Paul William McDowell (15 August 1931 – 2 May 2016) was an English actor and writer who appeared in numerous television productions over a 40-year period.^[1]

McDowell was born in Fulham, south-west London the only son of William a museum guard and shipyard worker. His mother Frances was a landlady and cleaner. He attended several primary schools and was evacuated to Guildford, Rochdale, and Torbay during the second world war.^[2] After leaving school, he trained to be a painter at Chelsea Art College. He later attended St Edmund Hall, Oxford. In the early 1960s as "Whispering" Paul McDowell he was a vocalist with the British 1920s-style jazz band The Temperance Seven, who had a No. 1 hit in Britain. He was a member of the pop group 'Guggenheim' which he formed with Granada Television producer and singer Chris Pye, and guitarist Jules Burns. The album Guggenheim was released in 1972 on Indigo Records, and distributed by the British Decca label. He worked at the Establishment Club as an actor/writer, then became a member of the improvisational group the Second City in the United States and was a writer on The Frost Report.

Later he lived in Towcester Northamptonshire, where he wrote a letter ^[4] to The Guardian, published on 11 March 2016, less than two months before his death. His letter was an amusing mild rebuke that The Guardian had omitted to state in their obituary of George Martin that his very first Number 1 hit was the Temperance Seven's "You're Driving Me Crazy".