The close-up Ronnie Le Drew treasured lasted only a few seconds: a carnivorous plant dialling a telephone in Little Shop of Horrors. Le Drew, the puppeteer who spent two decades operating Zippy on Rainbow and carried the same precise craft from a small London theatre into landmark fantasy films, died on July 27, 2026. He was 78.

That shot captured the way Le Drew worked. The performer stayed outside the frame while an impossible character completed a clear action. In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, he called the plant's telephone close-up his proudest movie moment.

Born in Toronto in 1947 and raised in south London, Le Drew made puppet theatres from ordinary things before he found his profession. He entertained friends from behind an upturned table, with a wind-up gramophone for accompaniment. At 15 he saw The Little Mermaid at Little Angel Theatre. Within months he had left school and become founder John Wright's second apprentice. Le Drew recalled his headmaster telling his mother, "Your son is leaving school for what I would assume is a hobby rather than a job."

The apprenticeship became the foundation of a career using marionettes, glove puppets, rods and tabletop figures. Le Drew returned to Little Angel as a performer, director and teacher, taking the craft into adult classes, schools and colleges. The theatre made him an Honorary Associate, a role listed by Little Angel Theatre.

Television gave that craft its most familiar face. Le Drew joined Rainbow in 1973, controlling Zippy from behind a high table with one arm inside the character's head and the other working an arm. He matched the mouth to Roy Skelton's voice until the timing became instinctive, then later supplied the voice as well as the movement. For 20 years on the programme, his operating work brought the zip-mouthed character's physical performance to the screen.

Zippy remained the role audiences sought out after Rainbow. Le Drew took the character into live appearances and reunions, but he never treated puppetry as one television trick. "A good puppeteer puts ideas across clearly," he told The Guardian. "You’re looking through your puppet when you’re performing." The sentence described work built on clarity rather than the visibility of its maker.

That principle travelled to film. In 1986 he worked on both Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors. He later contributed to The Muppet Christmas Carol, operated prehistoric birds in Pan and helped with character movement for Beauty and the Beast. At Little Angel he also directed, including the theatre's 2015 production of Cindermouse.

Le Drew passed the mechanics of the art to new performers. He taught adult classes at Little Angel, visited schools and colleges, and was responsible for the standard of operating skills expected of students at the London School of Puppetry. As president of the British Puppet Guild for 10 years, he attended events, performed when invited and made himself available to fellow puppeteers. In announcing his death, the British Puppet Guild emphasized how consistently he gave members his time and support.

He remained active in screen worlds known to a younger generation. In 2019 he worked as an additional puppeteer on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and published Zippy and Me: My Life Inside Britain's Most Infamous Puppet. Speaking to The Guardian in 2023 about directors returning to practical characters, he said they valued having a person beneath the figure because puppets had "soul."

His son John confirmed the death and described his father in a statement reported by The Standard as "such a sweet beautiful man." The description joined a public record written less by Le Drew's own face than by the characters he animated and the performers he helped.

The movements persist in Zippy, Audrey II and the fantasy creatures Le Drew helped bring to the screen. So do the Little Angel classrooms where he taught the craft, the Guild community he led, his memoir and the films that preserve the work of his hands one carefully judged gesture at a time.