Ronnie Barker

Ronald William George Barker (25 September 1929 – 3 October 2005) was an English actor, comedian and writer. He was known for roles in British comedy television series such as The Frost Report, The Two Ronnies, Porridge, and Open All Hours.

Barker began acting in Oxford amateur dramatics while working as a bank clerk, having dropped out of higher education. He moved into repertory theatre with the Manchester Repertory Company at Aylesbury and decided he was best suited to comic roles. He had his first success at the Oxford Playhouse and in roles in the West End including Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. During this period, he was in the cast of several BBC radio and television comedies, most notably the radio sitcom The Navy Lark. He got his television break with David Frost's satirical sketch series The Frost Report (1966–67), where he worked with John Cleese and Ronnie Corbett, the latter becoming Barker's long-time comedy partner. He joined Frost's production company and starred in several ITV shows during the late 1960s.

After rejoining the BBC in the early 1970s, Barker and Corbett achieved significant success with the sketch show The Two Ronnies (1971–87). The duo maintained their careers as solo performers; Barker notably starred as inmate Norman Stanley Fletcher in the sitcom Porridge (1974–77) and its sequel Going Straight (1978) and as shopkeeper Arkwright in the sitcom Open All Hours (1976–85). He wrote comedy under his own name, though for much of his written material after 1968 he adopted pseudonyms (including "Gerald Wiley") to avoid pre-judgment of his writing talent. He won a BAFTA for best light entertainment performance four times, among other awards, and was appointed an OBE in 1978.

Barker's later sitcoms such as The Magnificent Evans (1984) and Clarence (1988) were less successful and he retired in December 1987. The following year, he opened an antiques shop with his wife, Joy. After 1999, he appeared in smaller, non-comic roles in films. He died of heart failure on 3 October 2005, aged 76.

Barker was born on 25 September 1929 at 70 Garfield Street, Bedford, the only son of Leonard William Barker (always known as "Tim") and Edith Eleanor (née Carter; known as "Sis", by virtue of being the youngest sister amongst her siblings).

Barker's elder sister Vera was born in 1926 and his younger sister Eileen was born in 1933. His father was a clerk for Shell-Mex, and this job saw the family move to Church Cowley Road in Cowley, Oxfordshire, when Barker was four.

Barker's biographer Bob McCabe described Barker's childhood as "a happy time, marred by no ructions or family tensions, apart from the occasional wet sock." As a child, Barker enjoyed dressing up, particularly in his father's pierrot outfit, as well as films, comics and animals. He developed a love of the theatre, often attending plays with his family. The first play he saw was Cottage to Let and he once skipped school to see Laurence Olivier in Henry V. He frequently stood outside stage doors to collect autographs, his first being the actress Celia Johnson.

Barker grew up in the Florence Park area of Oxford, and went to Donnington Junior School, and then the City of Oxford High School for Boys. His chemistry textbook at Oxford had previously been used by T. E. Lawrence. He found his talent for humour at school and developed his musical ability by singing in the choir at St James's, his local church. He got into the sixth form a year early after gaining the School Certificate but he felt what he was learning would be of no use to him in later life and so left as soon as he could.