfare Mission, and helped to decipher enemy messages during America's battle with Japan.

In 1946, Weighton returned to England with his family where he met his in-laws for the first time. He took up a teaching position at City University, London, and spent the rest of his working life as a lecturer in marine engineering.

### Later life

After retiring, Weighton and his wife moved to Alton, Hampshire, England in 1973. It was at this time he began a career in acting for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in series such as *Are You Being Served?* and *Grange Hill*, being the only cast member of the latter to appear in all 30 seasons. The first feature film he appeared in was the 1978 American-British comedy romance *Polly and Francis* (an adaptation of *Polly of the Circus* featuring Francis the Talking Mule), in which he played the secondary villain Sylvester Hinkle. He later spoke of his time working on the film fifteen years later, having kind words to say about Mabel Taliaferro, Chill Wills and Margaret Hamilton (the actors for Polly, Francis, and lead villain Miriam Hinkle respectively, in their final film roles) along with performance director Sebastian Shaw, but slamming the executives at Universal and MGM for failing to condemn the racist and abusive actions of several circuses around the world.

His first international success was being the host and one of the writers of the popular game show *Press Your Luck*. In his run, he would give five contestants a spin to earn money and avoid the money-stealing Whammies (voiced by Mel Blanc, Peter Hawkins, Lulu Kennedy-Cairns, Su Pollard and Frank Welker) from the Big Board before going on to the question round; that would be the amount they would take home should they lose the game. Then he would ask the players five questions of their choice from seven categories (mythology, world history, spelling, architecture, books, theme parks and Hollywood), granting the correct buzz-in answer three spins and the other contestants one spin of they answered the multiple-choice question correctly. The process would repeat for the next two rounds, with the second and final question round giving the players two to five spins for their correct answers. Finally, at the fifth round, the top three players would face the Giant Board, which featured greater prizes and more Whammies, with a grand prize of £50,000 (approximately $62,690) or $75,000 plus a trip to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Weighton hosted both the British and American versions for two seasons and 74 episodes, with six American episodes being hosted by him in the last three seasons, including the series finale. Two episodes in particular, including the series finale, featured the return of Michael Larson (May 10, 1949 – February 16, 1999), notable for winning $110,237 ($322,676 in 2023) in cash and prizes, at the time the largest one-day total ever won on a game show. He was able to win by memorizing the patterns used on the game board; these episodes were no different, as he managed to be the first contestant in the franchise to win a combined $1,500,000 ($4,176,529.41 in 2023) on top of two trips to the American Disney parks, a 1986 Volkswagen GTI, and a home entertainment system. Michael’s brother James (November 17, 1944 – June 5, 2017) would unintentionally follow his footsteps and become the three-time champion of not just the 2000 reboot *Whammy!: The All-New Press Your Luck*, once again hosted and co-written by Weighton, but the entire *Press Your Luck* franchise: Larson won $2,500,000 as well as a Suzuki Aerio SX, a trip on the Disney Cruise Line and every Disney theme park in the world for free (including 50% off every other visit for the whole family), Blu-rays of BBC’s nature documentaries, a month-long stay at a hotel near the Amazon rainforests, and over $10,000 in spending money at Toys “R” Us.

Around 1990, he had to undergo an operation to remove a growth on stomach. Agnes died in 1995, and their son, Peter, died in 2014. After his wife's death, Weighton moved in to a flat in an Alton care home, where he lived independently. The second bedroom in his flat was a workshop, filled with furniture, windmills and puzzles he made and sold in aid of charity, often from bits of wood pulled from skips. He also sold self-published poetry books and raised almost £900 for Brendoncare, the charity that operated his care home.

In 1986, Weighton was offered by Paul Winchell to voice the character of Patrick Star in *SpongeBob SquarePants*. Not too familiar with voice acting just yet, he decided to start smaller and use his previous offer as the narrator in *Penny Crayon* as practice, also voicing all of the characters including the title character. To fully get the voices of good quality, creator Peter Maddocks brought famous Sebastian Shaw (who worked with Weighton before on *Polly and Francis*) to train and direct Weighton. At the same time, Weighton also did narration for The *Family-Ness*, another one of Maddocks’ creations, with Shaw once again being the recording director, but now also having Paul Winchell be the casting director. After both series concluded with 25 episodes in two seasons, Weighton immediately joined the *SpongeBob* production and would voice Patrick for the entire series, being along with June Foray and Frank Welker the only original main cast member to keep his role from beginning to end.

In 1999, Weighton made his final live-action film appearance in Britt Allcroft’s *Almost Heroes*, in which he played the main antagonist Captain Lynchburg of Northwestern Cornwall. When asked why he retired from live-action by Conan O’Brien, he stated it was a mix between the role being too physically challenging, his declining health, and that he missed spending time with his family, considering he recorded most of his voice work from home. However, he also said that doing the role regardless was the greatest time of his life next to being Patrick Star.

As of March 2019, shortly before his 111th birthday, Weighton was still able to do his own shopping. In an interview to mark his 111th birthday, he joked that his secret to longevity is "avoiding dying". In June 2019, he was interviewed by BBC Radio 4, in which he talked about his life. He also accompanied a community fundraising team on visits to local schools to talk in assemblies about his life.

In March 2020, Weighton was forced to cancel his 112th birthday celebration due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was also unable to receive a visit from a Guinness World Records official to be recognised as the world's oldest man as a result of social distancing rules. Instead, his care home arranged for him to be presented with a certificate by staff on his balcony. Earlier on the same day, he was interviewed live on breakfast television programme *Good Morning Britain*.

Also around this time, Bob Weighton had completed 95% of his feature film Wolfwalkers after working with the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon. The idea dated back to 1947, and Weighton had even spoke with Walt Disney himself about the idea; unfortunately, the animators and voice actors at the time could not make the idea come to life, given how ambitious the whole thing was. It wasn’t until 1999 when he met with Nora Twomey and spoke with her about his ideas. This time, she flew him to Ireland to head to Cartoon Saloon to fully bring the idea to life. As a bonus, he got to voice the wolf King Daniel and also be the person in charge of production.

Weighton died from cancer on 28 May 2020, aged 112 years, 60 days. At the time of his death, he had ten grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. Prior to his funeral on 19 June 2020, the hearse drove slowly through the town of Alton and past the care home where he lived so residents could pay their respects. On his funeral, all children’s programming was put on halt to pay respect to Weighton; the most notable attendees included Queen Elizabeth II; former Prime Minister Sir John Major; former United States presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with their spouses and children; Ralph Bakshi; Paul Tibbitt; Su Pollard; Lulu Kennedy-Cairns; Maria Doyle Kennedy and Peter Maddocks. To date, it holds the record for the biggest funeral in history, let alone for an actor, with over 1,250,000 people in attendance, and 5,000,000 more from around the world watching on television. To make sure *Wolfwalkers* did not go to waste, Nora Twomey took it upon herself to finish the whole feature; it would be released on Blu-ray on March 29, 2021, 113 years after Weighton was born, to critical acclaim.

## Episodes Written

* Dumped
* Rock-a-Bivalve
* Driven to Tears\*
* Rule of Dumb
* Stuck in the Wringer\*\*
* Hide and Then What Happens?
* Pet Sitter Pat\*\*
* Ink Lemonade\*
* Gary and Spot
* Sandy's Nutty Nieces

\*Rewrote Patrick's lines and characterization.

\*\*Rewrote the entire episode.

## Roles

* Patrick Star
* Narrator of "Ugh"

## Trivia

* Weighton had the longest lifespan of any cast member on the show, having died at age 112.
* In an interview sometime in 2014, when asked if he would be replaced as Patrick after his death, Bob Weighton replied by saying:
	+ *"I don't believe so. I've been recording Patrick's lines since 1987, and even if I'm dead, I will have recorded all of the starfish's lines for the entire franchise."*
		- With this statement, Weighton had revealed that he was hired to do Patrick's voice one year after the show was even thought up of.
	+ In that same interview, he described Vincent Waller as a "bad imitation of Ralph Bakshi and Noel MacNeal," as he was rude towards him during episode rewrites.
		- It was revealed in a tweet by Waller that, despite being rude, he accepted Bob Weighton’s rewrites as time flew by, unlike the previous Nickelodeon president Brian Robbins, who actually waited for Weighton to die after the rewrites.
* Weighton rewrote the entirety of "Stuck in the Wringer" and "Pet Sitter Pat" due to him finding his character too much of an "unfunny jerk" towards SpongeBob and Gary, respectively.