In 1958, he appeared in a television production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman, with Laurence Olivier as Borkman and Irene Worth as his wife, as part of ITV’s The Play of the Week series.

He narrated three Wildlife Explorer documentary films: “Powerful Predators”, “Animal Defences”, and “Weird and Wonderful”. He was also the voice of “Dr. X” on American heavy metal band Queensrÿche’s 1988 album, Operation: Mindcrime. In 1980 he narrated a documentary entitled It´s About Time in the BBC Horizon series, presented by Dudley Moore and featuring Science Fiction writer Isaac Azimov. He also voiced a television commercial for Gordon´s Gin.

Interviewed in 1995, Valentine recalled two earlier brushes with death. First, when he was dangerously ill with meningitis at the age of 26; second in 1974, when caught up in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, he holed up for two days in a holiday hotel as gunfire raged outside. “I’ve always felt that everything since has been an incredible bonus,” he said.

Valentine made his debut as a writer and director in 1998 at The Mill at Sonning with The Waiting Game. He went on to direct regularly at the Mill, productions including: Separate Tables (2005), The Odd Couple (2009) and California Suite (2012). On 12 November 2005 Valentine became a patron of the Thwaites Empire Theatre in his birthplace, Blackburn.

Valentine died on 2 December 2015 in Guildford, Surrey. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 2012. He was survived by his wife, actress Susan Skipper. The couple married in 1982, having met during the filming of the successful Raffles television series, and later appeared together again in a television film of Ivor Novello’s show The Dancing Years (1979).