Wallace
Voiced by Peter Sallis and by Ben Whitehead in Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures and Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels, Wallace can usually be found wearing a white shirt, brown wool trousers, a green knitted pullover, and a red tie. He is best known for his love of cheese, especially Wensleydale, and crackers. His birthday is 7 August. The thought of Lancashire hotpot keeps him from going into crisis. He enjoys tea or a drop of Bordeaux red for special occasions. He reads the Morning, Afternoon and Evening Post.
Wallace is an inveterate inventor, creating elaborate contraptions that often do not work as intended. He is a self-proclaimed genius, evident from his exclamation when he discovers Hutch's borrowed skill, a talent for all things mechanical. Most of Wallace's inventions look not unlike the designs of W. Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg, and Nick Park has said of Wallace that all his inventions are designed around the principle of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Wallace's official job varies; in A Close Shave he is a window washer. In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace runs a humane pest extermination service, keeping the captured creatures (nearly all of which are rabbits) in the basement of his house. In the most recent short he is a baker.
Some of Wallace's contraptions are based on real inventions. For example, his method of getting up in the morning incorporates a bed that tips over to wake up its owner, an invention that was exhibited at The Great Exhibition of 1851 by Theophilus Carter, and is similar to a device sold in Japan that is used to ensure the sleeper awakens on time by inflating a pillow under their normal pillow and rolling the person, thus waking them up.
He has a kindly nature, and is perhaps a little over-optimistic. At times he can be a little selfish and inconsiderate, but he has a good heart and always means well. Nick Park, his creator, says: "He's a very self-contained figure. A very homely sort who doesn't mind the odd adventure." He is loosely based on Nick Park's father, whom Nick described in a radio interview as "an incurable tinkerer". He described one of his father's constructions, a combination beach hut and trailer, as having curtains in the windows, bookshelves on the walls, and full-sized furniture bolted to the floor. The way he dresses and his love for cheese is based on an eccentric school teacher.
In the first photo shown on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it was revealed that once, when Gromit was little, Wallace had much more hair and a beard. On the photo that shows Gromit's graduation at Dogwarts, he had lost his beard, but still had a little hair, in the form of side burns just above his ears. The reason behind Wallace's loss of hair is unknown. As shown in The Wrong Trousers, he still uses a hair-dryer. In a "Matter of Loaf and Death", when Wallace is talking to Gromit, a picture is seen behind Gromit of Wallace with a brown beard and brown hair.
Wallace has had three love interests. The first was Wendolene Ramsbottom, which ended quickly when Wallace realised that she was allergic to cheese. The second was Lady Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, whom Wallace fondly calls "Totty." In A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace becomes engaged to Piella Bakewell, but this ended when she turned out to be a murderess who hated bakers, and was eaten by crocodiles upon trying to escape justice. He remembers all three though, since in Musical Marvels, after the montage of his three love interests, he refers to them as "the ones that got away".
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