Bill Cashmore appeared in Series 8 as Snapper-Jack, Honesty Bartram and the voice(s) of Bhal-Shebah. As well as acting, he was also a published playwright, scriptwriter, director, journalist, successful business coach and raconteur.


Originally from Nottingham, Bill graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1984 with an MA in English. He began his acting career in the university's famous dramatic club, Footlights, working alongside future TV stars such as David Baddiel and Nick Hancock. He also earned a Graduate Diploma of Counselling from the Australian College of Applied Psychology. He taught at Moffats School in rural Shropshire in the 1980s.
In 1989, Bill started work for a media response company in London on the day that a new client was visiting the office. He and fellow new recruit Carry Clubb were supposed to make the place look busy, but had to be given a broken computer and fake headsets due to a lack of equipment! This meant they spent the whole day roleplaying imaginary calls to each other, which helped prepare them for the real job and inspired them to co-found their own interactive training company, Actors In Industry Ltd, in 1992.

Apart from Knightmare and its sister show TimeBusters, Bill's TV credits include episodes of All Creatures Great And Small, The Bill (on three separate occasions), The Sharp End, Moon And Son, Casualty (twice), Grange Hill, Kavanagh QC, Men Behaving Badly, Sharman and Wycliffe. He also appeared in a handful of TV movies and various satirical comedy and sketch shows such as The Day Today, Fist Of Fun, London Shouting, Brass Eye, Does China Exist?, the NewsRevue, and the unbroadcast pilot for The Saturday Night Armistice. He and comedy partner Andy Powrie were writers and regular guests on CITV's Saturday morning programme Gimme 5 in the early 1990s, and co-hosted a two-part children's guide to Christmas in 1996. Together they wrote many plays and pantomimes which have been performed all around the world. The "zany twosome" starred in their own comedy stage show in 1993, which was highly praised in a Milford Mercury review.

In 1994-1996 he voiced several characters in The Magical Music Box, an audio play series released on cassette and CD with a magazine aimed at introducing children to classical music. These included 'Hall of the Troll King' (featuring Bill as some two-headed trolls and fellow KM actor Edmund Dehn as their slave Lars), 'Night of the Aliens' (in which he plays a railway ticket collector and an alien before discussing Bach's Orchestral Suite No.4), 'The Highwayman's Mask' (playing William the coachman and the villainous Sir Jasper Wellborn), and 'The Monks' Treasure' (as Brother Andrew). He appeared in the unaired pilot for Kevin Eldon's radio sketch show The Twelve Ronnies in 1997, and in the Radio 4 comedy drama Sunny Side Up in 2000.
In 2010, Bill wrote and performed an autobiographical one-man show called An Everyday Actor: "The audience will be taken on a journey through his experiences of the acting profession, including how he performed to Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson before they were famous, helped Helena Bonham-Carter to finesse a strip scene and arrested Ewan McGregor. His show will give an insight into his appearances as thugs, patients and coppers in television dramas and his time in theatre." [source] Descriptions of this show and two others - Pull Yourself Together and Bill's Clothes - can be found on his former website.

He also turned his hand to journalism, working as a freelance travel writer for the Sunday Telegraph and submitting various articles to The Spectator. In 2011 he combined writing with his enthusiasm for sports (rugby, football and cricket), contributing to the recently-launched rugby league magazine Forty-20. In 2013 he became a reviewer for travel site Queen of Retreats.

Bill married TV producer Sasha Bates in 2005 and they shared a Victorian home in Shepherd's Bush, London with their two cats. His interests included running half marathons (and sometimes full marathons) for charity, cycling, yoga, theatre, cinema, architecture and gardening. He collected autographs and, more unusually, baked bean tins.

In 2017 he stood as the Green Party candidate for Chelsea and Fulham in the general election. Five months later, he died unexpectedly at the age of 56 after suffering an aortic dissection that led to a stroke. He posthumously received the Order of St John Award for Organ Donation, saving the lives of others. His wife Sasha, who is now a psychotherapist, published a book called Languages of Loss exploring her grief journey and sharing many wonderful anecdotes about Bill. She has also created a theatrical bursary in his name, The Bill Cashmore Award (affectionately nicknamed 'The Billy'), in partnership with the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith.

Bill's sense of humour can be enjoyed on his own website, and on another set up by Andy Powrie in memory of Bill and his work.

In October 2001, he wrote the following in the Knightmare.com guestbook: "It was a great experience for me, I was actually a fan of the show before I joined so it was an honour to join the cast. I loved every minute of it and it's a real joy to see that Knightmare, although sadly over, lives on in everyone's hearts." He was one of several cast members interviewed for James Aukett's 2012 documentary to mark the programme's 25th anniversary.

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