Bill Cashmore appeared in Series 8 as Snapper-Jack, Honesty Bartram and the voice(s) of Bhal-Shebah. As well as acting, he is 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 has 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, Bill's TV credits include episodes of All Creatures Great And Small, The Bill (on three separate occasions), Moon And Son, Grange Hill, Kavanagh QC, Men Behaving Badly, Sharman, Wycliffe and Casualty (twice). He has also appeared in a handful of TV movies, various satirical comedy and sketch shows such as The Day Today, Fist Of Fun, London Shouting, Brass Eye, Does China Exist? and the NewsRevue, and the pilot for BBC Radio 4 sketch show The Twelve Ronnies. He and comedy partner Andy Powrie were 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 have written many plays and pantomimes which have been performed all around the world.
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] Booking information for this show and two others - Pull Yourself Together and Bill's Clothes - can be found on his website.

He has 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. Since 2013 he has been a reviewer for travel site Queen of Retreats.

Bill married TV producer Sasha Bates in 2005 and they have a Victorian home in Shepherd's Bush, London which they share with two cats. His interests include running half marathons, yoga, theatre, cinema, architecture and gardening. He collects autographs and, more unusually, baked bean tins.

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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